Smart Skills: Presentations

Frances Kay

• Publisher: Legend Business
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781787198654
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Book 2 of the Smart Skills series: practical guides to mastering vital business skills and techniques. Using proven strategies from business experts, these essential smart skills can empower anyone with the tools to get ahead.

Everything you need to know about presenting- a must have for any employee, manager, freelancer or business owner

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Despite being one of the most dreaded professional tasks, public speaking is an increasingly important skill to master: the ability to engage and connect can truly set you apart from the crowd in a competitive market. This easy-to-follow, succinct guide will provide you with effective tips and resources to help you with both the practical task of putting together a presentation and proven strategies for building up your confidence. This handy guide includes:

• Detailed advice on strategy, structure and format
• How to pinpoint and communicate your core message
• Expert strategies for staying calm and collected
• Understanding your audience's needs
• How to show your passion and create a rapport with your audience
• Best practice for using visual aids and speaker notes

Kay splits up the presenting process into three key stages: before the presentation, during the event, and afterwards. This easy method makes this Smart Skills guide a useful tool for anyone who has to present to an audience, even a complete beginner.

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Contents

Preface

Foreword

Notes from the author

Introduction: The opportunities - and the difficulties - of getting to your feet

BEFORE THE PRESENTATION

Chapter One

Focusing on the task

Ideas and objectives

Strategy, structure and format

Chapter Two

Getting organised

Calming the nerves

Harnessing your secret weapons

Spacial awareness

Chapter Three

Putting your message together

Speaker's notes

With a little help from your friends

DURING THE PRESENTATION

Chapter Four

Confronting the audience

Gaining attention

Creating rapport

Chapter Five

Communicating your message

Gaining acceptance

In conclusion

Can you hear me at the back?

Chapter Six

Involving your listeners

Use of visual aids

Signs of revolt

Anything and everything

AFTER THE PRESENTATION

Chapter Seven

Question time and feedback

Handling questions and objections

In the chair

Presentation performance checklist

DURING THE PRESENTATION

Chapter Four
Confronting the audience

‘He speaks to Me as if I was a public meeting.’

Queen Victoria (of Mr Gladstone – one of her Prime Ministers)

As has been said earlier, the audience want it all to go well. But they are not totally forgiving and they will have expectations. Above all they want you to talk to them or discuss with them, not to talk at them. So keeping the audience viewpoint in mind is, like preparation, another near “magic” formula for success. It is one that should, of course, affect your preparation as well as your delivery and manner.

Any audience faced with being on the receiving end of a formal talk thinks ahead. This process may perhaps be coloured by experience of bad or boring presentations they have attended in the past. They try to guess what it will be like. They wonder if it will be interesting, amusing, or useful – or just short. Whatever the intention is, they wonder if it will be achieved. They look for clues to what it will be like even before you start.

This is why things like your appearance, starting on time, being seen to be organised and comfortable with the proceedings are all important. In training, for instance, people are asking questions such as: does this person know their subject? Will they be able to put it over? Will they do so in an interesting manner and, if they do, will it help me? Each member of a group is an individual, they are concerned above all with themselves. The good speaker appears to address individuals, not some amorphous entity called “the audience”.

More specifically, the audience wants you to:

• “Know your stuff”.

• Look the part.

• Respect them and acknowledge their situation and views.

• Make what you say link to what they want from the talk.

• Give them sufficient information to make a considered judgement about what you say (they will weigh up your views, especially if they are going to be required to take some action at the end or after you finish speaking).

• Make them understand by the time you finish what action, if any, is needed or expected of them.

Above all, they want what you say to be: understandable, interesting and a good fit with the audience and the occasion.

Conversely, they do not want to be:

• Confused.

• Blinded with science, technicalities or jargon.

• Lost in an overcomplicated structure (or lack of one).

• Talked down to.

• Forced to struggle to understand inappropriate language.

• Made to make an enormous jump to relate what is said to their own circumstances.

And they certainly do not want to listen to someone whose lack of preparation makes it clear that they have no respect for the group.

Any audience’s attention (and certainly their respect) has to be earned. You must create a belief in your credentials for talking to them. You should build rapport between yourself and the group, make them want to listen and understand – yet perhaps also keep an open mind throughout about what is still to come. Presentation is aided by a healthy amount of empathy on the part of the speaker.

You can do a lot worse than think long and hard about any audience you are due to address. The more you know about them the better, and some prior checking is always advisable. If the group turns out to be very different, in age or experience say, from what you prepared for, there is a strong likelihood that some of what you say to them will fall on deaf ears.

You cannot overestimate the importance of a good start. Remember the old saying: you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. The beginning is the introduction; it must set the scene, state the topic and theme (and maybe the reason for the whole thing). Do this clearly and then move into the “meat” of the message, without too much delay.

Let’s look at attention and rapport in turn.

Gaining attention

Two things can assist you here: your manner and the actual start you make. Your manner must get people saying to themselves: “This should be interesting – I think they know what they are talking about”. Here a confident manner pays dividends. If you look the part and proceed as if you are sure of yourself then the audience will take it that you are. The assumption is made that you would not be doing the talking if you did not know your stuff. But if you appear hesitant or show any sign of being ill-prepared, hey will start to worry and that presumption will evaporate.

Exactly what you say first is also important. Not so much any formalities but the first real statement or point. What this means is that you may effectively need two starts: one that deals with any administration and formalities. Then another that is the real start into the meat of what you will say. While the first needs to be engaging and done in a way that prompts acceptance of its necessity, the second is perhaps even more important. Some examples of opening techniques you might consider using include:

• News: something you know they do not know (and will want to): “Gentlemen, we have hit the target. I heard just as I came into the meeting, and …”

• Not a lot of people know..., a startling or weird fact: “The next generation of computers, being made now in Japan, can perform ten quadrillion calculations every second”. A quadrillion, incidentally, is a number followed by 18 noughts.

The same effect might be obtained with something spoof: “There are two kinds of people in the world, those that divide people into categories, and the rest”.

• A question: actual or rhetorical and ideally designed to get people responding (at least in their minds): “How would you like to …?”

• A quotation: whether famous or not. Something that generates a smile or links firmly to the topic this can work well: It was Oscar Wilde who said: “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about’’ (used to introduce the public relations plan, perhaps).

• A story or anecdote: perhaps again to make a point, maybe something people know: “We all remember the moment when the …”, or something they do not, “Last week in Singapore I got caught in the rain and….”

• A fact: preferably a striking one, or maybe challenging, provoking or surprising: “Research shows that if we give a customer cause to complain, they are likely to tell ten other people; but if we please them they will only tell one. Not a ratio to forget because…”

• Drama: something that surprises or shocks, or in some way delivers a punch: “The next ten minutes can change your life. It can …”

• A gesture: something people watch and which gets their attention: “Some people in this company seem to think that money grows on trees,” – said while tearing up a bank note and scattering the pieces.

• History: this may be a general historical fact or one that evokes a common memory; “Five years ago, when we all knew we were at a turning point …”

• Curiosity: an oddity, something that will surprise and have people waiting (perhaps eagerly) for the link with what is going to be said – it may be really odd or just out of context: “Now you may wonder why I should start with a reference to pachyderms; you may even wonder what it is.” (It is a thick-skinned quadruped; apparently irrelevant but …)

• Shock: something totally unexpected, maybe seemingly inappropriate, that really makes people listen (though its relevance should be clear as you proceed): “Imagine this room full of dead bodies. It is a horrific thought, yet far more people than would fit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Note from the Author
• Introduction: The opportunities – and the difficulties – of getting to your feet
• Before The Presentation
• During The Presentation
• After The Presentation
• Acknowlegements
• About the Author
• Other Books in Smart Skills Series