Essential Presentation Skills Mrs. Flowers Finance & Business Technology

Effective Presentation Skills: Introduction To really succeed at presenting and build up effective presentation skills, there are several key areas that you need to become skilled in.  And once you’ve mastered these skills, you’ll be able to create a presentation with a clear message and deliver it with confidence. These key skills areas include…

5 Effective Skills Planning and writing the presentation Using visual aids effectively Overcoming presentation nerves Delivering the presentation confidently Answering questions competently

1) Skills for Planning & Writing the Presentation Planning the presentation involves much of the work that you’re going to do before you actually deliver the presentation. This is a very important area and its also one that many people should consider improving their skills in. A key part of this planning is to research your presentation audience, since the more you know your audience, the more you can understand them and what their preconceptions might be. You also need to get to grips with the purpose of the presentation – so that you are very clear about what you are trying to achieve from it. (This is a skill in itself.) Then its down brainstorming what you’re actually going to say and then structuring this into “digestable” chunks within the beginning, middle and end.

Planning cont. During planning think of these 6 things: Establish the purpose of the presentation Build an audience profile Establish the key message of the presentation Develop the structure and content Edit your presentation content Sum it all up

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

Planning cont. The next thing to think about is your key message. Every presentation should have one key message which everything else ultimately links to. Ask yourself, “What’s in it for them?” You now need to start developing the ideas for the presentation content.  Think in terms of THREE’s. Beginning Middle End

Planning cont. 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. Summing it up relies on you taking the time to practice the presentation and get a feel for the language, timing, etc. that you will try to use when you conduct it in front of a live audience.

2) Using Visual Aids Effectively Once you’ve done your planning, you need to consider what visual aids you’re going to be using.  (aka Power point slides) Think about what you want to do here – why you actually need the visual aids in your presentation and what are they going to be used for. Often they are fairly redundant – people put them in for the sake of it. So we are going to look at how to make visual aids effective and what types of visual aids are going to help you with your presentation.

Visual Aids cont. For many people, the presentation content is seen as the PowerPoint Slides. But slide after slide of bullet points with lots of different transition effects is an absolute turn off for most audiences. And this is only made worse when the presenter is just reading the bullet points on the slides or has their back to the audience much of the time!

What’s the purpose of your visual aids? Visual aids can be a great way of enhancing a presentation VISUALLY – when they are used sensibly and with a clear purpose. You need to relate your visual aids to your audience and to the type of presentation you are designing. It needs to be suited to that audience.

Pitfalls of Visual Aids You’ve probably already heard the phrase “Death by PowerPoint”.  You might already have experienced this yourself – as part of an audience. Use the KISS rule  (Keep It Simple and Silly), as far as your use of visual aids is concerned. Don’t over do things. Don’t use too many different transition effects. Don’t use too small font sizes Keep the number of slides to a minimum Keep it as visual and text free as possible

3) Overcome Presentation Nerves When most people when they hear the word presentation – previously built “presentation skills” are often forgotten about and nerves kick in.  So we’re going to help you overcome your nerves and become more confident in your personal presentation skills. There are lots of techniques and things you can do to help you to control your nerves and build your confidence even before you actually start your presentation as well as while you’re speaking and delivering it.

3 Techniques Physical Techniques: Psychological Technique: Control the rate of speech, don’t rush through it When you breathe out, try counting up to 20 out aloud.  1 .. 2..3 ..4.. 5.. 6.. 7.. 8.. 9.. 10 .. 11.. 12.. etc. Just a couple of deep breaths can make a difference Psychological Technique: Imagine that you have already completed the presentation and it was a success! Rehearsing the Presentation: 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.

4)Delivering the Presentation with Confidence Speaking confidently By speaking at the correct pace and pronouncing your words clearly – especially the ends of words, you will sound more confident and convincing to your audience. Sounding interesting To sound interesting and enthusiastic you need to use more expression in your tone of voice so that you avoid a monotone style. Injecting pauses into your speaking also helps to create an impact. 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.

5) Answering Questions Confidently Finally it’s important that you have the confidence to interact with your audience and deal with any questions that your audience might throw at you. So we’ll give you techniques to help you deal with the difficult questions – the different scenarios that you might face when you are actually having to interact with the audience

3 things to answer questions confidently Preparing for difficult questions It’s good to write down some of the most difficult questions you may be asked. Then take the time to decide how best to answer these.  Write down your answers. Then practice answering them out aloud.  If you’re unhappy about your response, rework it. Controlling the audience You want to be in control of your audience and not let anyone take over in the question section.

Answering Questions Confidently cont. Ending confidently It’s also important that you know how to end the question and answer session confidently. It can be sometimes hard to bring the session to an end if people have got  more questions to ask.   The last thing you want is to lose control of things right at the end, so plan how you want to end the Q&A session beforehand. 

In Summary So these are the 5 key elements (or presentation skills areas) for building and delivering a successful presentation. Get to grips with each of them, build your skills and then apply them to you next presentation – and you’ll be surprised just how much you’ve progressed.