If you were asked by someone to explain the difference between presenting and teaching what would you say?
You’d probably suggest that there isn’t much difference, right?
What if I were to tell you that if you said the above, you’d be very, very wrong? Since this was first posted in 2019 prior to the pandemic, education has changed. For better or the worse it has changed … but we’re not here to question content, we’re here to clarify the technique of delivery.
Why? Because presenting and teaching have many similarities. Both involve the delivery; the communication of information. Both can be done within the same environment, to the same audience, and both can be ‘carried out’ by the same people [educators, instructors, leaders, mangers, etc.] and both can be done in many of the same ways, with the same aids, such as via Zoom, or with the aid of PowerPoint …
So surely with so many similarities they are in fact the same thing! Your initial conclusion was correct … wasn’t it?
No, not by a long way! Although they share a lot of similarities … potentially even coming from the same parents … they not. Without getting too pedantic, there surely has to be a good reason, for defining these two practices as separate skills.
There is!
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We actually know the difference …
We all know this very moment. Whether you’re an employee of a company or a bored student in a classroom, you’ll be in your seat, pen … or coffee in hand, someone gets up to kick things off and after the initial introduction of … whatever, they start to talk about the big key … topic … whatever … it is you’re there for …
‘Q2 was a bit better than expected … but as you can see from these charts, these projections start to … ‘, *yawn … zzzzz*
‘okay, I need you both to pay attention, I’m going to show you how to use the CRM properly. Now … yeah … like … sorry the network is a bit slow here, here we go, you click this button here, and when the screen changes, you click into this field …’, *yawn … zzzzz*
This is presenting … we all know it, its boring! It’s mind numbing … it’s completely life draining, and tests your will to live. More often than not, the presenter is usually not needed. The ‘presentation’ is so chock full of detail, the presenter is simply there to summarize and force feed information to the audience.
Related: Workshops. Are they the best type of class?
Devil in the Detail
But what would happen, if the presenter were to ask a question instead of some senior manager wanting even more detail about growth projections?
What if the presenter, were to ask a question about the information delivered? What if they were to question someone else to test whether an answer was correct? What happens when the presenter shifts from the person who just wants to get to the end of their slide deck, to the person who truly takes centre stage to make sure the audience ‘learns’ something?
Presentations can be seen as ‘one sided’ monologues while Teaching can be a seemingly & completely improvised ‘dialogue’ between instructor and trainee, with unlimited & incredible results.
And there is the thin grey line between the two.
‘The Exchange!’
As much as it pains me to re-write this, the difference between the two is the ability to create and maintain audience engagement. Sure, presentations ‘can’ be interesting, they ‘can’ be engaging … but from personal experience, they often aren’t, and secondly … there is usually little consequence, when the key message doesn’t get through.
Teaching demands engagement, it demands confirmation, it also requires more than just charisma in order to ensure that the teaching outcomes are actually delivered. Sometimes when it comes to teaching you can deliver training with almost no additional supporting aids, purely from experience and sometimes this is the best way.
Related: 5 Factors that determine how fast you can teach
Knowing the difference
Why is this difference so important?
Being an educator is an extremely powerful skillset behind earning active income, an effective way to boost business and achieve financial security and independence.
Knowing the difference between pure presenting and the teaching of students, is a critical factor that will determine the results you can achieve and also how your reputation as an educator in your field is formed.
Related: Why being an educator means you have no competition
If you have successfully taught something to a group of people well enough, you must have presented it right, i.e. you have engaged your audience. However, vice versa may not be correct, is that right?
You are a great teacher by the way.
Yes, Thank you and I Miss some of our conversations.
Learning can definitely be achieved from a presentation, whether audience engagement has been ‘designed in’ to the presentation or not. I think i might have said that there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to teach or present, but from your experience as we both know, and also having delivered training, there are some presentations where the audience comes away with very little and others where the audience can come away with much more.