Back to: Effective Presentation Skills
Preparation is crucial for delivering a great presentation.
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Many of the best natural presenters appear relaxed and spontaneous precisely because of how much effort they put in beforehand. Even with material and situations with which you are very confident, neglecting the planning stage is always risky.
Content is king. Context is King Kong.
Human beings are surprisingly inefficient at taking on board new information in a limited amount of time. For instance, a typical newspaper item will revolve around only two or three basic ideas.
Much more than that, and readers, viewers and listeners become confused or bored. The same principles apply to presentations, which should be constructed around no more than three key messages. What is a message? A message is a guiding idea or theme or proposition that you want to convey to a specific audience. It is the essence of what you want to say.
Boiling down everything that you want to say to a few key messages can be a difficult process, but it pays dividends in clarity and impact.
The most important aspect of most presentations is not what happens in the room but what happens later as a result: we intend to change attitudes or behaviour. Messages are the foundations of all effective communication: in order to be understood they must be clear and simple; in order to be remembered and acted upon they must be consistent and repeated. Messages do not exist in a vacuum: they are aimed at specific audiences.
Structure
Your key messages will provide a frame for the content of the presentation. But how much information can you fit in? That will be determined by the time available. In some cases you will have a defined time slot; in others you can determine this for yourself. Either way, it is important to be concise in order to convey as much information effectively as possible. Bear in mind that people’s attention will start to wane after about 20 minutes.
About 25 percent of a presentation should be for the introduction and conclusion (see below); the remaining 75 percent divided among the key ideas in the body of your presentation. So for a 10-minute presentation you have time for seven or eight elements; for 20 minutes, about 15 elements.
Make full use of the time, but be realistic about what can be conveyed effectively. Focus and select the most important information. Choose information that is best suited for oral delivery. Leave data, routine or technical information for the handout; use your spoken presentation for meaning and explanation. Choose aspects of the brief that are best suited to this audience and occasion: their needs, attitudes, knowledge and expectations.
Making a short presentation can be just as challenging as a long one precisely because of the need to cut it to its bare bones and yet remain compelling and get the message across.