The setup: a simple path to a better presentation

Here is a small trick that is almost embarrassingly simple, and yet it is forgotten far too often. Before you say the thing you really want to say, build up the expectation for it first. I call this the setup, or the background, and it is one of the most fundamental building blocks in all of presenting. It is exactly what a good book, a good film and a good presentation all have in common.

The wonderful thing about a strong setup is this: you can take the very same content and make it feel like something much better, funnier and more interesting, simply by preparing the ground before you plant the seed.

Let me show you how I use it, depending on what I am trying to do.

In a teaching presentation

When I am educating a room, I build the setup from a motivating angle, so that the listener feels, "Oh, this is something I really need to learn!" More or less, or actually rather precisely, the way I am doing with you right now.

In a sales presentation

When I am selling, I use the setup to build the mood, the expectation and the focus of the potential buyer, so that the two of us land as close as possible on the same wavelength.

In an entertaining or informative presentation

Here I use the setup to lift the value of what I am about to say, partly as a little seasoning and partly as variation, so the message never arrives flat.

Three quick tips

• Keep it short. Your setup should never run long, three minutes at the absolute most. That is how you keep the thread of your talk feeling clear.
• Aim for feeling, not logic. A good setup stirs an emotion rather than making an argument. Let the head come later.
• Mind your delivery. To lift the value even further, remember to use your pauses well and to speak with deliberate changes of tempo.

An example

Let me show you what setting the background before a subject actually does. First the setup, then the subject itself.

The setup. In 2006, by complete chance, I ended up in a meeting with a man. His name was Micke Darmell, possibly an entirely ordinary man, or possibly not. But something happened that day, in that meeting. Exactly what it was, I found very hard to put my finger on, until a year or so later. And when it finally struck me, I realised at the same moment that a single meeting, a single person, can change an entire life. In this case, my life.

(Pause here, three or four seconds.)

The subject. He taught me the most important lesson in life: to dare to stop and enjoy this very moment, nothing else, just this one. That is quality of life. To see the positive instead of the negative. To look at what we have around us, at what mother nature has created, and almost weep at its perfect completeness. That is what lifts every living impression. And this is not knowledge, and it is not a skill. It is an insight, an insight you may already have arrived at, or one you are still on your way to. Who knows through which meeting, with which person.