The realisation that Ireland cannot beat huge multinationals from the US and Asia at their own game has led to our drive to develop a "knowledge economy". One of the key business skills that we have to foster, if we are to present ourselves as an educated, upskilled, industrious contractor to the world, is communication. But herein lies a problem.
Most professionals receive no training in making presentations, even though it is something they will have to do throughout their careers. This is strange, given the importance of this skill and the inordinate levels of fear that it provokes in most of us.
The problem is that there is no formal edifice of knowledge from which to draw these skills. The higher-level transfer of knowledge - in third-level education, and in business - is something of a black art. Not only does it suffer from a paucity of useful insight, it is also beset by harmful myths and misconceptions.
The trick in presenting to an audience is in simply conversing with them. Most people think that when you present, you should talk (very often to a screen full of bullet points) non-stop for the duration of the session.
This turns interesting people into automatons. A presentation, like a conversation, should be a collaborative, not a combative process.
Which brings us to another gem: "Imagine your audience naked". Why would you wish to do this? Apart from being more disturbing than it would be comforting, it suggests that the audience is your enemy. This is not so.
They are there to get something from your presentation and would prefer you to succeed. You are there to help the audience to understand something that only you can help them to understand. Identifying this key knowledge constitutes the most important preparation step.
Trying to see an audience naked, or talking down to them, will not be helpful. An audience will resent a presenter who is in any way aloof or condescending.
The hostile stance people often take with their audience is of course rooted in fear, but this fear will be lessened by allowing the audience in, not by excluding them. Again, similar to normal conversation, you should encourage participation. Even if you don't receive questions, you should look at the attendees like you anticipate that they might ask you one. Too often presenters speak at people, rather than talk to them.
Occasionally, a presenter may need to have a wayward negative signal (a too-casual hand in a pocket, for example) pointed out to them, but generally the gestures take care of themselves.
If you try to control them directly, you risk tripping yourself up and coming across as insincere.
Even high-profile politicians, who make speeches for a living and receive extensive coaching on body language, seldom fool spin-weary audiences.
Another huge popular myth of public speaking is the idea that you should write everything you wish to say into bullet points and to project these on to a screen, one by one, as you say them. Whose idea was that?
PowerPoint and other presentation media are excellent ways of manipulating visual aids and constructing mobile visual arguments. There is nothing in the educational or cognitive psychology literature to suggest that showing the words on screen, as you say them, aids communication.
The area of oral communication needs to be addressed as an important business and life skill, and studied as such. If we are going to build a knowledge economy, we must understand the means for communicating this knowledge.
We don't require abundant mineral resources or a cheap labour force to achieve this, so it is something that we can do in Ireland. After all, we are supposed to possess gift of the gab.
Barry Brophy is a researcher and part-time lecturer in UCD, and author of The Natural Presenter: Turning Conversations into Presentations.
