Why do orchestras need conductors? Can’t the musicians play by themselves? After all, they can read music, know when to come in and when to stop. All the dynamics are written in black and white: fortissimo here, piano there. Why do they need a guy in a monkey suit waving his arms, casting glances, and shaking his pompadour to get the music out?
The reason is the difference between translation and interpretation.
Trained musicians can translate the black dots and squiggles on the page into notes and chords. But they will not have unanimous agreement on the interpretation of the whole composition, on what the piece is trying to say.
For that they need a leader, someone who’s in charge of the big idea, the message, and can orchestrate the articulation of that message.
So who is in charge of your presentation? Sometimes you are, sometimes you’re part of a group doing the group-think thing, and sometimes you have a boss who wants to see what you’re planning to say and wants to have a say over how you’re saying it.
To be the conductor when you’re in charge, you simply have to decide what you want the audience to know, feel, and/or do as a result of hearing and seeing your talk. The great Roman orators called this the QED: Quod erat demonstranda, which means “what was demonstrated” by the talk when it was over.
This is generally pretty simple: you might want the executive committee to endorse your plan and give you the resources to complete it because… (and here you demonstrate why it’s a good idea for them to endorse it.)
When you are part of a group-think thing, you are part of an orchestra, so you will have lots of different opinions about how to develop the presentation material. What you will need, above all else, is a person with a strategic perspective who knows the audience and can interpret the information so that it is most effective for that audience.
When you have a boss looking over your slides, her advice to you will be guided by her own greater experience with the target audience, her own biases, and perhaps her own desire to be helpful to you. If you have a good rapport with her, you can debate the interpretation of the content, and retain co-ownership of the interpretation with her.
It is crucial that you internalize the interpretation, so that you can feel it in your bones. Your own thinking and your own logic will always be the greatest source of your confidence and conviction. If you have translated the information into slides–into data, opinions, stories and recommendations–but have problems understanding or agreeing with the interpretation forced upon you by your boss or your group, I suggest you ask for time to make the slides your own, and perhaps ask for a private run-through with your boss or the senior person in your group, to discover whether or not you can internalize the content and deliver it wholeheartedly.
Your whole-heartedness is a felt form of proof, and makes you a much better presenter.