For Better Presentations, Adjust to Fit Your Audience
Anxiety about public speaking and presentations is a common challenge across roles. Presenting to a board, leading a department meeting, giving a sales pitch, or speaking at a conference like GSX can feel daunting. Recognizing this fear as both familiar and manageable, learning to frame content for the audience, and developing a presentation process can turn anxiety into an opportunity for growth.
Building on this, understanding your audience and tailoring your message, even on similar topics, is essential in easing both nerves and presentation delivery. For example, an academic presentation for an emergency management class requires a different approach than a practical training session given to fire service officers or a board presentation about how crisis management adds value through prevention and planning. The core topic remains similar, but each setting demands a specific goal. While metrics can sometimes help, they aren’t the sole factor behind a successful presentation.
Build the Presentation with a Goal in Mind
You must understand the goal of a presentation before you begin to plan any PowerPoint slides, because the goal sets the tone and guides how you build your formatting. Oftentimes, your goal depends on your audience; knowing one will enable you to reach the other.
Academic. Usually, the purpose of academic presentations is to show your work. It often looks like a project summary or a demonstration of comprehension. The slides usually include a lot of content. Note fields in your presentation document can provide extra context. There are typically a few images, depending on the subject, but the main goal is to show a clear understanding, not necessarily to engage the audience or request support.
Departmental or internal. When presenting to peers or team members, the story behind the slides is often more important than the slides themselves. The slides will often include data that the group is familiar with, such as metrics, progress on defined objectives, and departmental goals.
When designing your presentation, try to keep this question in mind: If you were to share the slides without a narrative to explain them, could they convey the message on their own? This should be a solid foundation for the presentation, making it understandable so you can focus on making it relatable when you present. When possible, include visuals the team will relate to, such as video or still images of security risks and opportunities. These visuals spark conversation; they often tell a story better than words alone in a team presentation.
When sharing a positive message with your team, give credit for work the audience has completed, security improvements, progress towards team goals, or positive recognition from others.
Engage the audience with questions for context and buy-in. Audience support will make or break any challenging ask you have of the team.
Trade or industry. In tradeshow or conference presentations, your goal should be to appear relatable, stay on topic, and engage, engage, engage with the audience. This starts with being intentional with the title and summary to engage the audience and encourage attendance.
Consider which presentation title would be more likely to get your attention and attendance: “Fire Prevention and Response Strategies” or “Emergency Planning: Beyond the Fire Exit.” An engaging, evocative title encourages a potential attendee to want to learn more.
During the presentation, as you talk with the audience, make it personal. People chose to attend your session because you are an expert on that topic and they want to hear your message. So, let your slides back up the story you’re sharing verbally, don’t just read off them. Use data deliberately to support your message; be careful not to overload the audience with data points unless it’s a very technical topic that requires it.
Let attendees know what you will cover, and build participation through questions. Embed polls or easy surveys with QR codes into the slides. Be sure to allow time for some dialogue while maintaining pace. The challenge with this is not focusing solely on a vocal few participants but engaging the entire audience. Consider requesting input from specific people who are paying attention but have not contributed yet or simply asking the room for a show of hands in response to a question.
When appropriate, close with an ask or challenge to take home. This helps with topic retention and keeps attendees thinking about your presentation longer.
Share your contact information if you are comfortable doing so. This makes you more approachable and helps distribute best practices in our industry.
Executive leadership. Use as few slides as possible to make your point. The content must stay specific to the topic, and specific requests to leadership must be clearly articulated.
You might have 10 minutes in an executive meeting to make your case—try to use less time and leave a few minutes for questions. By being economical with time, you’re demonstrating that you value the audience’s time and attention, you are prepared, and you have fully tailored your content for them.
Jargon, acronyms, and unnecessary technical details should be avoided. The audience likely does not work in safety, security, or emergency management and may not ask clarifying questions, such as what an acronym means. If you lose executives’ attention because of terminology, you have lost the ability to engage effectively. Clear, easily understood language and specific goals are critical and show that you respect the audience’s time. Taking these approaches will likely get you asked to return and help build your brand.
When framing your ideas, keep the audience’s experience at the forefront of your preparation: What should they take away? Did you demonstrate that you value their time with impactful content? These aren’t just prompts—they are the blueprint for a presentation that resonates because it is tailored to the audience. It is a great honor to work in the security and protective services field. Our mission to protect people, property, and information is a high calling, especially now, and that pride should be evident in every word you share in your presentation.
Dan Rhatigan, CPP, CSP, is the vice president, security, EHS and site services at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. He has worked in the EHS and security field for more than 25 years in the pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing industries. He has extensive emergency response experience, having spent almost 20 years in the fire service, including serving as a first assistant chief of training and operations. He holds a Bachelor of Science in emergency management, a master’s degree in safety and health, and a doctorate in criminal justice, with a concentration in homeland security.
Aidan Rhatigan is a current student in the Emergency Management, Homeland Security Master’s Program at the University at Albany. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Hartwick College where he was a double major in criminal justice and sociology.
