How to present well yes

The following is a summary of presentation skills hints and tips for managers and others. For best effect they should be used in conjunction with a good quality presentation or public speaking training course.

Preparation

Practise

Practise on a colleague or friend. Think about who your audience is and what you want them to get out of an effective presentation. Think about content and style. If you video yourself get someone else to evaluate your performance; you will find it very difficult to be objective about yourself. Prepare, prepare, prepare.

Reconnoitre

Go into the presentation room before the event; practise any moves you may have to make, e.g. getting up from your chair to the podium. Errors in the first 20 seconds can be very disorientating.

Avoid 'Blue peter syndrome'

Try not to over prepare. Don't rehearse the whole thing right through too often. Your time is better spent going over your opening and closing paragraphs. Rehearse your beginning and your finish. Pick a few choice bits to learn by heart.

Presentation style

Be yourself

Use any personal gestures or vocal inflections to your advantage. It's very hard to change the way you express yourself. More effective presentations are ones where you actual put the energy into the presentation (this is a message you will hear again). Similarly, do not try to be anyone else or copy another presenter's style.

Wave

Be more expressive rather than less. These days 'good communicators' are more and more frequently seen on TV and held up as models. You giving a presentation is not TV. This is you communicating live. Gestures help understanding and convey your enthusiasm for the topic.

Be Dynamic

This is not a flippant comment. We all tend to pay more attention to things that change. If you can vary the tone, volume and speed of your delivery you will hold your audiences attention for longer.

How to present well

Presentations are an effective way to communicate to large numbers of people at the same time. However, it is not just about communicating information, but more importantly, to have advanced presentation skills you should be able to create interest and excitement in your subject and trust and enthusiasm in you.

Dealing with presentation nervousness

Be nervous

A certain amount of nervousness is vital for a good presentation. You need the extra energy to communicate: What you feel when you stand up in front of people is the urge to either run away or fight. If you endeavour to stifle those feelings you will be inhibited, restricted, artificial and wooden. The added adrenaline will keep your faculties sharp and ready to engage with your audience.

Breathe

Extra adrenaline, however, can result in shallow upper chest breathing and tension. Taking a slow, deep breath, breathing fully out and then in again, will relax you.

Strangely having something to pick up and put down tends to release your breathing.

Find something else to do

It may seem an odd idea, but our bodies seem to feel better when they have some sort of displacement activity to occupy them. It's the reason people hold pens and fiddle with things. A limited amount of this sort of activity will not be too obtrusive and can make you feel a lot more secure.

Hold on to something

When you start you are at your most insecure. Avoid all the well-meant advice about what you are and are not allowed to do. Until you feel settled do anything you can find to make yourself feel secure. This includes holding on to a lectern. Even just standing next to something solid will make you feel less wobbly.

Go slow

The breathing tip above will help you to slow down your presentation. Go more slowly than you think necessary to avoid gabbling. Your audience need the time to assimilate and interpret what you are saying. It's a fact that when adrenaline is

flowing your sense of time is distorted and what seems OK to you may look like fast forward to your audience.

How to present well

A presentation is far more than an opportunity to give people information. It's a chance to influence and persuade on a level that you just don't get in any other arena. Here is a chance to really work your audience.

Working your audience

Converse

Have a conversation with your audience. They may not actually say anything, but make them feel consulted, questioned, challenged, argued with; then they will stay awake and attentive. Your job as a presenter is to stimulate and communicate with your audience into wanting to get the information you have, not just to present that information at them.

Interact

Engage with your present audience, not the one you have prepared for. Look for reactions to your ideas and respond to their signals. If the light bulbs are not going on find another way to say it. Monitor their reactions; it's the only way you'll know how you're doing and what you should do next. If you don't interact you might as well send a video recording of your presentation. It's why you came.

Show conviction

Give an expressive presentation and an enthusiastic presentation and your audience will respond, which is what you want. At the very bottom line disagreement is

preferable to being ignored. Use your excitement, pace yourself to give an exciting presentation, use something you know you feel strongly about to build up to an important point or as a springboard to another idea.

Get some perspective

The odds are that someone in the audience will not like you or may disagree with you. There will probably be someone else out there for whom you can do no wrong. As a rule of thumb, the majority of most audiences want to like you and what you have to say - they want you to be good. They didn't come hoping to be bored or irritated by your presentation.

How to present well

A good structure will help you as much as your audience. If you feel in tune with the logic of your presentation, it will flow much better. Always rewrite a presentation you inherit from someone else.

Structuring effective presentations

Use metaphors

Metaphors and analogies are vital to communication. 'It's like climbing a greasy pole', for example, conveys far more than just literal meaning. It conveys image and feeling and enables others to empathise through similar experiences of their own. And remember the light bulbs - if they're not lighting up try a different metaphor.

Examples

Giving an example always helps your listeners to see more clearly what you mean. It's quicker and more colourful.

The point

Stick to the point using three or four basic ideas. For any detail that you cannot communicate in 20 minutes, try another medium such as handouts or brochures.

Finale

End as if you have done well. Do this even if you feel like you've done badly. First, you're probably the worst judge of how you've done, and second, if you finish well you'll certainly fool some of the people into thinking it was all pretty good. And anyway a good finish will get you some applause - and you deserve it!

How to present well

Never miss an opportunity to make a presentation. Occasions where a presentation is appropriate are quite frequent if you look out for them. Every presenting experience will add to your effectiveness as a presenter.

Developing as a presenter

Trust yourself

If you do not think you are up to a particular presentation either get help (do training courses and rehearsals), or get someone else to do it (there's no shame in

recognising your limits). However, most people have better presentation skills that they think they do. Recognise what you have. If you doubt your ability to think on your feet, for example, then defer questions till after the presentation. Similarly, do not use a joke as an ice breaker if you are not good at telling them.

Success is the best presentation training

Don't over reach yourself. Several short presentations that you feel went well will do you far more good than one big one that makes you sick with nerves and leaves you feeling inadequate.

Feedback

Encourage those around you to tell you the things you did well. Very few of us make progress by being told what was wrong with our presentation. When we're up in front of an audience we all have very fragile egos.

Follow these essential tips and your presentation skills development will blossom.

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Presenting Skills

When we use our own words to express ourselves, when we speak directly from the heart or the mind that is when we have the greatest impact on an audience.

Knowing your personal presenting style and having the confidence to go off script, allows you to respond directly to the needs of your audience; the stronger their engagement the greater your influence.

'I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!'

Thursday August 28th marked the 40th anniversary of one of the most famous speeches ever uttered.

Forty years ago, in 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington and issued a battle cry that stirred the American nation in the struggle for civil rights.

Interestingly from a presenting skills point of view the draft of this most famous public address, written the night before at Washington's Willard Hotel; does not contain the key passage 'I Have a Dream'.

This was added extemporaneously as King spoke to the huge throng at the Lincoln Memorial.

What has since been heralded as a model piece of speech making or presenting was in fact well prepared improvisation.

We can't all be great speakers, but with a little work we can master presenting skills and the environment in which presenting is done.

When we feel more in charge of the presenting arena we begin to present with flair.

And, interestingly just developing a sense of our presenting skills and personal style helps us feel and therefore look better when presenting.

http://www.impactfactory.com/p/effective_presenting_skills_training/snacks_1541-9103-58709.html

The best way to create a clear, succinct and well designed presentation is to take a structured approach to planning and writing it. And this is one of the key steps to achieving excellent presentation skills.

Establish the purpose of the presentation

There are lots of different types of presentations.

You might be trying to sell something, you might be trying to persuade your audience about a certain way of thinking – to influence them. Or you might just be trying to inform them about something.

So the first thing you need to do is to work out the purpose of your presentation. What are you doing there. What do you want to achieve from your presentation.

So having got a good idea of your purpose, its important to write that down – so its clear in your mind. So that whatever you do you are able to refer back to the purpose, you know what you want to achieve out of the presentation.

Build an audience profile

The next thing you want to do is think about your audience.

This is something that is going to affect your content that you are going to put into the

presentation. So its worth spending time trying to analyse your audience before you actually present.

Its useful to put together an audience profile – covering the type of people who will be at your presentation.

     

Where are they coming from

what level of expertise do they have

Are there any decision makers in the audience

What is their attitude towards the topic that you are presenting on

Do they have any preconceived ideas or expectations about what you will be presenting on etc etc

So brainstorm as much as you can about about your audience. Because the more that you can understand about them beforehand the more that you’ll be able toadapt your material to make it relevant to them.

Establish the key message of your presentation

The next thing to think about is your key message. Every presentation should have one key message which everything else ultimately links to.

The key message should have a very strong benefit for the audience to listen to you. So one way of identifying it is to brainstorm the main benefits to the audience that come from your presentation.

Ask yourself what’s in it for them.

Once you’ve been able to answer this question – you should also have identified your key message. Once you’ve established what this is – write it down.

Develop and structure the content of your presentation

You now need to start developing the ideas for the presentation content. Putting that content into a strong clear structure is very important to help you stay on track and also to help the audience to follow the presentation clearly. Think in terms of THREEs.

1. Beginning 2. Middle 3. End

Split your middle section into three sections as well. In each section have 3 further points you want to make and expand on to reinforce things.

And ensure that as you create the content for your presentation you remember:-

1. Your purpose – what you want to achieve from it 2. The key message – what is in it for the audience

If you dont have a strong structure, you’ll find that’s when you start to wander off topic, your mind can go blank or you’ll head off at a tangent. And then you lose your audience!

Edit your presentation content

Once you’ve got a draft, its then important to edit that. You need to consider the type of language you’re using, to help you keep the audience’s interest.

Identify ways of grabbing their attention. Ways of actually helping the audience to listen to you. Dont use long winded sentences. Or words that may not be relevant to the audience, or that they might not even understand.

So edit the material and adapt the language that you are going to use.

Summing up

Using mind-maps (like the one below – which summarises the main points on this page) is a great way to structure your ideas and enhance your presentation skills. Dont just power up PowerPoint and start writing the bullet points!

All these elements are going to help you planning the presentation.

You’re going to end up with a presentation that has a clear message, that’s relevant to the audience and is probably much easier for you to deliver.

How to Overcome Presentation Nerves

We’re now going to look at anything that might stop you being confident in your presentation. ie those nerves that can kick in the minute you start to think about having to present. Its important to think about why people get nervous and the effects nerves can have on you when you present. There are all sorts of symptoms that can be created through nerves. And sometimes they can manifest themselves quite a lot when people present.

So the more you are aware of them and aware of the fact that its quite normal to feel nervous then the more that you can actually start to overcome them.

Preparing yourself to present

The first thing is to think about is preparing yourself for your presentation.

We’ve already covered preparing your presentation – ie the planning, structuring, the visual aids etc but there’s also you – the presenter and how best to prepare yourself.

Obviously the benefits of proper planning are very important – and will certainly help to reduce nerves. However there are other things that you can do to fully take control of the nerves before you present.

Physical techniques

The benefits of breathing are often overlooked but this one simple technique can reall help to calm you and slow you down. Have a look at our article on breathing techniques to overcome presentation nerves for some more background on this.

When you are nervous you probably also speed up your speech. So controlling the speed that you speak at is a good way to help control your nerves.

There are lots of other physical strategies that people employ to help reduce nerves and focus their minds and we’ll cover several more in a later article.

Psychological techniques

There are also some key pyschological techniques that you can apply to help you to kick out those negative thoughts that can creep into your mind and reduce your confidence.

These techniques can help you to maintin a positive mental attitude towards your presentation and help you remain in control if any negative thoughts start to creep into your mind. One technique is to imagine that the presentation has just taken place – and it that was successful.

Spend time imagining that success – and how you feel at that time. Imagine the voices and other sounds that you hear at the end of the presentation and what the audiences’ faces look like and what else you can see in the room. Take time to imagine all of the positives about the presentation that made it a success.

A lot of the time our imagination focuses on the negatives – so forcing it to focus on the positive can help to turn things around and will help build your confidence.

Rehearsing the presentation

We’ll also look at the practical techniques of how to rehearse and to actually apply the

techniques you have developed to all sorts of presentations that you might actually do without even realising it because experience is obviously one of the best ways to get rid of your nerves. The more presentation experience you have the more confident you will feel. Finally we’ll look at how to control that nervous energy just before you present – what you can do that 3 minutes before you present, what you can do 20 seconds before you start and also what you can do during your presentation if the nerves start to kick in again and how to try and control things.

Improving Your Presentation Delivery Skills

A good delivery of your presentation can give you a certain uniqueness and extra edge. The audience will make judgements about you even before you start to speak. They will do this by way you come across and how you look. They will continue to form opinions about you by the way you speak.

So the way in which you use your own personal resources is going to have a large impact on the way your audience receives you.

First Impressions

First impressions are very important.

You need to look confident and look like you know what you are talking about right at the start of the presentation in order for your audience to take you seriously.

If you take time to ‘warm up’ into it you may well ‘lose’ your audience even before you’ve got to your key message.

Building rapport with the audience is an essential ingredient in making a good impact. The more confident you feel, the easier it is to connect with your audience.

There are many ways you can generate this confidence by developing your delivery skills – the way you use your voice, body language and space so that you fully engage with your audience from the beginning right until the end of the presentation.

Speaking confidently

Speaking confidently is one of key areas that you need to look at in order that you get your message across clearly.

It’s important to speak at the correct pace and not to rush, so you have to think about speaking a little more slowly than usual.

It’s also important to speak clearly – so that you don’t slur your words together – as this will make you sound hesitant.

So, by speaking at the correct pace and pronuncing your words clearly – especially the ends of words, you will sound more confident and convincing to your audience.

See our article on how to speak with more confidence and clarity for some simple voice exercies you can try out yourself.

Sounding interesting

The ability to sound interesting is also really important because, although you might be

passionate about what you are saying, if this doesn’t come across well to your audience, then they wont be convinced.

To sound interesting and enthusiastic you need to use more expression in your tone of voice so that you avoid a monotone style. You may also emphasise key words which will help to influence the overall meaning of your messages.

Injecting pauses into your speaking also helps to create an impact as well as helping you to control your speed so that you don’t race ahead too quickly making it hard for the audience to follow.

You can use all these techniques to help change the tone and dynamics of your presentation and this will help keep the interest of your audience throughout your presentation.

Looking confident

The ability to look confident is important especially as you might be feeling nervous which can unfortunatley have a rather negative impact on your overall presence.

The ways in which you use your posture, gesture and eye contact can ahelp you to control any bad habits created by nerves and create a much stronger presence. Make sure that you are standing evenly on two feet with a strong but relaxed posture.

Take a few seconds before you start to speak to take in your audience. This will help you feel more in control and more confident and you will be less likely to fidget or look uncomfortable.

Make sure that you also feel comfortable in the space that you are presenting, so that you look like you have ownership of the space and that you can move around appropriately. It really helps if you can walk around the space before your presentation – before the audience arrive to help you get used to it.

Engaging with the audience

Eye contact is also very important to help you engage with your audience.

If you just stare at them blankly, you wont get the right connection with them. So you need to use confident eye contact so that you really connect with individual members of the audience while you are speaking with them. See our article on how to make eye contact to engage your audience.

And although it might sound a bit daunting to look directly at audience members, it actually has the opposite effect and helps you to feel more confident.

Presentation stamina

It takes a lot of energy to speak in front of an audience, even if it’s just for 5 minutes.

So it’s important to use the voice and body language techniques we have discussed in this article and to practise them so that you build up your vocal stamina. You don’t have to wait until your next presentation, you can practise the vocal and body language techniques on the telephone or in a meeting.

Once you are used to using these techniques you can rely on them to help you maintain

the energy you need to keep your audience interested throughout your presentation no matter how long you are talking for.

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