When you are asked to give a presentation or a workshop, it is likely because you are a decent presenter, a content expert, or both. As a person with this skill set, it is likely your only job is not giving presentations on this subject and presentations take time and money to develop. Maybe you should just wing it.
What is Winging it?
Let’s start by talking about this idiom. Winging it is basically improvising your way through a presentation. If you know enough about the content and are comfortable in front of a group of people, you can probably get away with this. If you are winging it, it may help garner your audience’s sympathy by letting them know that you didn’t have time to prepare or rehearse.
Why do people wing presentations?
I don’t know about you, but I am busy. Work never seems to slow down and cramming in time for one more presentation can be difficult. Alternately, sometimes things fall off my radar. I will see a calendar reminder a few days in advance for an event I should have prepared for weeks ago. I don’t think there should be shame in saying we have all been here, and the need to cobble something together last minute that isn’t great, but it gets the job done.
This sounds like bad advice.
It is, but there hasn’t been much of an alternative. There are a few shortcuts to designing a good presentation like having access to a well-designed lesson plan, understanding a good learning model, and having access to 292 activities. However, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, presentations take lots of time.
With Soapbox you can create an engaging presentation in under five minutes. And then you will never have to wing a presentation again. Lucky you.
