Digital Digressions: Everything you wanted to know about presenting, but were afraid to ask*

In many professions you sooner or later have to present. Something. It is an inevitable part of our life now, but surprisingly few people are any good at it. I wouldn't say I'm any good at it either, but practise certainly makes you better. Below is a guide of do's and don'ts to get you up to speed on the subject:

Why Presenting Makes a Difference
What's the point with presenting? Wouldn't it be easier to just send a document and make people read it themselves? Yes and no. There are three objectives to presenting:

Getting a clear message across.
Making it memorable.
Making it actionable.

So would a document not suffice? It could, but documents are passive - they arrive, but don't press for your attention, and despite how well they have been laid out, it is easier for us to remember things, the more of our senses were involved.

The greatest challenge is inevitably getting a clear message across. Subjects are often complex and have many interrelated elements, so the majority of time preparing for a presentation is spent making the message as clear and straight-forward as possible.

Making things memorable - using pictures, videos, a level of showmanship, sound, etc. all these are methods of making a presentation more memorable to the audience. Ultimately an audience wants to be entertained, whatever it is you are presenting.

Making things actionable - many presentations focus on getting a complex message across, but not on what the audience is supposed to do with the information. This is a great mistake, because if you are not able to make things personally relevant to people, the less likely your audience will be engaged. If you make it very clear what the next steps are, what individuals are supposed to do, people sit up and take notice, if you don't they remain passive and only half of your message will sink in.

How to present effectively

Be someone worth looking at - Stand up, move around, use your hands - be passionate, animated and seek continuous eye-contact with the audience. This is the best way to get feedback on how you are doing, the body language of your audience reveals all: if they are sitting forward in their seats, watching you: you are doing well, you have their attention. If they are leaning back and not looking at you, they are bored and you should move on. Sitting down makes you instantly less dynamic and you really have to work hard to command the room.

Use your voice - Sounds obvious, but many people get it wrong. They are nervous so they either talk too fast, which means people miss most of what they are on about or they drone on in a monotonous voice, which just makes people switch off and not listen. So use tone, variation, slight variations in volume and frequent pauses to help the message sink in. Much like text on a page is organised into headlines, subheads, body text and pull quotes to help communicate information, you need to do the same, but using your voice. Less is more so talk less and say more - avoid too many examples and above all: get to the point, get to the point, get to the point! Oh and remember to breathe - short sentences are better and more easily understood, plus they allow you to breathe more frequently and in natural places as opposed to long sentences.

The Message itself - distill, distill, distill. Be structured, take your audience down a logical route split into easy-to-follow steps. Three keys to delivering an effective message:

Brevity. Get to the point, quickly. Whittle down your message to 3-4 key points. Try to be Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive in your points - i.e break down the message into parts that overlap as little as possible (mutually exclusive) and together define the entire issue or subject. (collectively exhaustive).
Thoroughness. Make sure your message contains everything your audience needs to know, you are not trying to keep them in suspense.
Structure. To be easily grasped, a message has to follow a structure, and the structure needs to be readily apparent to the audience. Consider having a header or footer on your slides that clearly shows where you are in the presentation.

Work in headlines and follow the famous 10/20/30 rule (10 slides, 20 minutes of talk and minimum 30 point font size). The clearer the message the easier it is to digest. Tell your audience what you are going to tell them, tell them and summarise what you have just told them. If you are using charts - keep it simple: one message per chart. Remember that there are diminishing marginal returns to effort so no tweaking of presentation until last minute, but get some rest so you'll be fresh!

Tools to help you present: The best presentations are delivered without visible aids. A speaker is infinitely more dynamic when he/she speaks without looking down at notes, entirely from memory. To be able to do this, you need to practise. Lots. If you can't go for a perfect-world solution of delivering your presentation without notes, prepare some discrete cue cards, have notes nearby, but NEVER-EVER keep turning around to read the projected Power-point slide behind you. This breaks your eye-contact with the audience and makes you look like you are not sure whether the slides will support your message.

To recap, the point of the presentation is to communicate a message and elicit a response from your audience, whether it is comments to your proposal or an understanding of what they need to do next. Be sure to write down any comments and follow up on them within 24 hours, while things are still fresh in people's minds.

Ask yourself: What's the message? What do you want people to take away from the presentation? What do you want them to do after your presentation? Use these questions continuously refine your presentation and remember: the more you practise, the better you will be.

* hopefully this will answer most of your questions..

Comments

フィンペシア http://funvalue.info
フィンペシア価格 http://www.absinthemarket.com
ロゲイン通販 http://www.think-create.net
ロゲイン効果 http://hregrow.info
ロゲイン通販 http://rogein.plusfor.net

薄毛　プロペシア効果 http://www.edaindesigns.com
プロペシア通販比較 http://www.sititop.com
プロペシア通販比較 http://generic.finasteride.jp
プロペシア通販 http://www.bjbzgg.com
プロペシア通販 http://pro-pecia.net

Posted by: プロペシア通販 | August 20, 2011 at 20:20

Translating this article? - Go for it! We like to share the goodness here at Digital Digressions - put a link back to us by way of reference. All the best - Cecilia

Posted by: Audiolathe | April 06, 2006 at 16:19