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:
- COHERENT – it should flow as a logical argument with a beginning, a middle and an end
- COHESIVE – as you work through your presentation, the various sections should move easily from one to the next
- CONCISE – use the minimum number of words to say what you want to say
- PRECISE – wherever appropriate, use some supporting facts, data, numbers
THINGS TO FOCUS ON
- 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.
- 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.
- 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