Have you ever asked to perform in front of public to do a presentation? I bet you have. Many are not excited when given the task. The reason is not because they do not know what they want to present but they do not how to do it in a good way to convey what they want to deliver. In my opinion, presentation is a good way to market yourself to the audience. If you agree with me, let’s make the presentation effective to your advantage.
In the beginning of your presentation session, start with brief introduction of who you are. Keep it brief, concise yet informative. Next, do introduce your presentation. You can use stories or anecdotes to smoothly get the audience’s attention to the topic. Take it like ice-breaking move. After that let the audience knows how long the presentation is going to take. For example: ‘I have only 5 slides today. It will take around 10-15 minutes. And we will continue with Q&A sessions for the next 30-35 minutes’. This will make your audience know what they are about to get and also help you set the time and session perimeter to anticipate questions being asked during your presentation.
Your presentation slides is not your CV or your thesis. Therefore. avoid displaying endless streams or words, numbers, tables. Those three things are a big NO unless you want your audience to shift their attention to Instagram on their phone. Why Instagram? Because this is the era of visualization and images. People are drawn to images. Fun fact: most people like the Instagram feed without reading its caption. 1 picture tells 1000 words, that is what you need to do in your slides. Use wordings and number to enrich your story in your slides, not the other way around.
This is the essence of presenting. During your presentation session, do regular reality check to assess your audience’s interest level. If you see many eyes following your body movement or fixating of the screen, you are doing a good job. When you see the interest level is going down, you can do some improvisation, for example throwing a question to reconnect with your audience. Easier said than done, this will need more practice and experience to do the improvisation naturally.
As clearly as it gets. Do not get tired practicing. You can ask help from your friends or family members to be your dummy audience a day before the real presentation take place. Ask them for their notes: what went well and what can be improved. And in reality, if you want to get more real-time practice, do not decline opportunities to do presentation. If you are up to the challenge or maybe starting to like the feeling of doing presentation, do the initiative to do it in your workplace.
