This week I have been working with the director of a local company on his presentation skills. The web is full of advice on giving presentations, but here are my own 'top tips'.
Start by asking yourself some questions:
Then:
Start by asking yourself some questions:
- Who am I speaking to?
- How much time do I have?
- Why am I doing this?
- What do I expect my audience to do as a result of my presentation?
- What 3, key points do I want to communicate (I can subdivide these if necessary)?
- How can I communicate these points most effectively?
Then:
- Choose an appropriate structure for your presentation as a whole.
- Break down what you want to say into a logical structure.
- Consider using audio/visual aids. But don’t feel that you have to. People were making great presentations long before PowerPoint was invented!
- Practise – a lot! Then practise more.
One basic example structure:
- Have an attractive, attention grabbing opening (being enthusiastic yourself will help).
- State your main aims in your introduction so the audience know what they are listening for.
- Outline (or show on a slide) the structure of the talk.
- Go through your main ideas briefly – if they want to know more the audience can ask questions at the end or talk to you one-to-one later.
- Plan a conclusion that has a purpose. E.g. a call to action, or a summary of key points.
Some features of a good presentation:
- Clear, simple introduction – if the audience doesn’t understand this, don’t expect them to pay any attention to the rest of the presentation.
- Warm, friendly and confident voice (you need to practise to achieve this).
- Speak slowly and clearly – more slowly than feels natural to you. This will sound better to your audience.
- On slides, use a large font and only have a few words or sentences on each one.
- Make eye contact with everyone in your audience.
- Keep to the time limit.
- Do repeat references to your presentation structure, so the audience knows where you are up to, what you have covered so far, what you just finished talking about and what’s coming next.
- Show a positive, open body language.
- Avoid over long, complex sentence structures - use simple English.
- Avoid too many technical terms or jargon – know your topic, but don’t try to show off.
- Avoid standing behind tables, chairs, microphones and lecterns.
- Try to avoid repeating yourself in your talk – this is a sign of nervousness and quickly gets irritating for the audience.
- Avoid reading aloud off PowerPoint slides – use them as an aide memoire for yourself, and to help audience members who have become distracted to catch up with where you have got to in your talk.
There is so much more that could be said, and many people have their own ideas about what makes a good presentation, but I hope this is useful. Please get in touch with any queries about presentation skills and training.