Home > Top Ten Tips

Presentations: delivery

Helen Kelly

1. Get the stage fright out of the way.

Let’s face it:  everyone gets a bit of the jitters when it’s time to present and sometimes nerves upstage the great things you have to say.  So, before you start on content, make stage fright a non-issue.  Here’s how. Ask a colleague to video tape you making a short presentation - three to five minutes; no more.  Demonstrate something you know how to do or give a short talk on something you know well.  Like football rules or dress for success, or how to save a document or make meatballs or use the phone system.  Anything you can organise into a series of points around a single idea will do.  Practice without the camera and then tape your presentation.  Tape it a second time and then watch it on a video player.  You may think I urge a form of torture but trust me; you’ll be pleased with yourself when it’s time for the real thing.

2. What outcome do you want?

What do you want from the audience?  Will you ask them to accept a point of view, change an opinion, take or reverse a decision?   Will you support a popular point of view or do you oppose one?  Before organising the content (next step), put yourself in the audience’s shoes, picture their attitudes on arrival, and plan to persuade. 

3. One key issue

All decisions about the content, visuals, staging, lighting, room set up and question time turn on one initial decision:  what is the single key issue you will address in this presentation?  You may or may not state it in the same words when you present but it’s the central organising thought – the key player in your plan.  For example:

  • What should we do about falling sales? 
  • Marketing and Sales are at odds:  can we help them work together? 
  • Can we justify increasing the budget? 
  • What is the key criterion for deciding who to hire/fire? 
  • What can we learn from research about the effects of telecommuting/job sharing in our industry?   
  • Why is it useful to look back at our company’s past performance?

Once you know the key issue, you’ll know how the audience is likely to feel about it, how to introduce it, how to arrange the body of the talk, which visuals to create and what questions to anticipate.    

4. Outline the talk

I learned this formula from Ronnie Strong in Boston.  I don’t know where he is but I do know I’ve never stopped thanking him because it works, every time. 

Outline a beginning, middle and end like this.  The beginning is called Background.  What’s the history?  What problems are we seeing?  What are the consequences of recent results?  Arrange the background so the issue is obvious by the time you get to it. The middle is the Issue – why it’s important to you, others, the audience.  The end is the Decision.  What you recommend, why, and what are the benefits of taking this decision.

Once you’ve planned the talk, anticipate questions and prepare answers.  The questions won’t be precisely what you plan, but if you’ve researched the audience, decided what you want from them and what their objections might be, you’ll be close on the mark anticipating their questions.

Well, that’s it.  “Easy,” Ronnie said, and he was right.  It just takes some time and thought.  Enjoy.

5. Visuals - The Rules

  • Keep them short, punchy, and concise – like headlines. 
  • Be sure you can read everything from twenty feet, so no detailed graphs, Excel pages, heavily illustrated pie charts, or long phrases.
  • Don’t repeat yourself:  visuals provide an alternative way to know what you’re saying.  
  • Avoid clichés.  No jargon, ever.
  • Use visuals to recap your outline and provide a memory jogger. 
  • Provide a handout of your visuals unless the information is confidential.
  • Choose images that stick with the tone and purpose of your presentation, and keep your audience and intended outcome in mind.  For example, don’t choose a cartoon if you know people will struggle to agree with you or even might oppose you. 
  • Along those lines, don’t use cutesy features like fly-in text unless it’s part of the way you set the tone.  These features can distract the audience and dampen your impact. 

6. Visuals - How to Avoid Disaster on the Day

  • Use slides stored in your laptop, in a carousel, and in a pinch on an overhead projector.  Whichever one, get the sequence down pat well ahead of presentation time. 
  • If you must advance the visuals and present, practice till your fingers move automatically when you reach the right point in your talk.  
  • Hopefully someone else will work your visuals.  Provide a script with the words you’ll speak that signal each visual.  Make sure the words on that script are in 16-point type so the operator can’t miss them.  Create a set of signals in case things go awry like slides out of order. 
  • Don’t practice in the hour before you present. 
  • If you’re presenting in a country not your own, the equipment may vary with regard to the size of slides and other particulars, so check everything about the venue and the equipment to avoid unwelcome surprises.

7. Learning to Walk the Talk

Watch the best of them -- the TV news stand-up reporters.  They do funny little things with their hands but they’re trained to look informal and informed.  Notice that they stand with their feet just slightly apart, they never shift their weight from foot to foot, they don’t look backwards at a scene ever though they may gesture toward it.  They pause between points, and they never ever give you the full force of a smile.  If you do the same, you’ll appear to be relaxed and at ease, and might be exactly that. 

One difference:  TV reporters don’t walk about, and you should.  When you move from point to point in the talk, move to another spot or if you’re in a wheelchair visibly shift your position.  In both cases move, pause, and look at the audience. 

8. The Room:  Plants, Lights, Seats and a Table

  • Plants are soothing, inspiring, and relaxing.  One big green plant standing at the back, which people see when they arrive, can improve their attention and make them more receptive. 
  • Keep lighting off the audience while you’re talking or they lose focus on you, whisper about your points to one another, and fidget. 
  • Arrange seats with some space between each one.
  • Arrange to see the person operating your visuals.
  • Have a small table near the back or near the door for any brochures, handouts and contact details you will make available for the audience.

9. Taking Questions  

Practice in front of the mirror or a video camera looking thoughtful, interested and pleased because you’ll need these poses when someone asks a question don’t like, you don’t want to answer, or think is silly.  So the rules:  do look thoughtful, interested, and pleased; don’t look puzzled, frightened, uneasy, disdainful, irritated or annoyed.  Your investment in a good talk can go down the drain with one unwelcome facial expression.

Address every question.  If you don’t know the answer, say so, offer to try to find out, and ask to meet the questioner after the talk to obtain contact details.  If the answer is confidential, say that, and offer to meet the questioner after the talk to see whether you can provide related information.

10. Closing

  • Thank the audience warmly for their time, attention and interesting questions. 
  • Let them know whether you will be taking further questions at the end of the session.   If so, say “I’ll be pleased to meet you afterwards for an informal talk.” 
  • Let them know whether they can contact you at a later date.  If yes, say that you will be pleased to hear from anyone who would like to be in touch and that your contact details are available on the table / on the handout. 
  • If you will not have further contact, say thank you and goodbye. 
  • If there is a chance for further contact, say thank you and goodbye for now. 
  • And here is your big chance:  smile while saying goodbye.

Going further