How often have you struggled to organize a presentation? How often have you racked your brain trying to come up with a killer opening? A killer closing? Things might get easier if you approach every presentation as an opportunity to help your audience learn something. That “something” could be anything from why they should buy your product to why they should embrace a change initiative. Once you see your presentation as a learning opportunity, you can organize it around the four stages of the experiential learning cycle. Using Kolb for presenting isn’t exactly like using Kolb for training, but the parallels are there. Let’s consider how you can take a lesson from trainers and educators.

1. Turn your presentation into a
learning experience
Peter Srivastava

2. adults learn from experience
Kolb’s learning cycle

3. Kolb’s Learning Cycle
• If you’ve had a positive training or learning experience, chances are you
progressed through this cycle:
• You had a new experience;
• You reflected on that experience;
• You learned from that experience; and
• You applied what you learned to create new experiences.

4. Presentations are all about learning
• Every presentation is an opportunity to help your audience learn
something.
• That “something” could be anything from why they should buy
your product to why they should embrace a change initiative.
• Once you see your presentation as a learning opportunity, you
can organise it around the four stages of the experiential
learning cycle.

5. Four stages of experiential learning cycle
•Experience
•Reflection
•Learning
•Application

6. Experience
•Talk about a past experience.
•Tell a story
•Do a demonstration, if appropriate or
resources are no constraints.
•Be creative

7. Reflection
•Reflect on that experience.
•Ask questions to encourage reflection
•Do not fear silence, give people time
to quietly process your question.

8. Learning
• Presenters make the mistake of jumping right into the
cold hard facts.
• Would you as a trainer jump right into instruction
without any regard for learners’ existing knowledge or
experience?
• If you’ve done the hard work of giving your audience
an experience and allowing them to genuinely reflect,
they’ll be more receptive to hearing your message.

9. Application
•Call to action. You want your audience to
adopt your viewpoint, idea, or take some
other action.
•Give feedback.
•Make the consequences of inaction clear.
•Help audience to visualize the outcome

10. Now look at the example – theory in action
• You’re the managing director of a
company that has watched 30% of
its customers evaporate over the
last year.
• You have a plan to turn things
around by improving customer
service, but you need staff buy-in.
• You will address all 50 employees
at a general staff meeting.
• Start by giving your employees a
concrete experience. Ask 15 of
them to stand up and walk out of
the room.
• Tell the rest: That’s what it looks
like when 30% of our customers
walk out the door.

11. Now look at the example – theory in action
• When everyone is seated again,
encourage reflection.
• How did it feel to watch all those
“customers” leave?
• What impact does this have on you
and your work?
• What might have led us to this
situation?
• Take questions and facilitate
discussion as much as possible
given the size of the audience.
• You want to gently bring staff around
to considering better customer
service as a potential solution to the
problem.
• You have a plan of action to discuss,
but be open to modifying it based on
their experiences and ideas..

12. Now look at the example – theory in action
• Lastly, make your call to action.
• Ask them to commit by following a
new process
• or signing up for a task force.
• By the end of the presentation,
your 50 staff should have had a
visceral reaction to the problem
(experience),
• processed their thoughts about it
(reflection),
• learned about a solution they
helped shape (learning),
• and committed to a course of
action (application).

13. What now?
• Next time when you give your presentation
• I encourage you to consider how it can be mapped
to the experiential learning cycle.