I've been to a few presentations over the last week and I'm still amazed at how bad some people are at it! Here are
my top 10 tips for better presentations. Nothing groundbreaking, just common sense. It's not rocket surgery as they
say.
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Be prepared. Those boy scouts are smart kids you know. Take some advice from them and prepare before your
presentation. Make sure you have everything you need. Does the room have a projector? And does your laptop work
with the projector? Do you have a backup of your slides? Do you have another backup of the backup? And is it in
a format that someone else's laptop can read if Murphy turns up and your machine suddenly stops working? Do you
have a hard copy so that if technology stops working that day at least you can hand out photocopies.
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Tell us what you are there to talk about. Don't just launch into it, give some background first and if
necessary, give a brief overview of the subject to get everyone up to speed. And provide some context as to how
your subject fits into the real world.
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Keep it simple. Try to explain things in a way that everyone will understand. Obviously this depends on your
audience, the more technical they are, the more technical you can be. But try to consider the lowest common
denominator and explain things in a way that everyone will understand.
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Keep it short. Long presentations are boring. People lose interest very quickly, so try to keep your
presentation to a sensible length. Again, this depends on the audience, but after 45 mins most people's minds
will begin to wander and start thinking about what's on TV tonight.
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Know your subject. Don't give a presentation on something you don't know a lot about. People are there to learn
and they will expect that you know what you're on about. And if you don't, people will be able to tell very
quickly. After the second question you answer with "Um, I'm not sure about that one", your audience will start
leaving the room pretending they're late for a meeting.
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Practice. No matter how experienced you are, practice your presentation a few times to get to know it. If all
you do is read out each line of your PowerPoint presentation as you go your audience will very quickly lose
patience with you and start throwing things.
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Give people access to your presentation. Nobody likes frantically taking notes while trying to listen to what
you have to say. Let people know that they can get a copy of your presentation when you are done so they can go
back over it later at their leisure. That way they can focus on listening rather than trying to write everything
down.
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Summarize your presentation. When writing an essay there's a saying that says - "tell us what your about to tell
us, then tell us, then tell us what you told us". The same thing applies to giving a speech. People have short
memories and if you want to get your point across you need to make sure you reiterate it a few times so it sinks
in.
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Leave time for questions. People will want to ask questions and discuss your ideas. Make sure you give them time
to do so. Running overtime indicates that you can't keep to time and that you don't really care about what your
audience has to say.
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Make it interesting. So many people give incredibly boring presentations that leaves the audience fighting to
stay awake. Don't be one of those people. I've sat through too many boring presentations recently to face
another one.
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