I’d love you to be in your tiara era

I was on the packed 7.45 am train into Melbourne CBD, standing in the aisle on a coolish autumn morning, with a clear view of the whole compartment. This meant I could do what I love most: people watching. Obviously not in a stalker kind of way, but for academic research. OK, that’s what I call it.

Everyone was dressed in roughly the same categories: coats, tops, trousers, skirts, shoes and bags. And yet no two people were dressed the same. One three-year-old had even popped a pink tutu over tiny jeans and placed a sparkly tiara on her head, which was adorable. I overheard her mum say, ‘She’s going through her tiara era.’

Good on her. Everyone deserves at least one tiara era.

Everyone on that train was expressing themselves through how they had chosen to show up. The same is true when you present. Self-expression matters just as much.

Your self-expression is already there in the words you choose, the joke only you would make, what you notice, what annoys you more than it should, and the thing you would say to a colleague over coffee but normally sand down for a formal slide deck.

Your self-expression – that’s the stuff to bring more of into your presentations. Not because you need to be quirky for the sake of it, but because otherwise your talk sounds like it came out of the same beige blender as everyone else.

One of my clients, Jack, was presenting at a roadshow. He shared that employee attendance was compulsory and people would think, ‘Oh no, not another roadshow.’

So, Jack, a senior leader, opened by saying, ‘I know a lot of you might be thinking: “Not another bloody roadshow!”’ His audience burst out laughing. They’d been outed, but by a leader who clearly understood what they were thinking and feeling.

So, before you open PowerPoint and surrender your soul to bullet points, ask yourself: what is the one thing everyone in the room is thinking, but no one is brave enough to say out loud?

Say that in your own words, before the first slide.

Then please adjust your tiara for the applause.