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BEC : Presentations -George

Hi, it’s George here on the subject of presentations, my comment and a few thoughts.

I’m going to tell you that the very first and foremost important thing that you’ve got to do when you do a presentation is know your subject. We talked about that in our conversation and I just want to reinforce that. Know your subject, because after that everything else is really very easy.

Let me give you a very simple format when you’re preparing your presentation, something I learned a long, long time ago. It pertains to presenting and it pertains to education too. Three things, there are three components to your presentation.

The first component is you tell the audience. You tell them what you’re going to tell them. What I mean by that is in the very beginning you give them an overview of the subject that you’re going to be talking about, just a brief overview that gets their attention so they know what direction your conversation or your presentation is going to take.

The second thing you do - here’s the body of the presentation - you tell them here’s where you get all the details, all the issues, whether it’s a problem you’re solving or an issue that needs to be dealt with or just a simple informational presentation. Tell them.

That’s the body.

The third and final piece is what I’ll call the wrap or the closing piece and in that piece all you do is tell them what you told them. So, in other words, you give them a recap and this is where you basically discuss the key points that you were trying to make in your presentation. That’s just a very basic format.

The other piece or the most important piece really sometimes to a presentation is the style and by style I’m talking about the use of slides, the use of PowerPoint, the use of a PC in any way, shape or form, the use of charts, some of you may still use overhead projectors. That is one big piece of style. And it doesn’t matter which one you use, but I would warn and tell you, one, do not put a lot of information on any charts, slides, PC presentations, anything of that nature.

Keep your presentation visual material down. I like two, but I’d say two to five maximum bullet points so that you don’t have people sitting there reading all the time that you’re trying to talk. Then behind that what you have to do is from those bullet points you have your discussion, your presentation based on those bullet points. Those bullet points can be keywords --they might even be pictures in some cases --keywords or pictures from which you then take off from that spot and go forward with the details of your presentation. You do this all the way through the presentation.

You do not want to ever, ever, ever read the charts, the foils or whatever is on the screen of your presentation. Don’t stand there and read that stuff to them. You’ve got short bullets, they can read, or you may just comment on them and then go on from there. Not only do you not want to read them, you don’t want to turn around and look at it. If it’s one of those situations where you’ve got a screen behind you, hopefully, that’s the ideal situation, don’t turn around and look at that thing. You know what’s up there.

Look at your audience. Look at your audience, which is the next probably big thing in my mind for a presenter is to look at your audience.

There are a couple old, old thoughts on how to get over the fear of dealing with a large audience. One of them that I think is kind of funny is they tell you just picture your entire audience as being naked and that will relax you instantly. If you want to try it go ahead, but let me tell you something. That never relaxed me and I’m not sure that’s the greatest idea in the world because … well, you get the idea. I don’t know if I’d try that.

Another thought that somebody comes up with and this is getting a little closer to a better idea, that is to pick out somebody in the audience, make eye contact with them and make your presentation to them. Forget about everybody else in the room. Well, that’s a good start. I would tell you let’s take it a step further.

Make eye contact with as many people as you can as you are moving back and forth around the stage. If you’re on the right side of the stage, look at somebody directly when you’re making a point. If you stay on that side and make another point, look at somebody else. As you move to the middle, pick out somebody, look at them and keep looking.

As you do this throughout your presentation, you will probably end up either looking directly at or in the direct vicinity of everybody in the room. That makes for a great presentation because everybody is sitting there saying he or she is talking to me, great way to get people to listen and absorb what you’re trying to get.

I mentioned also movement. I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of presenters who’ve stood behind the podium with their hands clasped to the side, never moved an inch, looked down every three seconds at their notes and just monotone talked through the presentation. Did you enjoy that? I’m going to bet that you did not enjoy that. Don’t do it.

I’m sure you’ve also seen presenters who’ve stood there with their back almost totally to you reading the presentation that’s up on the screen. Did you enjoy that? Did you really think they were talking to you? I’m going to bet that you didn’t.

There’s nothing wrong with moving around the stage and the stage can be maybe just the end of a room when you’re presenting to your team. Get your chair out of the way and move back and forth making eye contact with people as you move making your points. That is a very effective presentation mode that you can get into.

I’ll go back to what I said in the conversation piece. If you know your subject and you’ve got short bullets on your flipcharts, foils or slides or whatever they are and you know what each one of those bullets means and what your conversation or your presentation is about those bullets, the movement, the eye contact, all the rest of that is going to be very easy and this fear of presentations is going to be a piece of cake.

Do you know what means, a piece of cake? Well, a piece of cake is something good. If you want something good, you want a piece of cake? Well, a piece of cake in the business world means that’s easy. That’s easy to do, very easy. It’s easy and it’s good.

One last thought, try in your preparation, get yourself to where you know the subject, you know your presentation so well that you need very, very few notes. Now, I used to give a lot of presentations where there was a podium and I couldn’t stand behind that podium. I use moving all the time, but I would leave notes on the podium and every once in a while I’d drift past the podium and take a quick peek to make sure that I was covering what I wanted to cover and I was on track, if you will, for the subject and the whole presentation.

There’s nothing wrong with doing that, but just don’t carry a notepad around with you and don’t stand behind that podium and read off your notes. Feel free, act like you were at a party just having conversation with a whole bunch of people at once. It really is that simple.

The End.