Architect's Essentials of Presentation Skills by David Greusel, AIA, (John Wiley & Sons, 2002), fourth in this year's "Architect's Essential Series" on best practice skills, presents all aspects of presentation, from preparation to delivery, provides the tools to succeed in project interviews, and offers guidelines on creating that ineffable sense of "stage presence."

This is a really great book to help you coach yourself through a lot of public speaking situations—from presenting to an audience of thousands, a five-person client meeting, or a one-on-one conversations with the boss—with which many architects may not be naturally facile or comfortable and certainly are not trained. Greusel, himself a principal of HOK Sport + Venue + Event, Kansas City, consistently rates as one of the favorite presenters at AIA conventions, a venue through which he has polled architects about their worst presentation nightmares. These are remarkably consistent he says (the list is in the book), and he succeeds in offering techniques to build the skills needed to conquer the dragons.

The Ten Commandments
Greusel divides his text into 10 chapters, which he dubs "The Ten Commandments of Presentation" and describes as:
1. Show Up: An investigation of the physical quality of presentations, use of the body, stage presence, and a discussion of appropriate movement
2. What's My Motivation? Understanding the goal of your presentation and how to use that goal to motivate every statement, visual image, and action request in your presentation
3. Know Your Lines. A discussion of the importance of preparation in delivering successful and compelling presentations and, especially, on the distinction between preparing and rehearsing; here you will discover the two keys to winning presentations: mastery of the topic and the paradox of practicing
4. Find Your Light: Looking at the physical environment in which a presentation is to occur, preparing the space, and preparing yourself to be seen and heard in it
5. Face Out. A discussion of the five aspects of presenting that keep audiences involved: energy, empathy, engagement, enthusiasm, and entertainment
6. Keep Going. Dealing with obstacles and breakdowns in a presentation, especially when your options are limited
7. Project. How to make yourself heard in different presentation venues
8. Be in the Moment. A discussion of focus and concentration and the importance of maintaining intensity at the time of your presentation
9. Remember Your Props. Consideration of various types of visual aids used by architects, and their pluses and minuses
10. Know When to Get Off. How pace and timing affect the delivery of a presentation, as well as a discussion of stage management techniques and managing multiple presenters.

Be in the moment
In little gray boxes in the reader's margins, Greusel peppers Presentation Skills with "Tips" (you should plan for as many predictable obstacles as possible), "Warnings" (often, architects become so enamored with their own drawings that they end up talking to the drawings instead of to the audience), "Reminders" (if the audience can't see you, they can't hear you either), and "Rules of Thumb" (one of the biggest obstacles to enthusiasm is tension felt by the presenter). There is a lot of solid practical information packed into every page. Arguably, however, there is information a tad more abstract but equally—and then some—critical in the "Be in the Moment" chapter. In the author's words:

"'In the moment' is a phrase you hear in connection with performing arts, psychology, and occasionally with sport, usually in the form of a counterpart phrase, 'in the zone.'It refers to a level of focus and concentration that most people, in their everyday lives seldom aspire to or attain. But being in the moment is absolutely critical to delivering a successful presentation and accomplishing your objective. It requires you to devote 100 percent of your resources—physical, emotional, mental—to the task at hand, which is presenting. It's not enough to call it commitment, because commitment can be expressed in a variety of ways. A person who spends ninety hours a week at work is said to be committed, but how much of that time does he or she spend surfing the Internet or passing the time with coworkers? Being in the moment is a different level of commitment, the total commitment of self to a task or activity. . . .

"Part of being in the moment is the recognition that every design professional wears many hats and plays many roles, of which being a design professional is only one. We are not as single-minded as our resumes and our performance reviews would have us (and others) believe. We are enormously complex creatures with amazing abilities to think about more than one thing at a time. There is nothing wrong with having more than one thing going on in your head most of the time—don't most of the people in your office listen to music while they design? The only time it is wrong to be multitasking is when you are presenting. . . .

"There are two main obstacles to being in the moment: the past and the future. The moment, of course, is right now, and being in the moment means bringing your full personality to bear on the activity taking place this second, whether you are speaking or not."

—SS

Copyright 2002 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved.