Today is Thursday, so I’m posting on communication skills. Let’s start with the biggie – presentations…
Presentations are an important communication tool. Many careers have been made on the strength of one or two good presentations. Presenting can be frightening. It doesn’t have to be. Presenting is like any other process, there are a series of logical steps to follow.
1. Determine your message.
2. Analyze your audience.
3. Organize your information for impact.
4. Design supporting visuals.
5. Practice, practice, practice.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself to determine your message:
• What do you want or need to communicate?
• What information does the audience need?
• Why do they need it?
• At the end of the presentation, what should the audience: Understand? Remember? Do?
You can determine the best way to communicate your message by analyzing your audience. Ask yourself these questions:
• Who is the audience for this presentation?
• Why are they attending?
• What is their general attitude toward you and the topic?
• What is their knowledge level on this topic?
Use the golden rule of journalism to organize your information for impact. “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, Tell them, Tell them what you told them”.
Begin at the end. Prepare your presentation ending first. This is helpful, because it keeps you focused on where you’re going. Your ending should be the three or four main points that you want your audience to remember. This is the “tell them what you told them” part of your presentation. There should be nothing new in your ending, just a summary of your main points. Write your ending and memorize it. Audiences remember how you end, so you want to be completely prepared.
Then prepare your presentation beginning. A good beginning has three things: a grabber, a hook, and an outline of your talk. Grab people’s attention to get them to focus on you and what you’re saying. Tell a story related to your message, ask a rhetorical question, or bring up a headline from the morning paper. Tune into radio station WII FM (What’s In It For Me?) when preparing your opening hook. A good WIIFM makes your audience want to listen to what you have to say because they see the value in it for them. Provide an outline of your talk to make it easy for your audience to listen to and follow your presentation. This is the “tell them what you’re going to tell them” part of your presentation. A brief outline of your talk helps the audience keep up with you and understand where you’re going.
Write your opening and memorize it. Next to your closing, audiences are most likely to remember how you began. You have only a few seconds to get their attention and make them want to listen. Prepare yourself by knowing exactly what you’re going to say. Having a memorized opening also helps you manage your nerves. You’ll feel more confident as you begin your presentation if you know exactly what you are going to say.
Fill in the blanks with your content. This is the “tell them” part of your presentation where you fill in the outline you developed for your presentation opening. This is the place for facts, figures and tables.
Stories are a helpful tool for enhancing your content. If you use a story, make sure it reinforces the point you are making. If there is even the slightest potential for the audience not getting how your story reinforces your point – tell them. Never tell a story that leaves the audience wondering why you told it.
Quotations are another good way of building your credibility with the audience. Plan your use of quotations. Know who you are going to quote and how what he or she said has relevance to the point you are making.
Break complex subject matter into manageable parts. If you are having difficulty fitting all of the information you want to convey about a subject on one slide, it is a good idea to break the subject into sub parts and create a separate slide for each part.
Plan for transitions. Make sure the audience knows when you are leaving one point and moving on to another. Plan segues that help your audience know when you are moving on. A simple segue is something like: “we’ve covered point A, so let’s move on to point B”.
Don’t write and memorize all of your content. You want your presentation to flow. Your talk will flow better if you know approximately what you’re going to say about each point. Good presenters use about 85 to 90% of the same words every time they give the same talk. It’s the 10 to 15% that makes the difference in how well you connect with your audience. Memorized talks make it difficult to insert the timely and topical sentence that can be the difference between a competent talk and one that sparkles.
Be careful with humor. Don’t tell stories or jokes that can be offensive to anyone in the audience. We live in politically correct times. Even if we didn’t humor that demeans, excludes or offends is never appropriate.
Design visuals to enhance what you are saying. Good visuals support the points you are making, create audience interest, improve audience understanding, save you time – a picture is worth a thousand words, and are memory aids.
Visuals also act as your presentation outline. They are your notes – visible to everyone. They remind you of the points you are making as you move along in your talk. They are so obvious as audience aids, they become almost invisible to the audience as speaker notes. Most audiences will think that you are speaking without notes if you use your visuals properly.
Make your visuals easy to read from the farthest part of the room in which you are presenting. Use the “rule of 5” – no more than 5 words per bullet point, and no more than 5 bullet points per slide. When using a prescribed and “busy” slide template, cut down the information on each slide. Compliment, don’t compete with the background. Make sure that the colors of your bullet points are easily readable.
If you decide to use “build” slides to keep people focused on the point you are making, keep the builds simple. Avoid having text “fly in”. Highly animated visuals may showcase your PowerPoint abilities, but they distract from your message.
Accomplished speakers use visuals with pictures or graphics and little or no words. If you rehearse properly, you will know exactly what you want to say and the point you want to make when the picture or graphic comes up on the screen.
PowerPoint is not always the best choice for visuals. Consider flip charts and when working with a small group. Flip charts should be legible, easy to read from the back of the room and colorful. Use blue or black for writing, and red or green for accent colors.
Regardless of what type of visual you use, always speak to the audience, not the visual. It’s OK to glance at the screen of flip chart, but remember to keep your focus on the audience, not your visual.
Practice, Practice, Practice. Rehearse, Rehearse, Rehearse. Remember the old saying, “practice makes up for a lack of talent”. Say your presentation out loud. Listen to yourself. Video tape yourself. If you don’t have the equipment, practice in front of a mirror, or you spouse, or your dog or cat – just practice.
Practice and rehearse with your slides. You need nothing more than your computer to do this. Make sure you know exactly what you are going to say for every slide in your deck.
Follow the old maxim: Prepare, Practice, Polish, Present. Never give a speech without practicing it, identifying and polishing the rough spots. Practice gives you the opportunity to improve your presentation.
Arrive early for your presentation. Make sure your computer works with the projector. If possible, set it up before it is your turn to speak. Use handouts to help your audience listen. PowerPoint notes pages are particularly useful for handouts. They provide an organized, easy to use note taking tool.
Take a few deep breaths prior to beginning your presentation. This will help calm your nerves and help you project your voice. Articulate and enunciate clearly. Don’t be lazy. Say every syllable of every word as clearly as you can. Slow down. Most of us speak too rapidly. If you slow down your delivery, you will most likely present at a relaxed, easy to understand pace.
Let your audience see your excitement and enthusiasm for your topic. If you’re not excited by it, they won’t be either. Communicate in the audience’s language, not yours. Avoid jargon. Use the type of words that are most likely to be fully understood by everyone present.
Step away from the podium. It is a barrier between you and your audience and it restricts your natural energy and enthusiasm. Buy a radio frequency device to advance your slides. These devices are relatively inexpensive. Most come with a laser pointer built in.
Look at different people in different parts of the audience as you speak. This will help you address the entire audience, not just the people in one section. Use both forms of eye contact: fleeting and dwelling. Fleeting eye contact involves moving your eyes quickly from one person to another. Dwelling eye contact involves focusing on a single individual for a few seconds.
If you tell a humorous story, wait until the laughter dies down before moving on. Audiences who are laughing are enjoying the presentation, don’t hurry along and cut short their enjoyment.
Involve your audience as much as possible. An easy way to do this is to ask for a show of hands. Vary the cadence and volume of your talk. Speed up, slow down, speak louder or softer to reinforce the points you want to make. Practice before you try this in front of a live audience.
Pause after making a key point. This indicates to the audience that what you have just said is important and that you want them to remember it. For extra emphasis, repeat what you said just before the pause.
Manage your gestures. Gestures should flow. They should not be herky jerky. Keep both hands where people can see them – not in your pocket. When you move, move toward and back from the audience, nor from side to side. If you are on a large stage and want to move left to right, do it in a diagonal motion.
Use body language to your advantage. For example, you can take off your jacket, loosen you tie, or roll up your sleeves to indicate that you’re serious and ready for some hard work. Again, practice this before attempting to do it with a live audience.
Anticipate the types of questions you are likely to receive from the audience. Prepare your answers to specific questions beforehand. In this way, you’ll be in control. Don’t give all of the information in your talk. Hold back some of the details. These details will enable you to easily answer questions. Repeat every question that you are asked. Do this for three reasons. 1) You’ll be sure that you heard and understood the question correctly. 2) You will buy yourself some time to think about the question and your answer. 3) You will ensure that your audience hears the question.
Stay calm. Don’t let a hostile member of the audience bait you into saying something you wish you hadn’t. This way you’ll remain in control, of yourself, the audience and the talk.
As I’ve said before, preparation makes up for a lack of talent. It also helps cut down on your pre presentation anxiety. If you know what you’re going to say, you’ll be much less nervous just before and as you are saying it.
Finally, treat your presentation as a conversation with the audience. Conversations are less anxiety producing than presentations. Realize that your audience wants you to succeed. They want you to succeed because they want the information you have to give them. They want you to succeed because they’ve been in your situation, and they know that presenting can nerve wracking. Because your audience wants you to succeed, you don’t have to be perfect. It’s OK to admit that you left out an important point and to return to it. It’s OK if you misspeak and correct yourself. You’re a person, the audience is comprised of people. No one is perfect. You don’t have to be perfect to give a great presentation.
If you find presenting extremely difficult, join Toastmasters to sharpen your skills, or take a presentation skills workshop – at work, or at a local college.
I realize that this is a rather long post. But it captures the essence of what I’ve learned in over 30 years of presenting. I hope you find these tips valuable.
That’s it for today. Thanks for reading. Log on to my website www.BudBilanich.com for more career advice. Check out my other blog www.CommonSenseGuy.com for common sense advice on leading people and running a business.
I’ll see you around the web, and at Alex’s Lemonade Stand.
Bud
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