Presentation Skills

Presentation Skills
Presentation skills are the skills you need in delivering effective and engaging presentations to
a variety of audiences. These skills cover a variety of areas such as the structure of
your presentation, the design of your slides, the tone of your voice and the body language you
convey.
Effective presentation skills are important because they help keep a presentation interesting,
help the presenter communicate with confidence and motivate the audience to listen.
Some essential presentation skills are:
 Creating variety.
 Speaking with optimal audibility.
Objectives of a presentation:
Your main goal is to provide your audience with input to a given topic. This input serves as the
basis for discussion during the session. For a fruitful discussion, it is not only essential to
present the basic concepts and ideas but also to spark and strengthen the interest of the
audience in the topic.
The essential elements of a presentation are:

 Confidence.
 Sincerity.
 Mastery of the subject.
 A friendly feeling for the audience.
Here are seven effective methods to open a presentation:

 Quote. Opening with a relevant quote can help set the tone for the rest of your
presentation.
 “What If” Scenario. Immediately drawing your audience into your presentation works
wonders.
 “Imagine” scenario.
 Question.
 Silence.
 Statistic.
 Powerful statement/phrase.
How can you make a good presentation even more effective?
 Show your passion and connect with your audience.
 Focus on your audience's needs.
 Keep it simple: Concentrate on your core message.
 Smile and Make Eye Contact with your Audience.
 Start strongly.
 Tell Stories
What is the 7x7 rule?

The 7x7 Rule states that a Power Point slide should have no more than seven lines of text and
no more than seven words in each of those lines.
Effective Presentation Techniques:

 Use visual aids. Using pictures in your presentations instead of words can double the
chances of meeting your objectives.
 Keep it short and sweet.
 Use the rule of three.
 Rehearse.
 Tell stories.
 Use the bullet points – don't put your speaker notes up on the screen.
 Video yourself.
 Have a back-up plan
Points to remember during a presentation:

 The main points are your backbone of your presentation.
 Do not read from your notes.
 Prepare cue cards with key words on them.
 Use visual aids like slides, charts and graphs to illustrate your points. ...
 Dress appropriately for your presentation.
 Speak clearly and loud enough for your audience to hear you.
What are the benefits of presentation skills?
A well-crafted presentation also demonstrates professionalism and helps to reinforce an

organization's corporate image.
 Face-to-Face: A presentation provides an opportunity to meet your audience in person.
 Engagement: Presentations make it easier to engage your audience.
 Flexibility: Change or modulate as per audience response.
 Consistency: Proper flow.
 Versatility: Be ready with your answers.
How do you evaluate presentation skills:
 Story flow: This parameter is used to evaluate the flow structure chosen to build the
presentation.
 Message clarity in slides.
 Visual representation of ideas.
 Effective opening.
 Audience engagement.
 Verbal transitions between slides.
 Eye contact.
 Voice clarity.
Giving effective feedback on presentations:

 Be positive. Focus on all the aspects of the presentation the speaker has done well.
 Be concrete. Ensure your feedback is specific and clear, so the speaker knows exactly
what needs to be improved upon.
 Be descriptive instead of evaluative.
 Highlight the costs of the problem behavior.
 References.
Tips for effective presentations (summary):

1. Preparation and knowledge (of subject and the presentation itself) are the pre-requisites
for a successful presentation, which importantly produce confidence and control, in turn
important for relaxing the presenter, and the audience.
2. When you are a presenter you are in charge. The audience generally accepts this, and
you are within your rights to control anyone who does not.
3. Remember also that "depth of conviction counts more than height of logic, and
enthusiasm is worth more than knowledge". Passion is therefore a very powerful
component in any successful presentation.
4. Good presenting is about entertaining as well as conveying information. As well,
people retain more if they are enjoying themselves and feeling relaxed. So whatever
your subject and audience, try to find ways to make the content and delivery enjoyable -
even the most serious of occasions, and the driest of subjects, can be lifted to an
enjoyable or even an amusing level one way or another with a little research,
imagination, and humor.
5. Enjoyment and humor are mostly in the preparation. These effects are not easily
produced spontaneously. You don't need to be a natural stand-up comedian to inject
enjoyment and humor into a presentation or talk. It's the content that enables it, which is
very definitely within your control.
6. Research and studies generally indicate that in presentations you have between 4 - 7
seconds in which to make a positive impact and good opening impression, so make
sure you have a good, strong, solid introduction, and rehearse it until it is 'second
nature' to you and an action of 'unconscious competence'.
7. Try to build your own credibility in your introduction, and create a safe comfortable
environment for your audience, which you will do quite naturally if you appear to be
comfortable yourself.
8. Smiling helps a lot. It will relax you and the audience. In addition to giving you a relaxed
calm appearance, smiling actually releases helpful 'happy' chemicals into your nervous
system, and makes you feel good.
9. So does taking a few deep slow breaths make you feel relaxed - low down from the pit
of your stomach - before you take to the stage?
10. Avoid starting with a joke unless you are supremely confident - jokes are high risk things
at the best of times, let alone at the start of a presentation.
There is a big difference between telling a joke and injecting enjoyment and humor into
your talk. Jokes are risky. Enjoyment and humor are safe. A joke requires quite a
special skill in its delivery.
Enjoyment and humor can be injected in very many different ways - for example a few
funny quotes or examples; a bit of audience participation; an amusing prop; an amusing
picture or cartoon; an amusing story (not a joke). Another way to realize the difference
between jokes and enjoyment is consider that you are merely seeking to make people
smile.
11. Apologizing to the audience can also affect the moods and atmospheres of
presentations...
It is normal to make mistakes, and even the most experienced professional speakers
and presenters make mistakes, so just relax and keep calm if (when) you make one.
In acknowledging minor mistakes it is usually better to keep the mood light and relaxed,
with phrases.
12. Try to start on time even if some of the audience is late. Waiting too long undermines
your confidence, and the audience's respect for you.
13. The average attention span of an average listener is apparently between five and ten
minutes for any single unbroken subject.
14. Any audience will begin to wriggle and feel less comfortable in their seats after about 40
minutes of sitting listening/watching. So presentations which are longer than this time
should include a reason for the audience to move a little, or ideally stand up and move
about, after about 40 minutes.
15. Break up the content so that no single item takes longer than a few minutes, and
between each item try to inject something amusing, amazing, remarkable or spicy - a
picture, a quote, a bit of audience interaction - anything to break it up and keep people
attentive.
16. Staying too long (ten minutes or more) on the same subject in the same mode of
delivery will send people into a trance-like state. So break it up
17. You can stimulate other things in your audience besides the usual 'senses'.
You can use content and activities to stimulate feelings, emotions, memories, and even
physical movement.
Passing several props or samples around is also a great way to stimulate physical
activity and involvement.
18. Quotes are a wonderful and easy way to stimulate emotions and feelings, and of course
quotes can be used to illustrate and emphasize just about any point or concept you can
imagine.
Research and collect good quotations and include then in your notes. Memorize one or
two if you can because this makes the delivery seem more powerful.
19. Some trainers warn that passing props around can cause a loss of control or chaos.
This is true, and I argue that it's good. It's far better to keep people active and engaged,
even if it all needs a little additional control. Better to have an audience slightly chaotic
than bored to death.
20. Planned chaos is actually a wonderful way to keep people involved and enjoying
themselves. Clap your hands a couple of times and say calmly "Okay now - let's move
on," or something similarly confident and un-phased, and you will be back in control,
with the audience refreshed for another 5-10 minutes.
21. Create analogies and themes, and use props to illustrate and reinforce them.
22. Fun, humor, interest, participation and diversion are “spice” that you can use to bring
your presentation to life, and keep your audience attentive and enjoying
themselves.Like the spice of a meal, spice in a presentation gives it a lift - stimulates the
senses, and adds texture and richness. Here are examples of the many sorts of 'spice'
elements you can add to a presentation:
o Stories
o Questions and 'hands-up' feedback
o Pictures, cartoons and video-clips
o Diagrams
o Video-clips and sound-clips
o Surveys and statistics
o Straw polls (a series of hands-up votes/reactions which you record and then
announce results)
o Inviting a volunteer to take the stage with you (for a carefully planned reason)
o Audience participation exercises
o Asking the audience to do something physical (clapping, deep breathing,
blinking, finger-snapping, shouting, and other more inventive ideas)
o Asking the audience to engage with each other (for example introductions to
person in next chair)
o Funny quotations (be careful not to offend anyone)
o Inspirational quotations
o Acronyms
o Props, samples, physical objects (see the visual aids ideas page)
o Examples and case-study references
o Fables and analogies
o Prizes, awards and recognizing people/achievements
o Book recommendations
o Fascinating facts (research is easy these days about virtually any subject)
o Statistics (which dramatically improve audience 'buy-in' if you're trying to
persuade)
o Games and exercises and icebreakers
o Body language, and the changing tone and pitch of your voice.
23. Take the pressure off yourself by not speaking all the time. Get the audience doing
things, and make use of all the communications senses available.
24. Interestingly the use of visual aids generally heightens retention of the spoken word - by
70% or more.
25. Some people refer to the following figures on the subject of information retention, which
are taken from Edgar Dale's theory called the Cone of Experience:
o Read 10%
o Heard 20%
o Seen 30%
o Heard and Seen 50%
o Said 70%
o Said and Done 90%
26. Use visual aids a lot in your presentations. Your voice is not the only or main tool at
your disposal. Get visuals working fully for you, and your presentations will be more
engaging, and a lot easier for you to deliver and enjoy.
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Presentation Skills

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Presentation Skills

The essential elements of a presentation are:

Here are seven effective methods to open a presentation:

What is the 7x7 rule?

Effective Presentation Techniques:

Points to remember during a presentation:

What are the benefits of presentation skills?

A well-crafted presentation also demonstrates professionalism and helps to reinforce an

How do you evaluate presentation skills:

Giving effective feedback on presentations:

Tips for effective presentations (summary):

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