Brilliant people are often terrible at connecting. I’ve met highly capable people who tell me, “I’m just not a people person.” I’ve also met confident speakers who can hold a room’s attention but leave everyone feeling like they’ve been talked at.
I’ve been guilty of both. And I’ve probably caused a few cases of death by PowerPoint myself.
Over the years, I’ve given presentations across different countries, industries and audiences. For a long time, I thought my job was to make sure people got everything they needed from me: every important point, every example, every piece of information I’d gathered.
I thought being thorough meant being useful.
So I gave them more slides, more detail, more explanation and more information.
The problem was that I was measuring my presentation by what I had managed to deliver, rather than what the people in the room had actually received.
Those are two very different things.
I’ve had this happen more than once (maybe i should say several times). I’m partway through a presentation, still working through the slides, and I can see the room starting to drift.
People are still looking at me, but they’re no longer really with me. The energy drops, attention wanders and I realise I’m giving them more information than they’re able to use.
I’ve finished presentations like that knowing I’d put a lot into them but also knowing I hadn’t really connected.
I was prepared. I knew my subject. I had plenty to say.
But I’d made the presentation about getting my message across rather than making sure it actually reached the people in the room.
That changed how I think about communication.
It’s very easy to confuse communication with connection.
You can speak clearly, have good slides, know your subject inside out and be confident, yet still miss the person sitting in front of you.
The trap is that being thorough feels like being helpful.
When you’ve done the work, gathered the data and know the subject, you don’t want to leave anything out. So you add another example, another qualification, another chart, another slide.
Before long, you’ve created the corporate equivalent of a phone book and called it a presentation.
But connection starts somewhere else.
The question isn’t, “How much can I give them?”
It’s, “How can I add value to what they already have or know?”
That changes how you prepare.
You start thinking about what the people in the room already understand, what matters to them and where you can add something useful.
I’ve found this is less about personality than we sometimes make it.
You don’t have to be the loudest person in the room or naturally charismatic. You do need to be interested in the person you’re communicating with.
What do they already know? What matters to them? What are they trying to work out? What can I add?
When I started asking those questions, I stopped trying to get everything out of my head and started thinking more about what might be useful to someone else.
That meant leaving things out.
It also meant accepting that something can be interesting to me without being useful to them.
For me, that’s the real shift from communicating to connecting.
It’s not about saying more.
It’s about making what you say matter to the person hearing it.
I’ve changed how I judge a presentation too. It’s not whether people say, “Great presentation.” It’s whether they remember something useful and can do something with it afterwards.
Because communication isn’t complete when the words leave my mouth.
It’s complete when something useful reaches another person.
And yes, I’m still responsible for a few (maybe several...) PowerPoint casualties. I’m just trying to create fewer of them.
What I learned this fortnight
- Connection starts with understanding what people already know.
- If someone has agreed to give me their time, I need to respect that time, whether they’re paying me or not.
- Good communication gives people something they can use.
