five tips to the perfect presentation
TRANSCRIPT
Five tips to the perfect presentation
Of course, many will have heard of the phrase “death by PowerPoint”, usually because they’ve spent hours watching someone simply read off ninety slides as they get displayed on a huge white screen at the front of a warm and stuffy meeting room. To these people, the thought of a presentation brings dread and loathing of what’s to come.
It’s unlikely you’ll ever go through your office life without having to do a presentation of some sort, it seems it’s a rite of passage in some companies and regardless of what it is your company does, somebody will want to generate some slides and show them to someone else.
If you’ve tried to arrange a meeting where you are expected to present something, you may have wondered why nobody wanted to come. It’s because they expect you to do the same and essentially bore them to death.
Well how about doing something completely different and making a presentation a little more exciting (yes, I know it’s relative) and maybe not rely on PowerPoint to do all the work?
These five tips are gleaned over years of having to stand in front of an unappreciative crowd trying to get them excited about things that really, aren’t very exciting. Ever had to present about a new sewer system under Sheffield? Exactly.
Let’s jazz it up a bit then…
Use a flip chart
This may sound obvious and a little low-tech, but flip charts are an amazing way of not only jotting down things you hear from the crowd, but for letting the crowd know that you’ve made notes.
Presentations should be two-way, you’re not just there to bark at your audience for five hours, you’ve got to make sure they don’t get fidgety.
Use different but dark colours – they’re easily read by people, and write LARGE. Don’t make people squint to see what you’ve written. Ideally have somewhere you can rip off the individual sheets and pop them on the wall when you’ve filled one – a bit of blue tack is useful here.
They’re also fantastic for calming nerves. If you find yourself wobbling at the thought of standing in front of so many people, you can simply hang on to the flip chart like a comforter. Holding on with one hand and having a pen in another keeps you occupied and allows you to calm down as you ease into the talk.
Master the ‘W’ buttonThis tip is specifically for PowerPoint but other systems will have a
similar function and it is absolutely essential when presenting. All it does is fade the screen to white. Why? Well it’s a simply psychological trick.
If you prepared your presentation well then your slides are merely used as notes to jog your memory and you shouldn’t just be reading them out to your audience. If that’s all you are doing, just spare them the agony and send them the slides so they can read them over a coffee in their own time.
No, your job is to add to the presentation in an entertaining way and giving feedback. But, if the slide you’re presenting is on the screen all the time, your audience will be looking at it and not concentrating on you.
Hit the ‘W’ key to fade to white or the ‘B’ key to fade to black and suddenly the audience is back in the room looking at the main attraction, i.e. you.
Involve your audience
How this works depends on what you’re speaking about, but one of my favourite things to do at the beginning of a presentation is to ask a question of the audience and get them to raise a hand or shout out an answer. Sounds simple, but you have to be able to adapt if you do this.
Now, I’m going to assume that if you’re presenting something you know about then you’ll be OK with this, you can ad-lib if someone asks a questions or throws you a curveball, but remember that if the audience changes the direction, you need to be able to roll with it.
It almost doesn’t matter if you don’t have slides for this sort of thing, you should just be able to answer the person’s questions. When you’ve done that, bring everything back on track.
Audience participation is also good if you seem to be losing the crowd. If it looks like they’re starting to get a bit tetchy then ask them a question. There’s always someone who’s had too much pie for lunch and is starting to nod off – ask them what they think so far!
Do not apologize, everIf you’re anxious about standing up then you might be
tempted to apologize in advance for your rubbish presentation. This just puts people on edge and they’ll feel embarrassed for you and maybe even expect it to be rubbish. Seriously, don’t ever apologize for how you’re doing.
It’s likely your audience won’t actually sense your anxiety –they’re not all Derren Brown. Just carry on and eventually you’ll get the hang of it and the nerves will subside.
Don’t be tempted to make excuses or say you’re sorry for a dodgy slide transition.
Make sure your stationery worksThere’s nothing as bad as walking up to a flip chart or whiteboard
to write something and then finding all your pens are dried up and unusable.
If you’re unsure, get a fresh set of pens and have them ready to use, don’t be fighting with cellophane just as you come to use them.
Summing up…There are entire books written on how to run a
good presentation but if you stick to these tips, you can work the rest out yourself.
One final note I would add is that you should always aim to have fun.
Yes, I know it sounds crazy as presenting to a crowd is apparently more dreaded than death to most people, but if you know your subject well, it shouldn’t be a problem at all.
