Tips on Giving an Effective Presentation

Here are some good tips if you are asked to give a presentation. Actually, the tips can also be used when you have to write an email, make a telephone call or have an important conversation!

Let’s start by focusing on giving a presentation. Sometime in your future you may have to give a presentation. This might be to one person or one hundred people, but however many in the audience if you follow these tips you will massively improve your presentation!

THE BASICS

• Know your subject – be as certain as you can be about your topic, but remember – in a presentation, the audience don’t know what you don’t know!
• Try and make your presentation:
  1. COHERENT – it should flow as a logical argument with a beginning, a middle and an end
  2. COHESIVE – as you work through your presentation, the various sections should move easily from one to the next
  3. CONCISE – use the minimum number of words to say what you want to say
  4. PRECISE – wherever appropriate, use some supporting facts, data, numbers

THINGS TO FOCUS ON

1. Your audience – who exactly are you communicating with? What is their relationship to you? Their age/ nationality/ expertise/ position? Understanding this will enable you to grade your language, select the most appropriate vocabulary, the best tone, the most effective mix of onscreen images and information vs you speaking.
2. What you want to say – sounds obvious? It’s not! Take time to think what you want to say, what information you want to impart and the order you want to say it in. Make a list of the points, and don’t forget to build in a beginning and an end as well as the middle section.
3. What response do you want to achieve – this is arguably the most important element to think about! Knowing what response you want to achieve, how you want the person/people to react, what you want them to take away at the end of your presentation, will largely determine points 1 and 2!

A SIMPLE PRINCIPLE

Start with the end in mind!

With anything/everything you do, focus on where you want get to and that will shape your thinking and planning.

What do you think a football manager’s advice is to their strikers – ‘run around and play football’, or ‘score goals!’?

Teacher Terry