Presentation Skills

Presentations skills are very useful in many aspects of work and life. Effective presentations are important in business, sales and selling, training, teaching, lecturing, and generally feeling comfortable speaking to a group of people.

Developing the confidence and capability to give good presentations, and to stand up in front of an audience and speak well, are also extremely helpful competencies for self-development and social situations.

Presentation skills abilities are not limited to certain special people anyone can give a good presentation, or perform public speaking to a professional and impressive standard. Like most specialisms, this requires preparation and practise.

The formats and purposes of presentations can be very different, for example: oral (spoken), multimedia (using various media visuals, audio, etc), powerpoint presentations, short impromptu presentations, long planned presentations, educational or training sessions, lectures, and simply giving a talk on a subject to a group on a voluntary basis for pleasure. Even speeches at weddings and eulogies at funerals are types of presentations.

Preparation and creating your presentation

This is a sequential step-by-step process a list of the main action points for creating and preparing a successful and effective presentation large or small. The process includes preparing, creating, checking, rehearsing, refining and finalizing the presentation.

1. Think about your audience, your aims, their expectations, the surroundings, the facilities available, and what type of presentation you are going to give (lecture style, informative, participative, etc).
2. What are your aims? To inform, inspire and entertain, maybe to demonstrate and prove, and maybe to persuade.
3. How do you want the audience to react?
4. Thinking about these things will help you ensure that your presentation is going to achieve its purpose.
5. Clearly identify your subject and your purpose to yourself, and then let the creative process take over for a while to gather all the possible ideas for subject matter and how you could present it.
6. Think about interesting ways to convey and illustrate and bring your points to life, so that your presentation is full of interesting things (think of these as ‘spices’) to stimulate as many senses as possible. A presentation is not restricted to spoken and visual words – you can use physical samples and props, sound and video, body movement, audience participation, games and questions, statistics, amazing facts, quotes, and lots more ideas to support your points and keep the audience engaged.
7. Use brainstorming and ‘mind-mapping’ methods (mind-mapping is sketching out ideas in extensions, like the branches of a tree, from a central idea or aim). Both processes involve freely putting random ideas and connections on a piece of paper the bigger the sheet the better – using different coloured pens will help too.
8. Don’t try to write the presentation in detail until you have decided on the content you need and created a rough structure from your random collected ideas and material. See the brainstorming process, it’s very helpful and relevant for creating and writing presentations.
9. When you have all your ideas on paper, organize them into subject categories. Three categories often work best. Does it flow? Is there a logical sequence that people will follow, and which makes you feel comfortable?
10. Use the ‘rule of three’ to structure the presentation where possible, because sets of three have a natural balance and flow. A simple approach is to have three main sections. Each section has three sub-sections. Each of these can have three sub-sections, and so on. A 30 minute presentation is unlikely to need more than three sections, with three sub-sections each. A three day training course presentation need have no more than four levels of three, giving 81 sub-sections in all. Simple!
11. Presentations almost always take longer to deliver than you imagine.
12. When you have a rough draft of your presentation you should practise it, as if you were actually in front of an audience, and check the timings. If your timings are not right (usually you will have too much material) – then you can now adjust the amount of content, and avoid unnecessarily refining sections that need to be cut out. Or if you are short of content, you can expand the presentation material accordingly, or take longer to explain the content you already have.
13. You must create a strong introduction and a strong close.
14. You must tell people what you’re going to speak about and the purpose or aim of your presentation.
15. And if you finish with a stirring quotation or a stunning statistic, you must, before this, summarise what you have spoken about and if appropriate, demand an action from your audience, even if it is to go away and think about what you have said.
16. Essentially the structure of all good presentations is to: “Tell’em what you’re gonna tell’em. Tell’em. Then tell’em what you told’em.”
17. When you have structured your presentation, it will have an opening, a middle with headed sections of subject matter, and a close, with opportunity for questions, if relevant. This is still a somewhat flat ‘single-dimensional’ script. Practice it in its rough form, which is effectively a ‘read-through’ rather than a fully formed presentation with all aids and equipment.
18. Next you bring it to life as a fully formed presentation; give it space and life and physicality and character – by blending in your presentation methods, aids, props, and devices, as appropriate. This entails the equipment and materials you use, case studies, examples, quotations, analogies, questions and answers, individual and syndicate exercises, interesting statistics, samples, visual and physical aids, and any other presentation aid you think will work. This stage often requires more time than you imagine if you have to source props and materials.
19. Practice your presentation in rough full form with all your aids and devices. Review and record the timings. They will be different compared to earlier simple read-throughs. Amend and refine the presentation accordingly. Practise at this stage is essential to build your competence and confidence especially in handling and managing the aids and devices you plan to use and also to rehearse the pace and timings. You’ll probably be amazed at this stage to realise how much longer the presentation takes to deliver than you imagined when you were simply reading on your cards or notes.
20. If your presentation entails audio-visual (AV) support and equipment provision by specialist providers then ensure you control the environment and these services. If there are audio-visual aspects happening that you don’t understand then seek clarification. You must understand, manage and control these services do not assume that providers know what you need – tell the providers what you want, and ask what you need to know.
21. Ask an honest and tactful friend to listen and watch you practice. Ask for his/her comments about how you can improve, especially your body-language and movement, your pace and voice, and whether everything you present and say can be easily understood. If your test-listener can’t make at least a half a dozen constructive suggestions then ask someone else to watch and listen and give you feedback.
22. Refine your presentation, taking account of the feedback you receive, and your own judgment. Test the presentation again if there are major changes, and repeat this cycle of refinement and testing until you are satisfied.
23. Produce the presentation materials and organise the equipment, and ensure you are comfortable with your method of reading from notes, cards etc.
24. Practice your presentation it in its refined full form. Amend and refine as necessary, and if possible have a final rehearsal in the real setting, especially if the venue/situation is strange to you.
25. Take nothing for granted. Don’t guess or make assumptions about anything that could influence your success. Check and double-check, and plan contingencies for anything that might go wrong.
26. Plan and control the layout of the room as much as you are able. If you are a speaker at someone else’s event you’ll not have complete control in this, but if it’s your event then take care to position yourself, your equipment and your audience and the seating plan so that it suits you and the situation. For instance, don’t lay out a room theatre-style if you want people to participate in teams; use cabaret-layout instead. Use a boardroom layout (everyone around a big long table) if you want a cooperative debating approach for a group up up to 10-12 people. Consider splitting people into sub-groups if the total group size is more than 10-12 people. (See guidance on managing groups sizes in the teambuilding section.)
27. Make sure, when the room/venue is prepared, that (before delegates arrive) everyone will be able to see you, and all of the visual displays (screen, wipeboard, etc).
28. Make sure you understand, and if appropriate control and convey, the domestic arrangements (fire drill, catering, smoking, messages, coffee and lunch breaks etc). If you are running/starting the event, then this is your responsibility. It is also good to remind people of these arrangements when restarting after a lunch-break. So build these aspects into your presentation and timings if they are required.