Thomas: So it’s been five years. Mm-hmm. But The Presentation Boss podcast is back after just a short five-year break. Um, in this episode, we’re gonna share exactly what has changed, what we’ve been up to, and what we’ve learned from all this time away, what we’ve been up to working with a bit over 2,000 professionals in that time on their communication skills, and also why communication matters more now, even than it did a couple of years ago, especially with AI on the scene in a big way.

And of course, what you can expect from what we’re calling season two of The Presentation Boss podcast

Thomas: I looked it up. Our very last episode, episode 100, which was our goal, we wanted to get to 100 episodes-

Kate: Yeah,

Thomas: we did … nailed it, um, was on the 24th of March 2021, which feels-

Kate: Oh, so it’s actually been over five years.

Thomas: Yeah, it feels like it’s been a- Oh … lifetime. Um- Yeah … and look, I think in that episode we did promise that we would go on a break for a little while.

Kate: Yeah. Look, what’s, what’s a while? What’s a little while? Five years, I guess. It

Thomas: kind of just went into hibernation. Uh, but that’s because life, business priorities changed.

Kate: Yeah. Yeah.

Thomas: Yeah. Uh, but because also, look, in the background the, the, um, platform that we hosted the podcast on got bought out twice, so I kind of just stopped looking at any of it.

Um, but when we jumped in reasonably recently, I was surprised, I think we were both quite surprised- Mm … at just how many people every kind of week, every month, were still searching for and discovering and listening to the podcast. Like, it was still in the thousands. Mm. So, uh, we’re back. And look, if you’re listening to us, that is awesome.

We’re also a video podcast now, too. This is-

Kate: I think that’s the… That’s honestly, like, the biggest thing that’s changed in five years- Yeah … is podcasts are so different, and now we have to show our face and not just our voice. Yeah. Um, which is far less comfortable, if I’m honest. But look, we’ll, we’ll get used to it.

The first couple of episodes, uh, will be quite clunky, as, you know, the first of anything that we ever do is. Um, but we’ll get better.

Thomas: Mm.

Kate: I assume.

Thomas: Mm. But do you remember, I have never gone back and listened to our first ever episode. Oh,

Kate: no way. Yeah. No way.

Thomas: So if you’re into video podcasts or you’d like to see us, uh, that’s an option now too. In future episodes I’m sure we’ll have stuff where we’re trying to show things that is- Well,

Kate: that was actually one of our biggest frustrations- Yeah … was that, um, when we did speech breakdowns, we had a couple that were really visual- Mm

that we really wanted to do, but they were visual, and now we have that opportunity to do it. So I’m really excited. I know we’ve got some really, um, good ones lined up.

Thomas: Yeah. That one. The one. The one that we wanted to do since episode- Our favorite … like, two. Yeah. Yep. We’re doing it. Yeah. Finally. Finally, after all these years.

Um, if you’re just listening, I will make sure that we put in a little note that, like, this one’s best on YouTube or I’ll, I don’t know, I’ll get screenshots in the description or something. We’ll work it out.

Kate: So why now? After five years, why have we decided to bring it back? Um, in five years, the world of communication has changed quite drastically, and we’ll go through some of the biggest changes. But by the same token, there are a lot of things that have stayed exactly the same- Mm … and we wanted to bring our skills to that.

So, um, the things that have stayed the same, to start, we still believe that good communication is absolutely a learnable skill. It is not just something that you are born with.

Thomas: Hm. I had to learn it. Still learning it. That’s why we share. Um, the other thing as well, breaking down great presentations. Ooh, yes, the speech breakdowns.

We’re not getting rid of them. We’ll talk about more that in a moment. Uh, still an excellent way observing and analyzing and evaluating other speakers are still a brilliant way of learning those methods. I stand by it. Life is too short to make all the mistakes yourself. Learn from other people’s mistakes.

Uh, and another thing I’ve noticed that has remained exactly the same is PowerPoint. I’m still a PowerPoint lover. Uh, it gets blame- blamed for problems that it did not create. Uh, we still see it kind of misused, and yeah, it gets blamed for being misused rather than for what it’s actually for. I’m- Yeah

sure we’ll talk about that a lot more.

Kate: Um, and then finally, technical experts, people who have a lot of knowledge in their head, they deserve to have a lot of influence and, you know- Mm … try and get great information out into the world and share their knowledge. That is still absolutely the same and possibly even more important in this day and age.

Thomas: Hm. Yeah. So episode 50 of the podcast, and l- look, if you’ve just found us, there is no real need to go back and listen to the back catalog.

Kate: I don’t know what episode 50 is.

Thomas: Episode 50 was, uh, April 2020. So- Oh, yeah … right as all the COVID lockdowns here in Australia started, kind of peak COVID. Everything was a bit of a mess.

And it’s crazy to think that just a year after that is when we stopped the podcast, right? Mm. A lot has changed since that tail end of the COVID era. So-

Kate: Mm …

Thomas: there’s two big things that I wanna talk about. One is AI has entered the scene massively. Mm. I am almost sick of hearing about it kind of every time I open any kind of media.

Yeah. But it’s here, right? Generalist data analysts, we notice, are becoming, not replaced, but AI is doing a lot of that work for us, and specific analytic skills, uh, when it comes to technical presentations, when it comes to understanding data, those specific analytic skills are becoming more required in other roles.

We’re needing to be more literate of complex information, because we can push a lot of that understanding, if you will, to AI models. Mm. And AI is getting better at… I was gonna say it’s great at, but certainly- Mm … getting better at being able to read the data and pump out interpretations. AI is really good at reading the data.

It’s read kind of everything on the internet, as we know, but it cannot read the room. It cannot read the room, it cannot communicate insights, it can’t connect with people. So while the technical parts have become easier, connection, communication is required even more so. We are having this conversation with clients all the time about how AI, how AI um, affects the way we show up.

Kate: Yeah.

Thomas: And the other thing is working from home- Oh … has become normal.

Kate: Completely normal. Completely normal. Hybrid work is almost expected from anyone who has the ability to-

Thomas: Mm …

Kate: work remote.

Thomas: Yeah, yeah, kind of all white-collar work, um- Mm … is now expe- It used to be a little bit weird, then it became enforced almost during COVID, and now it’s- Yeah.

An expected standard, right? So presentations now are done largely through screens. We spend a lot of time on Zoom and Teams. Oh, Teams. Um, it’s made the world smaller, I guess. But a lot of those, a lot of, a lot of presentations are done through a screen, which means on the other side of that screen is literally everything that can distract people at their fingertips.

You know, emails, and distractions, and what, what have you. So relevance, engagement, and interest to the audience are needed more than ever because there are so many distractions on the other side of a Teams call.

Kate: Yeah. Um, another thing that has changed is dashboards. Mm-hmm. Dashboards are absolutely everywhere.

If you thought that they were everywhere five years ago like we did, oh, we knew nothing. Um, there is just so many dashboards and information out there, data. The world of data has absolutely exploded. And in the absence of like clear information, um, all of the information is expected, and this kind of compounds the problem where all of us, every company now is absolutely drowning in data and is just screaming for meaning from that data.

Thomas: Mm.

Kate: Um, which is something that we see and we work with a lot at the moment, just, um, the abundance of data in the world and in companies. And even personally, um, now everyone just has so much.

Thomas: Mm. What does it all mean, right?

Kate: Yeah. And, and with that, like explaining what matters is becoming harder and harder as well.

People’s attention is stretched even thinner and, what, um, we notice is that people now are not just expected to do normal kind of data work. They are expected to be strategic advisors, and that’s a really new and interesting and difficult place, um, for people to step into.

Um, but it makes people a lot more valuable in the workplace and, you know, that is what we, um, are helping people with, is how to move into that strategic advisor, um, place and get a lot more career stability and career progression through that angle.

Thomas: Mm. Yeah. How can you make yourself not replaceable by an AI agent?

Kate: Mm.

Thomas: Yeah.

Kate: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thomas: Look, all this is to say communication skills are becoming more valuable. Yes. And I remember, remember years ago you see those articles that’s like, “What are gonna be the most important skills in the workforce in the coming X number of years?” And-

Kate: It was always data analysis …

Thomas: data analytics showed up in that Yeah Yeah.

And then robots now do that kinda for us.

Kate: Yeah.

Thomas: Um, they can’t do the communication thing. And I think communication ties in, um, well, communication we know is becoming an increasingly important skill. It’s going to continue being an incr- increasingly important skill. Mm-hmm. And it ties in so neatly or so closely, I should say, with, when we talk about data analysis, it ties in with interpretation, pulling meaning out of information- Information

uh, with discernment. Why does this matter? What matters, especially in regards to audience understanding? How do I connect with people? How do I get people interested? How do I get them to actually listen and be memorable? Mm. All of those skills, it isn’t just about being able to stand up and speak and articulate your words clearly.

It is interpretation, discernment, connection is- Mm … going to continue becoming more and more important.

Kate: Yeah.​

 

Thomas: So where have we been,

Kate? What’s the story? Well, um, we’re not dead Um, the business is not dead. Um, when we started Presentation Boss, we were very committed to helping people plan, design and deliver their best presentation with clarity and confidence, and that morphed fairly quickly in the professional sense, so being able to help people present better in the workplace.

Mm-hmm. And towards the end of the podcast, if you’re a longtime listener, you may have noticed that we evolved to, um, focus a lot more on those data-driven roles, which we’ve always been drew- we’ve always been drawn to those type of people. Um, as a, your data analyst myself, as someone who loves everything technical- Yeah

um, with an aviation background, they are, you know, those, those technical roles are definitely what we like and what we’re drawn to, and where we were most able to use our skills to help people, um, with those kinds of presentations. And after the podcast went on break, we kind of rebranded the entire business and started to have a full-time focus on technical communication to communicate technical information clearly and simply.

Yeah. Look, maybe you’ve, maybe you’ve had this experience, which is you are a subject matter expert. You know a lot of information that’s going on. You go to a meeting, you have to pres- present some kind of, well, presentation, report, update, and you’ve got a heap of information that is important, and you present that information, but it feels like, hmm, maybe nobody’s really listening, or nothing kind of happens.

Or you end up back here in the next reporting period, and it just, you’re kind of wondering what’s not landing here or in some cases, like a client doesn’t buy or buy back in, right? And we work with, we have worked with people to understand how to extract narrative from their, from their information and make it land with audiences.

So we’ve worked with a bunch of backgrounds. I’ll probably miss some, but like engineering, finance, safety, sales, marketing- Accounting … accounting, software. We’ve done a lot, we’ve done a lot of finance stuff. Mm. I’ve really liked working with safety teams. Um, smart people with this huge understanding of the information, often data, um, context and all kinds of information, but just missing the skills to be able to kind of simplify that into a way that a stakeholder is going to understand, act on, and you feel, like, confident and valued in your role as an advisor.

Yeah

And there are so many technical people out there who are doing great work that doesn’t get acted on, that, you know, is not having the influence that it really deserves, and our goal with that podca- and our goal with the podcast is to help to close that gap. So whether you’re presenting to your team, or an executive team, or a board, or a client, uh, wherever you want to have influence, we want to help you communicate those ideas that actually help to change decisions.

And your time is valuable. We appreciate you give up a bit of time to listen to an episode, a whole bunch of episodes, I don’t know, a snippet of our podcast. So we wanna keep what we talk about really practical, to the point, to get you results that you need. What we hope is if you can … We assume if you’ve downloaded this, you have a bit of an open mind, right?

Keep an open mind and ask yourself, “How could this work for me?” We’ve worked in a lot of industries, a lot of functions, but not all of them. Always gonna be keen to hear about people who’ve worked in s- Mm … slightly different stuff, right? And obviously we wanna have fun, make this an enjoyable listening and watching experience, but the goal is not going to be to overhaul your next presentation.

I always say if you can listen in, if you can find one thing, a 1% change, that’s awesome. Yeah.

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Thomas: So what is the plan? What is, uh… What can you expect from this podcast going forward? In season two, well, we had some discussions. Mm-hmm. And we’ve decided that what we were doing- Worked … it kinda just worked. We real- we really liked it. Um, we could see the analytics. You liked it, the comments and the feedback we got.

It was liked, it was valuable, so we’re gonna stick with the rotating three formats. First one is, is this, where it’s, uh, the two of us having a discussion about some kind of topic, uh, getting a little deep dive, some tools, some strategies, some philosophies around all the aspects of communication. I think some big stuff, c- audience analysis and data visualization, and- Oh, it’s exciting-

recommendations and- … we can do data vis- data visualization now with video … we can show stuff. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Exciting. Yeah. We’re gonna continue with the presentation breakdowns. Uh, like I said, not just audio. We can finally do those visual ones which have been sitting on the, um, on the plan for, for years.

Which means we can have a look at them, share them with you on screen. Like I said, if it’s something that’s gonna be a bit tricky in audio, we’ll let you know or- Mm … um, explain what we can. And then lastly? Guests. We have some really cool ideas for guests, people to bring on and share their knowledge and their experience with us.

Um, of course, we will always be open for suggestions if you know someone who would be great to talk to- Mm-hmm … um, about communication, or if you have something yourself that you believe you would be able to share, always happy to take suggestions and pitches and, um, we’d love to have great people on. And I should say, there’ll be no requirement to go back and listen to the back catalogue.

If you have, awesome, we love you for it. Uh, if you haven’t, that’s totally cool. I imagine we will go back and revisit some of those topics with new and upgraded content and ideas and material. Yeah. Yeah. So today- I don’t remember them anyway. I think we spoke over each other there, sorry. Oh. Oh. I don’t remember them anyway.

So we sure as… Oh. I don’t remember them anyway, so I think that is highly unfair that we would expect anyone else to. Yeah. I remember them. I had to edit them. Anyway, uh, so that’s it. Look, after five years, we’re back with, I think it’s not-

I’m gonna go back from just a bit. Yeah Having said that, there is no requirement to, um And I should say there is no requirement or expectation that you go and listen to the back catalog of our episodes. I’m very proud of them. Uh, but if you’ve listened to them, that’s awesome, and I love you for it. Um, if you haven’t, that’s cool.

We’re gonna move forward and probably revisit some of the topics we’ve discussed with a bit more detail, a bit more context, upgraded philosophies Mm-hmm Otherwise, that is it. We’re back after five years, five and a bit years I should say, with, and I don’t think it’s, like, uh, bigging ourselves to say, with way more experience, ideas, predictions, insights, a- Personality.

Maybe. Yeah. Look, we’re looking forward to having a bit of fun and sharing what we know for another… 100 episodes? Probably.