Tuesday, December 19, 2023

Presentational Speaking

 From compiling content to conducting the presentation, here are helpful hints on selecting and creating audio-visuals, as well as crafting handouts and other presentation materials. Ultimately, viewers should feel confident in their ability to provide an engaging and effective presentation that achieves its purpose. Key areas are: 

  • Contents
  • Audio-visuals
  • Materials
  • Presentation

 CONTENT:

 Know your purpose, audience, and logistics that they consider from the start. Conduct research, compile information, and structure their content effectively. Understand how to craft engaging and purpose-driven content, from the introduction to the body to the closing of the presentation.

 Steps:

  1. Consider the purpose of your presentation
  2. Who’s your audience – demographic, attitude, age
  3. What are the logistics – room, technology, what comes before and after your presentation
  4. Conduct Research – Read books, search internet – know you have relevant, and complete information
  5. Select a Background – Topical, Problem-solution, process, chronological, Change of position, Objection-Response, Question-Answer, Topological, Mystery Trip. – You can use more than one background
  6. Opening of presentation – Strong Hook – Grab your audience attention. Describe your purpose, Establish Credentials, Create Rapport, Identify common ground. Write the opening – question, quote, joke, Statistics,
  7. Create the Body – Organise the main points effectively, for each key point start with Hook, explain how to apply, provide transition. Repeat key point several time. Feel free to play with language. Metaphors, story and humor. Be creative. Make your message resonate with them. You may also want to use persuasion. Emotional tone and Evocative expression, provide case. It’s important to make your core message clear throughout the content of your presentation and ensure every point you make clearly supports that message.
  8. Strong closing – Reinforce main points and call to action. Let audience leave with two or three key ideas, and make it obvious. Try to end your presentation on a positive note if possible.

 It takes lot of effort to compile your presentation and keep it interesting.

 Consider some key questions.

o What’s the purpose of your presentation?

o Who’s your audience?

o What are the logistics?

 • Conduct research.

o Search the internet and read books, articles, studies, etc.

o Find as many sources as you can to get a well-rounded understanding of your topic.

o Stick to sources that are credible.

o Find information that’s relevant to your topic and that supports the overall purpose of your

presentation.

• Select a backbone, or conceptual structure.

o Pick a backbone that supports the purpose of your presentation.

▪ With a topical backbone, your organize your content by topic.

▪ With a problem-solution backbone, you clearly detail the situation and describe the negatives, then explain the solution and project the resulting positives.

▪ A process backbone allows you to take listeners through a series of sequential or networked steps.

▪ A chronological backbone organizes content by time.

▪ A change of position backbone is a persuasive structure in which you convince your audience to change their attitude about something.

▪ With an objection-response backbone, you conduct a point-counterpoint discussion of each objection.

▪ The question-answer backbone works through a list of questions and provides corresponding answers.

▪ With a topological backbone, a physical object provides the logical structure.

▪ With a mystery trip, you let a message or story unfold, creating curiosity and interest by not letting your listeners know exactly where you’re going.

o You can use more than one backbone if it makes sense based on the content.

Write the opening.

o Create a strong hook that grabs attention, describes your purpose, establishes your credibility, creates rapport, and identifies some common ground.

o Use a question, anecdote, data, joke, or something else to gain your audience’s interest.

• Create the body of your presentation.

o Organize your main points effectively.

o For each key point, start with a topic sentence, convey the content itself and explain what it means and how to apply it, and provide a clincher or transition to the next point.

o Make your core message clear throughout and ensure every point you make clearly supports it.

o Play around with language by incorporating vivid word choices, figurative language, humor, stories, etc.

o Apply persuasion by highlighting your credibility, appealing to your listeners’ emotions, and using logic and reason.

• Make a strong closing.

o Reinforce your main points and perhaps make a call to action.

o If possible, end on a positive note.

o Make the end obvious.

 AUDIO-VISUALS

 Selecting AV Consider:

  • Visibility – Easily Readable
  • Sleep factor – Engaging
  • Reliability
  • Simplicity

 Select one that is easy to prepare.

 Use flip cart, chartboard, slides etc. 

  1. Decide the Style; what content to use.   
  • Plain test
  • Emphasized test – Green write , yellow – Bold etc
  • Cued test – boxes/question-response, Historical font for age
  • Balanced Visual – test and graphic
  • Labelled graphic – mostly graphic
  • Pure graphic – Pictured, diagram, forms, screenshots. 

Variety is a good thing. 

  1. Consider the overall look.  
    1. Contrast – Backgroud dark and writing light;
    2. generally left align text, Use white space – it is attractive.
    3. Make test meaningful but concise – use 6*6 – six lines/six words – don’t write everything – Give title
    4. Consider Visibility – Create animated zoom in box if needed
    5. Be consistent – It should be same  - clean, clear and uncluttered. – Jumping content. – Create master and take them off when done.
    6. Keep it simple – Heading/Subheading
    7. Consider copyright laws – Not copying anything from internet is okay. 

Use your AV in a truly meaningful way. 

Your text should be no smaller than XXX points. 

Delivering effective and powerful presentations is critical to business success. It’s about making an impact that influences your audience, whether you are an entrepreneur pitching investors, a small business owner pitching a product to a retailer or potential customer, a startup presenting a new initiative, or a manager asking for budget or staffing resources. 

Here are five principles you must use to create powerful PowerPoint presentations: 

1. It’s About You, Not the Slides

 Whatever the purpose is for the presentation, it’s about your purpose or message, what you know, your passion, and your delivery. It’s not about what’s written on the slides.

 Switch the focus of attention from the slides themselves and onto your message, your expertise, and your grasp of the content -- not to mention your ultimate goal for the presentation itself.

 You won’t be able to do that if you let the slides themselves dominate the presentation, if you read from your slides, or have so much text on your slides that the audience themselves read the slides instead of listening to you.

 2. Let Your PowerPoint Slides Support Your Point, Not Make It

 I’ve seen people, including experienced professionals at senior levels, essentially read from their slides when presenting. Or their slides have lots of points but the presenter ignores them and leaves the audience confused about whether to focus on the side or the presenter.

 Slides that accompany a presentation shouldn’t be the focus of attention or prop up a poor presenter.

 So, don’t develop slides so you can read them. Develop them to support you.

 Start with what you need to say by developing your outline, then create slides that complement and emphasize your points rather than starting with a slide and then scripting what you say around the slide.

 3. Incorporate Graphics Into Your PowerPoint Presentation to Evoke Emotion

 Slides don’t need to have bullets. If you do your presentation slides properly, they will be a guide or support to what you are saying. While you can accomplish that with short bullet points on your slides, you will have more impact with graphics and images.

 And you don’t need follow the so-called rules of thumbs for the number of slides, since the time you spend on each slide is what should guide you.

 Take the slide with five bullets and make five separate slides with either just a graphic that illustrates the point or a graphic and a word or two, but without a bullet point. You can spend the same amount of time on the five separate slides as you would on a single five-bullet slide, yet you will end up with more impactful slides.

 4. Keep Your PowerPoint Slides Simple

 If you are making a point, be clear and concise on your slide. Eliminate as many words as possible, use graphics as mentioned above, and, if you are creating a graph or using a table to show information, simplify them down to the essential elements that matter. Don’t just take a standard Excel graph and copy it onto your slide. Either simplify the Excel graph or create a simplified graphic in PowerPoint instead.

 Take a look at a few examples of infographics to see how information can be conveyed in a more simplified, impactful way.

 Beyond the content, make your template streamlined. Be a rebel and scrap your organization’s standard template. A simple single-colored background is best. Or use a colored slide for sections or to change topics, then simple white slides in between for your actual content. If you are using graphics to emphasize your point, make them full-slide size and your background template becomes a non-issue.

 Also, eliminate the logo, contact information, or whatever else your marketing department added to the templates that show up on each slide. If you are presenting, they should know who you are. Putting your corporate info on the intro page and then possibly on the last page is all you need.

 5. Tell a Story with Your Presentation

 Storytelling has always been an effective way to convey information and make it more memorable. So, don’t just give information, facts, and figures on your slides.

 Build a story into your presentation, whether a single scenario that you carry through your presentation or separate stories (or examples) throughout your presentation to emphasize and give context to specific points. Not only will it be more memorable if you can tailor your story to the audience, it will connect more readily.

 The story isn’t for entertainment, although it should be interesting. The story should be related to the topic. For instance, if you are presenting a business case about new equipment, your story should be about the old equipment you are replacing and what happens when the new equipment is used. Create your story based on the real-life implications and benefits in a real-world application instead of just presenting uninteresting facts and figures that your audience will immediately forget.

MATERIALS

Promotional materials for their presentation, as well as the presenter bio and introduction. Learners will also consider how to create handouts that highlight the key points of the presentation without splitting the audience’s attention.

Promotional Information - 

  • Catchy title - It’s important to pick a title that’ll hook people’s interest and that’s specific to what you’ll be discussing.
  • Cover Description format - results, 
    • 'See, 
    • Know, 
    • Do' 
  • Your Bio -  Establish your credibility in your bio. What makes you an expert on this topic? What makes you special - experience, knowledge, 
  • Your Introduction - Short - include 6 points - Topic, why imp, Name, Title and position, why where you asked to speak on this topic, credentials you have to speak out.
  • Handouts - split attention, so audience may miss content. Guidelines - Don't print presentation. It should be different document. Not all content is critical to remember. Give key take away, and give graphics if needed. You can give contents not in the presentation. If you do not have time to cover all. 
Lay out, leave space for attendees to jot points and and at the end space to take notes. 

Use bulleted or numbered list. Make it clear. Huge block of text is overwhelming's. 

PRESENTATION

Public speaking is a skill you can develop if you commit to develop.

Start with your preparation. 

Practise. 

  1. Go through your entire presentation, several times. 
  2. Plan for the unexpected.
  3. You should arrive early for your presentation so you can: (Check all that apply.)

  •   Check the room setup
  •   Do a sound test and make sure all equipment is working
  •   Go through your visuals and ensure they can be seen across the room
  •   Get your handouts ready
  • Mingle with the crowd


During the presentation:

  • Pay attention to your voice 
  • speak confidentaly.
  • Talk to the audienct not them
  • Maintian eye contact
  • Smile geninunely. 
  • Dont cross arms, fidget.
  • Connect with your audience
  • Focus on their needs
  • Dont use filler words 
  • Manage interuptions - set expectation in the beginning - only one person to speak, keep phones silent. 
Technology glitch - if distraction is 30 second, continue as if nothing happen, longer than 2 minutes take a break and restart, in between give a recap. 

People have hard time focusing beyond 20 minutes, so give break or tell story. 

To do immediately after presentation:
  • Say Thank you. 
  • Conduct Q&A 
  • Use good listening skills
  • Repeat or paraphrase question
  • Explain and not argue. 
  • Clean up. 

          Take right action, before , during and after.

          Now present with Confidence and Grace. 

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