Gosh! It?s not easy to give presentations, is it? Why is it that many start sweating just thinking about the activity that they are required to perform? Could it be lack of confidence? Is it because of lack of knowledge on the subject? Could it be due to lack of organising ability on your part? Well it could be one of those or in the worst-case scenario, all of them put together! Have a heart; this is not the end of the world! You simply need to GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER.
If you are starting your job you are required to put theory(what you learnt in school) into practice(what you will be doing from now on), because, effective presentations require nothing, but practice. A good job, high paying salary, perks, benefits in the end, all these things DEMAND that you are able to present yourself in a befitting manner. If you are unsure about HOW, here are a few basic pointers about MAKING AN EFFECTIVE PRESENTATION.
STEPS IN THE CREATION OF AN EFFECTIVE PRESENTATION AND THE PRESENTATION PROCESS:
GOALS TO BE DETERMINED
What are you trying to achieve? Is it to sell to your prospective customer or to get a contract? Is it to provide information or to educate? Are you trying to motivate your juniors or are presenting your work to the senior management? This is the first step towards a successful presentation - determine your goals!
AUDIENCE TO BE ANALYZED
You should if possible know before hand what would be the size of the audience and their BACKGROUND. What is it that your audience is expecting from you in terms of STYLE, LEVEL AND DETAIL that you would be covering in your presentation. What time is the presentation? Is it early morning or late afternoon? Early morning sessions can be more intense since the audience is full of energy, whereas late afternoon sessions tend to be difficult in the sense that most of the attendees are looking forward to calling it a day.
You also need to analyze the tools that you would be requiring to conduct the presentation. It could be Magi board, an overhead projector, computer, LCD projector, stationery, etc. The use of the OHP/LCD projector is ideal for planned explanations and the Magi board/Flip Chart is a good tool for interaction. Make sure all the tools that you need are available at the time of presentation.
TOPIC TO BE RESEARCHED
Assuming you have analyzed your audience already and you know who they are you now should research the topic as much as you can, verify the FACTS and SOURCES not forgetting to give due credit? ethics is the key here. NEVER take credit that is not due to you, however, you MUST give credit wherever it is due.
AN OUTLINE TO BE PREPARED
Having researched the topic, now you need to arrange everything in order and prepare a SKETCH/OUTLINE of your presentation. Do not worry about discarding some of the DATA/FIGURES if you feel like and if it will not affect your presentation in any way. Too much of anything is never a good idea anyway.
THE SCRIPT, CHARTS, AND FIGURES NEED TO BE PRODUCED
Now that you have the data/figures, prepare whatever is necessary, CHARTS, DIAGRAMS etc. Decide on a central theme and keep it in focus. Prepare the STRUCTURE of your presentation keeping in mind that, INTRODUCTION should be mo more than 20% of your entire presentation. The BODY should be 70% and the balance 10% of your presentation, the CONCLUSION, which can also include the brief summary of the entire presentation.
PRACTICE AND REFINE YOUR PRESENTATION
Based on your goal in the very first point above you now need to select a PRESENTATION STYLE. When you have arranged everything, you should prepare yourself to TIME the presentation. You are to keep in mind that the time is already set, maybe 60 minutes or whatever. Assuming it is 60 minutes, you need to find out if you are going to go overboard, or you will finish too early. You need to go through the entire presentation at least once in its entirety to access how much time it takes. Make sure you check your watch every 15 minutes and make a note of it since you should have covered 25% of your presentation. In case you exceed the 60-minute limit, you need to discard some irrelevant info from the presentation to save time, or the other way around. If you created the QUARTER HOUR CHECKPOINTS, you will find it easy to discard or add information from/to the relevant portion.
THE PRESENTATION
Make a single sheet checklist of the entire presentation and mark all the points, high priority, medium priority or low priority(I always do it while writing a review for MS due to 8000 character limit imposed). Keep the checklist handy while you give the presentation. This will help you in tailoring the presentation and time it well since you do not know at the beginning how much involvement your audience will have in your presentation.
The presentation should be in a RELAXED MANNER; this can only be achieved if you rehearsed your presentation in the first place. If so, it will also help you with NATURAL DELIVERY of the presentation, your CONFIDENCE LEVEL will be high, you will be able to have EYE CONTACT with your audience(necessary to get their attention) and above all, you will be prepared for questions. If you like, you can come up with questions about the subject itself and include it in the INTRODUCTION(just as I did in this review), the questions than would automatically be answered while the presentation is unfolding. This way you will keep the interest alive. The presentation should be INTERACTIVE as much as possible. This will also help gauge the interest and knowledge of the participants.
During the presentation, you can effectively make use of the quarter hour checkpoints you made while rehearsing to know in the middle of the presentation how you are doing with time. Try not to digress too much, otherwise you will loose track of time. MAKE SURE YOU FINISH THE PRESENTATION IN TIME.
EVALUATION PROCESS
Three types of evaluations are possible; formal, informal and self-evaluation, FORMAL evaluation is usually in the shape of a questionnaire that you distribute to your audience.
Keep the formal questionnaire simple, which could do with just three questions:
a) Did you find the presentation effective/ ineffective?
b) Did the presentation help you in any way?
c) What improvements would you suggest?
INFORMAL evaluation could be in the shape of feedback from your own colleagues or someone who was assisting you in the presentation, or from members of the audience itself after the presentation is over. However, the most important evaluation is, SELF EVALUATION and that is what I would associate with the learning process. Quoting Shakespeare TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE, you should ask yourself:
Did I achieve the objective?
Did I succeed in getting full attention from my audience?
If I were to do the same presentation again, would I do it differently or in the same way? If differently, what would I change or incorporate in my presentation?
Did it finish in time?
Well I have finished the review and you are my audience so now it is your turn to give me the feedback! Did you find this review informative? Did the review come up to your expectations? Can you give an effective presentation by following the guidelines in this review? I sure do hope so, because that was my real intention.
Thank you for dropping by and reading what I write.
All text Copyright Quadophile 2004