The Art of Presenting Successfully

Copyright

© 2015 by Pavlos S. Pavlides

Reproduction, copying or use of the material in this book is not permitted without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Pavlos S. Pavlides

pspavlides@gmail.com

ISBN 978-9963-2225-0-6

Acknowledgments

A big ‘thank you’ to my family and especially my wife Marina for her patience and support. I would also like to thank Melanie Efstathiadou for the design of the cover.

Preface

Have you ever wondered what really makes a presentation successful? Is a fancy presentation with impressive slides, lots of special effects and sounds a successful one? The question you need to ask yourself is whether the presentation got your message across! If your audience received your message the way you meant to, then your presentation was successful.

This e-book is designed to provide information in a concise and easy to read format to anyone who needs to prepare a presentation, whether formal or informal.

The information flows in a logical sequence of actions to guide you through the process of making an effective presentation. There are ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ based on information gathered from many sources and filtered using my personal experiences.

I hope that you will find it useful!

The Author

The elements of Presentations

A presentation consists of the following interrelated elements:

- Presenter

- Topic

- Objective

- Audience

- Tools

A presentation cannot exist if any of the above elements is absent. However, the presenter plays a focal role for a successful presentation. The presenter is the orchestrator that will coordinate and organize. A lot depends on his or her public speaking skills, on the thorough knowledge of the topic and the attention she or he will give to details.

In the sections that follow, you can read an analysis of each element with useful tips on how to eventually deliver a successful presentation.

The Presenter

Your performance as the presenter will determine whether one presentation will be successful or not. The audience attends your presentation because they expect to gain from your knowledge and your expertise. The knowledge you have on your topic will not be helpful to the audience unless you relay your message clearly.

Your ability to communicate effectively and to wisely use or handle the other four elements of a presentation is crucial.

Good public speaking skills are essential in every aspect of life, professional or personal. Just think about the positive impression a good speaker makes as opposed to an average one!

The ‘bad’ thing about public speaking is that you do not know when you will need it. It could be at a family gathering, at a friend’s wedding or at work.

In this section I refer to public speaking in the professional and academic environment. Good public speaking skills are a definite plus when you try to build a professional image. A sales meeting or presentation, a training, a briefing to your superiors, a presentation of an academic project are only some examples when may need to use your skills.

Communication is the core of public speaking. Communication is a two-way process.  To achieve effective communication you need to get your message across and at the same time to be able to receive feedback from the other party. According to the 7 Cs theory, communication, written or oral, must have the following characteristics:

Clarity

Makes understanding easier

Enhances clarity of message

- Define the purpose of the communication.

- Emphasize on a specific message or goal at a time.

- Do not try to convey too many messages in one communication.

- Use appropriate and exact words.

- Ideas should be clear and not subject to assumptions or different interpretations by the audience.

Conciseness

Better comprehension by the audience

Makes the message more appealing and more apparent

- Use the appropriate number or words.

- Avoid the excessive use of adjectives.

- Avoid the use of unnecessary expressions or ‘filler words’

- Avoid different forms of repetitions.

Coherence

Your message will make sense.

- Check the relevance of your points.

- The communication should be consistent in tone and flow.

Concreteness

Gains the confidence of your audience.

Provides a clear and lively picture to your audience.

- Be precise.

- Be focused.

- Support your message with appropriate amount of facts and figures.

Correctness

Enhances the impact of your message.

Increases your credibility.

- Make sure your communication is free of grammatical and syntax errors.

- Proof read your written communication. Do not rely only on the spell checker.

- Use appropriate and understandable technical terms.

- Check the accuracy of facts and figures used.

- Use appropriate language-avoid jargon.

Completeness

Enhance the reputation of the organization

Persuade your audience

- Establish what your audience expects from the communication

- Convey all the facts and figures so that the audience can make decisions or take action.

- Be ready to provide any additional information if required.

Consideration

Helps you to gain the trust of your audience

Creates a positive attitude towards the communication

- Take into consideration the characteristics of your audience, their views, background, educational and social level.

- Respect your audience.

- Be friendly and honest.

- Be positive and optimistic.

Build your self-confidence

Self-confidence is the cornerstone for a successful presentation. Even if you believe that ‘you don’t have it’, it is in your hands to succeed by consistently using exercises to boost your self-confidence and to follow some useful guidelines.

- Eliminate tension by using simple techniques like using a stress ball and taking a series of deep breaths.

- Familiarize yourself with the arguments of your presentation.

- Do not apologize to the audience for being inexperienced! Why are you there then?

- Keep calm and move on if you missed your point or forgot what you wanted to say! Move on to the next point and return to the missed point later!

- Do not hide behind a lectern or a desk. It implies a ‘physical’ apology.

- Read your material over and over again and get used to hearing your voice.

Appearance

A proper appearance will give a good first impression to your audience and will be vital for the success of your presentation. First impressions are sometimes hard to change. By the time you begin your presentation, the audience will have formed a positive or negative idea about you. How can you make a good first impression then?

- Dress appropriately, business-like and smartly.

- Do not wear clothes or accessories that are distracting for the audience.

- Avoid extravagant hair styles.

- Hide any ‘perspiration problem areas.’

- Do not overdo it with makeup or perfume.

- Make sure that your clothes are well-fitted and properly ironed!

- If applicable, make sure your tie is at the right length and the knot is well made.

- Hair is brushed and tidy.

- Make sure your shoes are polished.

Body language

Believe it or not, our body is a means of communication. How we stand, the gestures we make and facial expressions transmit messages to the audience. So it is important to have in mind some important guidelines in order for the body language to work in your favor.

Voice

Your voice is critical to the success of the presentation. The volume, the pace and the pitch of your voice are equally important as all the visual messages you will be transmitting during your presentation.

Eye Contact

Eye contact is a powerful tool! Establish a connection with your audience so that they keep following the presentation. Losing the eye contact will most probably mean losing the audience.

The Topic

The topic of the presentation is what you are going to talk about to the audience. The topic may be given or chosen. Whatever the case may be, you as the presenter should have a thorough knowledge of it by the time you will be presenting. The audience will be expecting to receive a value from the presentation of an expert in the specific field. Knowledge brings confidence. The better you know the topic, the more confident you will be as a presenter.

The Objective

Just after setting the topic of the presentation you have to think about its objective.

Ask yourself the following questions and note the answers. This exercise will help you to identify the objective.

Put yourself in the shoes of a guide who has been asked to lead a group of people.  Whether you use a GPS receiver or a traditional map, you need to identify three elements:

1. The destination.

2. The current position of the group.

3. The route you will follow.

When you are a presenter you will do exactly the same thing. You will first identify the destination-where you will want your audience to be after the presentation.

Then you need to identify what is their position now-the level of information or knowledge they have at the moment.

Finally, the route is the means you will use to lead the audience to the desired outcome-the objective of the presentation.

Assess the presentation

Has the audience reached their ‘destination’, in other words have you managed to achieve your objective? At the end of the presentation it is important to receive feedback from the audience not only as regards your skills as a presenter but as regards the degree of success in conveying your message across. In addition, comments as regards the venue and the overall organization would be helpful information for future reference.

If the objective of a presentation is to sell a product or service, then the success is easily identifiable. However, if the objective is not so tangible, then you need to probe your audience in order to evaluate the presentation. Remember that a successful presentation is the one that gets your message across to your audience.

The Audience

You, as the presenter are the one side of the communication equation. The other one is the audience. In order to deliver an effective and eventually successful communication/presentation, it is of utmost importance to get to know the audience. Find out as much information as you can during the preparation phase of the presentation.

Information you need to find out from the organizer of the presentation or by researching yourself:

Handle the audience

The presentation is organized for the benefit of the audience and you as the presenter you should always have this in mind. Therefore, it is important to do whatever you can to add value to your presentation and enable the audience to make the most out of it. Opinions or facts stated in your presentation may initiate hostility or strongly opposing opinions. You should be prepared to cope with such situations by being a soother that an instigator of hostility and tension.

Do not interpret body language signs of the audience in isolation rather look at the whole picture. For example crossed legs by itself do not mean negativity.

Emphasize points of agreement with hecklers and repeat your opinion at the end.

Do not maintain prolonged eye contact with a hostile audience member, this may cause escalation.

Do not lose your temper under any circumstances.

Do not involve yourself in tension or hostility among audience members. Be the mediator, defuse tension and bring the presentation back on track.

Answer questions

Remember that a presentation is most often a two-way communication. You should structure your presentation in such a way to allow time, depending on the subject of the presentation, for questions from the audience. You should be prepared to answer to expected and unexpected questions.

The Venue

The choice of the right venue contributes to the overall success of a presentation. Ensure that the chosen venue:

- Is easily accessible from audience by car or public transport.

- Has enough parking capacity.

- Provides flexibility for different sitting setup.

- Has satisfactory visibility and acoustics.

- Can cater for the required audio-visual equipment.

- Has satisfactory heating and air-conditioning.

- Provides pleasant surroundings to hold coffee breaks.

- Has or can provide catering facilities.

The Tools

Nowadays a presentation may involve a number of audio-visual equipment, from a PC and a projector to sophisticated audio systems to cater for large audiences. Whatever the case maybe, the success of the presentation depends on the reliability of the equipment you will use as well as your ability to handle any technical issues. In essence, it is important to have a backup plan for anything that might go wrong!

Audio-Visual Equipment

Have a copy of your slide presentation saved on a cloud-based file management service like OneDrive, Google Drive or Dropbox. It will be your backup in case you forget your USB/CD-Rom or if something goes wrong with it.

Make sure that the slide projector is properly adjusted to the screen.

Ensure that there is a second projector at the venue as backup.

Handouts

Handouts should be given at the end of your presentation. If you give them at the beginning, most probably you will distract your audience as they will be flipping through to the very end.

A handout is not a hard copy of your slide presentation. The slides should be the visual support for your presentation, they should not substitute it. Therefore, the handout should be a well written and presented document that will contain the information in your presentation. The preparation of such a document requires time and effort and you should take this into consideration when you make your planning.

The handout does not have to be in printed form, you can always have it available in electronic form to be sent or downloaded.

Building and delivering a presentation

This is the final stage of the presentation process where you will perform your focal role as the presenter. Being a presenter is a multidimensional function for which you need to possess a range of skills. You will find them applicable when preparing and giving a presentation. Having studied the previous sections, you are at the point that all the elements are connected so that you have a meaningful presentation which will then be enhanced with the visual part in the form of a slide show, if you so choose.

Outline

You cannot build a house without the architect’s and the civil engineer’s drawings.  The same holds with the presentation. You cannot ‘build’ a presentation without having a ‘drawing’, an outline. With an outline you ensure that you have identified your main points and consequently you know the framework within which you need to research, to collect information and data in order to support your points.

Your outline can be ideas written on paper, on sticky notes or using more elaborative methods such as software for making mind diagrams or even story builders like the tool from Amazon.

Do not engage in the visual design at this point. Using the house analogy it is as if you start decorating the house while is still not built!

Structure

The script

You can write the contents of your presentation either in full or on index cards in the form of notes.

- The script is meant to be a backup in case you forget some points you want to talk about.

- Index cards should contain only information in point form and not full sentences.

- Number your index cards so that you can easily sort them in case they get mixed up.

- If you using full script number the pages and staple them, otherwise they can be easily get mixed up!

- Use appropriate margins, spaces and font sizes so that you can easily refer to your script.

- Do not read directly from your script.

- Do not use both sides of the paper or index card for your script.

- If you feel nervous do not hold the script in your hands. Keep the script on a table or on the podium and flip through.

- If you feel comfortable using a tablet during the presentation, you can save the script in an appropriate application. Have in mind that PowerPoint presentations may not show correctly in some compatible applications.

The Slideshow on PowerPoint

PowerPoint is the most widely used software that provides all the tools to design professional-looking presentations. PowerPoint is just a powerful tool in your hands nevertheless you will decide how the presentation will look like.

There are a few simple rules that will make your presentation more professional and will enable the audience to concentrate on the messages you want to convey

- Use bullet points appropriately. Use not more than six words in each one and not more than six bullet points per slide.

- Use dark colored fonts on light colored background or vice versa. Make sure that the contrast is enough to make the text readable.

- Use automations and timings only if you feel confident that you can handle them.

- Proof read your slides and check the spelling, the grammar and the syntax.

- Avoid the use of the pre-designed templates available in PowerPoint. They have been widely used and your audience might have seen them too many times!

- Avoid the use of distracting elements like flashy transitions, excessive animation and sounds.

- Do not use all capital letters.

- Do not clutter the screen with logos and useless design elements. An uncluttered slide makes your visual message stronger. You can add the logo of your company in the corner.

- Do not move back and forth in your slide presentation. You look disorganized and eventually the audience will not be following.

- Do not read directly from your slides. The audience can read them too!

- Do not use more than 2 colors for the fonts on the slides.

- Use ‘builds’ (lines of text appearing one after the other each time you click the mouse or based on timings), when they support your message.

- Make sure that ‘builds’ appear one at a time so that you have time to make your point and that they run each time in the same order, for example top to bottom. Do not use any flashy animation.

Numbers, tables and graphs

- Use tables and graphs to present the most important and relevant information that can be easily understood.

- Check the colors you use for fonts and graphs. Make sure that are readable on the chosen background. Bright colors are sometimes difficult to read.

- Numbers should support your message but should not be the main focus. It does not make sense to flood the screen with numbers which will be unreadable anyway.

- Present the summary or the conclusions you draw from numbers, do not present the full details. A slide with a table full of numbers is useless.

- Do not use complicated diagrams, tables or graphs. They add nothing to the information you want to convey!

Fonts

- Use a simple Sans Serif font throughout the presentation, using no more than two complementary fonts (for example Arial and Arial Black). You can add emphasis by using bold. Check the appropriateness of italics for your presentation as sometimes they can be difficult to read.

- Do not use Serif or complicated fonts.

- Font size should not be less than 24 points. Make sure that the font size is appropriate so that the text is readable from the back of the presentation room, without being too ‘loud’.

- Vary the font size for headings and subheadings.

- Select one of the standard fonts or embed the selected fonts in your presentation.  If the fonts you have used are not installed on the presentation PC or laptop, the fonts will be substituted and this might change the appearance of your presentation. The same holds for words written in other languages whose fonts may not be supported on the presentation PC or laptop.

Presentation Checklist

Topic

Is the topic clear?

Have you asked for/received clarifications?

Do you have a thorough knowledge of the topic?

Objective

Have you completed the self-question section to define the objective?

Have you set the objective (s) of the presentation?

Audience:

Do you know the number of participants?

Have you received information on the composition of the audience?

Have you prepared answers to expected and unexpected questions?

Venue:

Has the venue been booked and confirmed?

Have you checked about suitability of the venue to the requirements of your presentation?

Have you made your travel plans to the venue?

Will your travel plans allow you to have enough time for last minute checks at the venue?

Appearance

Have you arranged what you are going to wear?

Is you clothing appropriate for the type of presentation you are delivering?

Tools-Audiovisual equipment:

Has the required equipment been arranged and confirmed?

Have you checked the list of requested equipment with the ones arranged?

Have you checked whether the remote control/laser pointer, the projector (s), the PC or laptop and the other required equipment are functioning properly?

Presentation:

Have you saved your slide presentation on a USB stick and optionally on a cloud file management service (OneDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive)?

Have you prepared your script?

Do you have a copy of the script with you?

Do you have enough copies of the handouts (based on the audience size)?

Do you know the time and the order you will present?

Have you prepared a presentation assessment (either hard copy or online)?

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