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Making Oral Presentations Module 20 and Additional Notes

+“Take-Aways”

What do you want your audience to do?

Always actions.

Change a behavior?

Change an attitude?

Buy something?

+“Take-Aways”

Make them clear and explicit.

Gives your audience a chance to make sure they understand the points you want them to understand.

+“Take-Aways”

Limit your main ideas to the smallest number you can.

Spend your time—supporting , clarifying, offering evidence, examples, interaction, etc.—in the service of that point.

+Why is this a presentation, not a document?

Do you really need to present this?

What does your presentation do that a document can’t?

Expensive and inefficient to make a presentation when the information could have been distributed as a document.

Advantages/Disadvantages of one strategy vs. the other?

+Opening/Closing

Relevance/Importance

Preview/Summary – Take-aways.

Framing Techniques (quotes, stories, analogies, metaphors, goals, missions, etc.)

Close: look to the future, positive emphasis, call to action.

+Body Language

Gestures

Stance

Podium

Visual Cues

Relationship to your visuals

Eye contact

The speaker dance

+Voice

Project to the back of the room

Tone: Confident and/or conversational

+General Principles

Enjoy yourself

Positive emphasis

You-attitude

+Questions from the audience

Restate the question.

Shows you’re listening.

Allows you to reshape the question.

Allows the “asker” to clarify.

+Questions from the audience

Ask for clarification if you don’t understand something about the question.

You don’t want to answer a question the asker didn’t ask. Makes you look like a bad listener. Wastes the asker’s and the audience’s time.

+Questions from the audience

Internally identify the asker’s best possible intentions.

Frame your response within those possibilities.

People generally don’t ask questions just to be jerks.

But be careful.

+Questions from the audience

Plant a backup question. Just in case.

+Questions from the audience

Keep your answers direct and succinct.

Check in with the asker to make sure you’ve answered their question.

+Practice, Practice, Practice

With your team

In front of a generous audience (trusted, helpful)

On-camera (here your voice; see your body language)

Get your timing down

Avoid a sense of “winging it” – project preparation

+Focus on Structure

Opening

Transitions – more than just a hand-off

Content

Closing

Unity/Consistency

Avoid redundancies

+Have a backup plan

If the technology doesn’t work

If a team member doesn’t show up

If the audience asks a question for which you are unprepared

+Prepare to adjust

Have a system of communication in place to help keep each other on track

Small window of time; must be able to adjust and compensate

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Thanks.