Many college students will graduate this year without adequate instruction in the one skill that might prove to be the most valuable in their careers. The good news—there’s still plenty of time to learn it and plenty of resources available to do so. The #1 skill is the ability to effectively deliver a presentation. Listen to what billionaire Warren Buffett once told Columbia business students:
“Right now, I’d pay $100,000 for 10 percent of the future earnings of any of you. By having good communication skills, you can improve your value by another 50 percent. If you have good communication skills, see me after this, and I’ll pay you $150,000 for 10 percent of your future earnings.”
Over the past several years I’ve been invited to speak to MBA students at the highest-ranking business schools in the country (you can see my Stanford and U.C Berkeley presentations on YouTube). In many cases students approach me and say, “We don’t learn this stuff in school.” But times and teachers are changing, led by instructors like John Fallon at Walhalla High School in South Carolina.
Fallon teaches Presentation Skills levels I and II. Beginning in their sophomore year, Walhalla students can choose the elective which meets 1.5 hours, three days a week for an entire semester. Fallon’s program was brought to my attention when I learned that Fallon has been using some of my YouTube videos in his instruction. He also shows videos from other experts in the field of communication and presentations. So in a sense, we’re all “teaching the class.”
I spoke to Fallon this week about his program. Although the students work with PowerPoint, Fallon doesn’t simply teach presentation design. “I’m teaching what students can do with PowerPoint.” He includes storytelling, humor, visual design, stage presence, and elements of persuasion. Presentation skills are “the next competitive advantage,” according to Fallon. “In this era of email, texting and voice mail, true face-to-face communication is becoming a lost art. While many people are comfortable with private, individual conversations, most people are uncomfortable speaking to groups, large or small.”
Today the world of education is taking notice. Newly developed national standards called Common Core State Standards for K-12 now include the category “Speaking and Listening.” The guidelines encourage instructors to teach the “skills necessary for formal presentations” as early as the 5th grade. In grade 5, students should be able to “present an opinion, sequencing ideas logically…speak clearly at an understandable pace…and include multimedia components and visual displays in presentations when appropriate to enhance the development of main ideas or themes.” By the end of high school, students are now expected to “make strategic use of digital media (textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding.”
These standards are intended to prepare students for college. Eighty-nine percent of employers say they want colleges to place more emphasis on oral and written communication (survey results here), so it makes sense that teachers are being encouraged to place more emphasis on presentation skills even at the elementary and high school levels.
According to Fallon, the world of education is becoming more reflective of the needs and inputs of the business world. In doing so the educational community has recognized the importance of communication and presentation skills. Fallon established the non-profit The Presentation Literacy Initiative Foundation to offer teachers free resources to help the next generation master the ‘next competitive advantage.’
While it’s safe to predict that the class of 2024 will be more exposed to effective presentation techniques than today’s graduating class, it doesn’t mean that it’s too late for others to learn. I’ve seen 22-year-olds improve their presentation skills overnight, and I’ve seen 62-year-old’s do it, too. Learning resources are abundant in the form of books, blogs, audiobooks, YouTube videos, and even slide-sharing sites like Slideshare.net. Make sure you (and your kids) master the #1 skill employers require.