In this entertaining podcast from Adam Grant he is interviewed by Jennifer Garner (as a last minute replacement for Rainn Wilson).
They talk mostly about his newest book, Hidden Potential and the stories Adam tells around that. It exists on youtube (below), and you can also get it on his normal podcast “from wherever you get your podcasts”.
There’s a very interesting bit about teaching Chess to kids – by starting with the End game. The idea being that they get to win or lose, rather than focus on the (frankly boring to me) first steps of moving a pawn out etc. It made me wonder what would happen if we taught presentation skills that way, for example.
I’m not sure what that means just yet.
Combining this with another presentation skills idea I got from Shane Parrish interviewing Blake Eastman, where he says firstly, record yourself and play it back (even on Zoom), but secondly, record and watch back the audience at each point in the talk – to get a full gamut of what people are doing in response to you, rather than just generic advice about where to put your mind.
The “audience focus” which I have been teaching forever is taken to the extreme this way, and I suspect it would be fabulous feedback.
So End Game for presentations? Maybe pop yourself in front of an audience, record people’s responses and see what worked or didn’t, I guess? Still pondering.
I knew nothing about Blake Eastman, so here’s a link to his company.
