Ensuring a great first impression

- You may be familiar with the maxim, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression." And in the creative business, our ability to communicate clearly, both verbally and with visuals, is a great advantage or disadvantage, depending on your ability to deliver. Assuming that you are competent in presenting, no matter how well you practice, are ready, or have it down, there are times that things do not go as planned. Every step of the job is important, but if you get off on the wrong foot without recovering, the project and ended up being harder, less profitable, and more mentally draining than it should, When getting ready to present virtually or in person, take care of as many details as you can ahead of time, so you're in a great spot to begin. As the great Benjamin Franklin once said, "By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail." I strongly believe in that. Practice your presentation. Do your research. Prepare an agenda if you're leading the meeting and write down questions beforehand. I also recommended a backup pres, extra cables, and a wing man if you can make it happen. When starting the presentation, do all you can to create a positive and open atmosphere. This may help you take notice of someone that may be off, looks agitated, or is ready from the start to ask a whole bunch of questions. If you have a wing man with you also observing the room, whether it's in person or virtually, this can help you reduce challenges by addressing that person or bring them into a conversation as soon as possible. To avoid getting off on the wrong foot, start your presentation by stating what you're going to talk about, reconfirming the time you have to give it and setting some ground rules about questions and the agenda. With all that in place, it's still possible to have a poor presentation. And when that happens, what should you do? Part of this starts with preparing. When you are thinking about the presentation, build in moments to ask questions or to get a sense of how everything is going. This will help you make adjustments as you go and make sure any potentially large issues stay small. Preparation and occasional check-ins should help you avoid running out of time and losing your train of thought, and so will an outline and some notes. You especially want to be aware of the heckler or the constant interrupter. The first rule is not to directly engage with them, but instead ask them to hold their comments or questions until you're done. Try a little humor to cut any attention if you feel you can pull that off. You might also say that you're here to offer some great ideas and you appreciate the respect and professionalism to finish. I've given presentations that I felt went extremely well and then later found out they missed the mark. Those can be hard to recover from, but it's not impossible. I've found that approaching challenging feedback with openness and humility and asking to share a new response ends up being more of a positive experience than a negative one. Challenging presentations will happen, but with thoughtful preparation, you'll reduce the odds of that. And when presentations don't go smoothly, you'll be able to recover and show your desire for the project to be successful by your humble, but confident responses when you do get challenging feedback.