9-2 Presentations: Good Practice

Good Practice

A good speech is like a pencil; it has to have a point.

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Spend the majority of your time in preparatory activities

• There is a reason that we have extensively covered and repeated the message planning process!
• Good speakers and presentations are created in the planning stage

Practice giving your presentation ahead of time

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Don’t wait until the actual event to deliver your presentation.
• Practice in front of a colleague, the mirror, or record yourself on a smartphone and watch it back. Seeing ourselves give our presentations on camera allows us to see what the audience will see, hear, and experience. It can be daunting at first, but it’s well worth the uncomfortableness.

Be fully present in the moment

• Being completely present during the presentation is both the most important thing you can do and the most difficult.
• Your mind will constantly offer-up real-time critique and concerns. Instead of helping, this unconscious internal dialogue will distract and hinder you from performing at your best.
• Taking deep, calming breaths and absorbing the sounds, smells, and sights in your environment will allow you to better engage with your audience.
• When you are actively aware of what’s actually happening in your environment, you will be naturally more confident and better able to adapt and pivot should any unexpected difficulties occur.

Know your key message and stick to it!

• Be clear about the primary purpose of your presentation (lesson 4-1).
• Is your aim to; inform, educate, persuade, inspire, provoke, or call to action etc.?
• What is it specifically that you are trying to inform your audience of? Every part of your presentation must be focused on that goal.

Keep it simple

Your slides should be a billboard, not a document.

Lee Jackson

• Presentations are not the time to try out new words or convoluted concepts.
• Allow your audience to make connections and understand supporting arguments by keeping it simple.
• As a rule of thumb, people will only remember three main ideas from your presentation. Your job as a presenter is to tell the audience what those things are!
• Use repetition and summary. Tell your audience what you are going to say, say it, and then summarize what you just said.

Know your subject

The best way to sound like you know what you’re talking about is to know what you're talking about.

Harvey Mackay

• To be able to explain something concisely, you need to understand it comprehensively.
• When we ask an audience to take the time to listen we are promising them that what we say will have value and meaning for them.
• Don’t waste other people's time by presenting a subject that you do not understand.

Be yourself and show your passion!

Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.

Oscar Wilde

• The best way to connect with an audience is to honour their time. We can do this by being confident in who we are and passionate about what we have to say.
• Remember our lesson on tone and register during 2-1.
• Optimize your use of tone throughout your presentation with,
  • Expression
  • Intonation
  • Images
  • Relevant, short multimedia

Focus on the audience’s needs

Leadership is about persuasion, presentation and people skills.

Shiv Khera

• The only reason that you are presenting is the audience and their needs lesson 4-2. We must never forget this; our presentation is for the audience, not ourselves and should suit their needs, not ours.
• Remember Aristotle's rhetoric from lesson 8-1. To be persuasive, a speaker and their message must be,
  • Logical to the audience
  • Credible and trustworthy
  • Emotionally resonating
• We can use word selection, tone, and register to do this.

Smile and engage your audience with your body language

• Remember 93% of all messages are delivered not through our word choices but through the non verbal signals we give and our tone and register. lesson 2-2
• Smile and make eye contact.
• Take your hands out of your pockets.
• Make sure your back is not to the audience.
• Listen to the audience's questions and reactions with your ears, body, and gut.

Breathe and relax

• Remember to slow down and breathe.
• The audience won’t connect with you if you look as though you would rather be doing anything else than presenting to them.
• All messages won’t be positive and your delivery needs to reflect the appropriate tone and consequences. We will learn more about this during upcoming lessons.
• It is a privilege to be able to address an audience no matter how small and regardless of the message.
• Honour that privilege and your key role in delivering the message.