presentation outline

presentation outline

How to Deliver an Effective Presentation

1. Introduction

But fear not, there is hope. Although some individuals are able to deliver a presentation and captivate their audience with little or no preparation, that is not the ideal situation to be in. Presentations are important and often times the impression you leave with your audience will affect their opinion of you and their willingness to listen to you in the future. This text is designed to take the shacker and mold him or her into an effective presenter. By using some or all of the techniques presented, you can turn a bad or mediocre presentation into a great one. And remember, it doesn’t happen overnight. Becoming comfortable with these techniques and internalizing them will take some time. But if you are motivated and persevere, you will become an effective presenter.

No matter what your profession, there may come a time that you will be called upon to deliver a presentation. According to speaking expert Dorothy Leeds, “From CEOs to assembly line workers, we are all in the business of communicating.” Like it or not, part of your job description requires “selling” your ideas to those around you. Unfortunately, not all of us are born public speakers. In fact, studies have shown that public speaking is the number one fear among North Americans, outranking flying, snakes, sickness, and even death.

2. Preparing for Your Presentation

In this part of the chapter, I want to assess how to prepare for a presentation that is a major way to succeed when delivering a presentation. Preparation is the most important phase to ensure an effective presentation. Without good preparation, the speech will not go. Organisation is important to control the timing in during all the parts of the presentation. First, we should be aware that the audience’s mind is focusing for about 20 minutes. With this in mind, we need to be very selective on what information you want to give to the audience. Practice delivery is very important to familiarize how the presentation will be done with the real audience. This phase will also help in generating estimated time on each part of the presentation. Then we should predict questions that the audience have a concern on our matter. List it down and find the most suitable answer to it. Audience tend to ask a rhetorical question. At the end they will make a conclusion in a form of question and answer it themselves. All the collection from these should be put into a preparation outline. Next is flexibility in preparing the aids and materials. Presentation aids are anything used to help in enhancing the audience’s understanding on the topic of a presentation. Common thing used for presentation aid is a power point. There are also other aids such as handout. We should need to prepare for the worse situation if at the time we are presenting, we cannot use the prepared aids. This can be caused by many factors. For example technical problem. So what we need to do is practice a presentation without the aid. This is important to ensure the presentation can still go without relying on the aid. Then prepare make a case scenario if we have to explain the presentation to the audience without relying on one of the prepared aid. At the end of the explanation, give an analysis from the audience on what we have explained. This is to ensure the understanding of the topic from the audience.

3. Structuring Your Presentation

Secondly, you should think about the length of your presentation and how much focus should be given to each area you wish to cover. You should bear in mind time constraints, available resources, and the apparent importance of each area. Audience focus often wanes after 10-15 minutes, so varying what you are doing between speaking and using visuals can help maintain attention. A standard attention span of an adult is 20 minutes, so it is important you summarize and discuss the main points within this time period. A well-structured presentation will normally combine speaking time, questioning, self-explanatory visuals, and activities or handouts if possible. These are all things you should consider when creating your plan in order to engage your audience and convey your points as effectively as possible.

Firstly, as with writing any good piece of structured writing, the most important step is to plan it. Whether you are using “mindmapping” style software or just scribbling down some notes, a plan is essential. A useful plan would be to put down the main subject of your presentation in the middle of a piece of paper and then put down any related areas around it. You can then draw lines to show how these other areas relate to the main subject. A well-structured presentation should have a clear and logical layout, and the plan should reflect this. Planning your presentation in the way described will also help you to keep on track and not stray off-topic. The aim of the presentation should always be kept in mind, and planning in this way can help prevent you from adding irrelevant content that loses the interest of the audience.

4. Delivering Your Presentation

If you are anything like me, then the last piece of presentation practice advice may be most beneficial: practice in front of a mirror. This will reinforce good body language and show you when you seem animated and interested in what you are talking about – bearing in mind that your audience will reflect what you are giving, if you look bored, they will be bored.

When you practice, it is often a good idea to use the aid and prompt cards. This is the first time you will really test how good they are. An effective way of testing precisely how well you know your material and the full content of your slides is to attempt to do the presentation with no aid at all.

The dress rehearsal is a very important element in practice, as we all know too well that it is different rehearsing something when you know no one is watching. Imagine you are doing this for real, and you will get a better feel of the presentation.

Although you have already rehearsed your presentation, you should schedule some time to practice it at least once more through. However, this time try to do it with a fuller dress rehearsal and set the allocated time.

Practice

With your preparation and good planning, you have come a long way toward a successful presentation. Now you need to make sure that you deliver it well.

5. Conclusion

The key to being an effective presenter is to deliver the message in the most convincing fashion possible, hence a presenter takes on the role of someone trying to sell an idea. This is the reason why effective presentation skills are vitally important for an IT professional. Convincing management to provoke a policy change, or to convey a new idea is done through persuasion. It is unlikely to implement change if there is no belief that the changed action is worth more than the current action. It is unfortunately quite common for the best idea or course of action not to be taken. Usually, the determining factor is how the idea was presented. If the presenter of the better idea did not present it as convincingly as his/her counterpart, then his/her idea is unlikely to be taken. It would be ideal if good ideas could sell themselves, but it is rarely the case. Hence, in order for anything to get proper consideration, it must be properly presented. This is why effective presentation skills are so important.