The common way of presenting is the selfish way. It’s all about what the presenter wants. She wants the audience to buy her product, to approve her project, to donate for her cause.
The overwhelmingly dominant way to get there is to praise the product, the project, the cause. She tells us how awesome it is, how gorgeous it looks, and how much better it is than the previous version.
About the only thing she doesn’t tell us is why this is for us. Why should we care about the new AI powered steering wheel? Why would we want a camera that has even more megapixels? She expects us to chime in when she cheers for her product when she didn’t even spend a minute on listening what we care about.
The servant presenter has a different approach. She makes it 100% about the audience. She makes us feel welcome and heard. Because she did hear us. She did the hard work of understanding what matters to us. She cheers for us. Not by praising us but by acknowledging us. By understanding what’s important for us.
So she starts with why we should care and develops everything from there. That, by the way, is why she didn’t even think about increasing the megapixels, in the first place, but instead improved night vision. It’s why the servant speaker doesn’t talk about storage but about carrying 1000 songs in your pocket.
The servant speaker wants to make change happen. By caring deeply for her cause and for her audience, she makes her audience see and feel why that change is important. And as a result people will buy her product, approve her project, or donate for her cause.
Read the The Servant Speaker Manifesto.
