Newsletter July 04

An effective presentation

What makes a good presentation?

I ran a seminar recently on presentation skills, where one of the audience members - Brent Ruru – offered to give a brief talk with only minimal preparation time.

His talk was impressive.

Why?

Because he used some simple, yet effective techniques:

The Structure
His talk had a good structure. It had a brief opening (approx 10% of the time), a longer body (approx 80%) and a short ending (approx 10%) which made it easy to follow.

The Content
1. He used an opening that grabbed the audience’s attention.

The first thing he did was to stand and look at the audience. This only took about a second, but gave him a look of confidence.

He then started by saying “Fellow Wellingtonians” which created a sense of belonging, and he followed this by asking the audience a question.

An opening like this will ensure that people are ready to listen to your message.

2. He gave the body of the talk three easy-to-follow points, centred round the main theme.

3. His ending included a link back to the opening, “Fellow Wellingtonians …”, and finished with a succinct, easy-to-achieve call to action.

The Delivery

He used a number of delivery techniques that kept the audience interested and enabled him to get his message across:

1. How he looked

Brent came across as relaxed and at ease in front of the group. If the speaker looks at ease, the audience will feel at ease.

He used variety e.g. natural gestures, facial animation and movement, to keep people’s attention.

2. How he sounded

He had a good pace, not too fast, with a number of pauses.

He had variety in his voice, and he varied his speaking style, eg rhetorical questions, statements, descriptive language.

3. What he did

He involved the audience by asking questions.

He used the whiteboard as a visual.

[Our last newsletter covers the issue of variety and why it is important.]

There are many ways to give a good presentation, though if you aim to use some of the techniques mentioned here, you will be well placed to give an effective presentation every time.

Happy speaking!