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What It Takes to Give a Great Presentation
- Carmine Gallo
Five tips to set yourself apart.
Never underestimate the power of great communication. It can help you land the job of your dreams, attract investors to back your idea, or elevate your stature within your organization. But while there are plenty of good speakers in the world, you can set yourself apart out by being the person who can deliver something great over and over. Here are a few tips for business professionals who want to move from being good speakers to great ones: be concise (the fewer words, the better); never use bullet points (photos and images paired together are more memorable); don’t underestimate the power of your voice (raise and lower it for emphasis); give your audience something extra (unexpected moments will grab their attention); rehearse (the best speakers are the best because they practice — a lot).
I was sitting across the table from a Silicon Valley CEO who had pioneered a technology that touches many of our lives — the flash memory that stores data on smartphones, digital cameras, and computers. He was a frequent guest on CNBC and had been delivering business presentations for at least 20 years before we met. And yet, the CEO wanted to sharpen his public speaking skills.
- Carmine Gallo is a Harvard University instructor, keynote speaker, and author of 10 books translated into 40 languages. Gallo is the author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman (St. Martin’s Press).
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10 Presentation Skills That Every Great Presenter Must Have
It’s no secret that effective presentations can help you get ahead in business. After all, what better way to show off your knowledge and expertise than by delivering a well-crafted presentation? The right presentation skills give you the ability to share your ideas with an audience convincingly and engagingly.
Unfortunately, not everyone is born a natural presenter. If you’re not used to standing up in front of an audience, the prospect of doing so can be daunting. Fortunately, there are a few simple things you can do to improve your presentation skills.
In this article, we’ll share some tips on how to do just that, allowing you to deliver an effective presentation.
Let’s get right into it.
What are Presentation Skills?
Presentation skills are the abilities you need to deliver a clear and effective presentation. After all, a good presenter is someone who can communicate their ideas in a way that engages and motivates their audience.
There are many different aspects to presentation skills, from knowing how to structure your talk to using visuals effectively, to dealing with nerves.
Developing strong presentation skills will help you to communicate your ideas more effectively and make a positive impression on your audience.
Presentation skills are important because they can help you to communicate your ideas clearly and effectively. A good presentation can make a big impact on your audience and can help to persuade them of your point of view.
Presentation skills are also important in other areas of life, such as job interviews, sales pitches, and networking events. Being able to present your ideas clearly and concisely can give you a big advantage over others who are not as confident in their presentation skills.
Why Is it Important To Recognize Presentation Skills & Their Benefits?
One of the most important reasons to recognize presentation skills is because they are a valuable skill for any profession. Good presentation skills can help you in your career by making it easier to sell your ideas, get promoted, and be successful in business.
In addition, good presentation skills can also help you in your personal life by making it easier to give speeches, make presentations, and teach classes.
In addition, recognizing presentation skills can also help you improve your presentations. If you are not aware of the importance of presentation skills, you may not be using them to their full potential.
By taking the time to learn about presentation skills and how to use them effectively, you can make your presentations more effective and persuasive.
Here’s a list of benefits that come with good presentation skills:
- Increased confidence
- The ability to think on your feet
- Improved public speaking skills
- Enhanced written communication skills
- The ability to lead and motivate others
- Enhanced problem-solving abilities
- Improved negotiation skills
- Stronger time management skills
- Greater creativity
- The opportunity to make a positive impact on others
10 Examples of Presentation Skills
Let’s now explore some practical examples of presentation skills that will help you ace your next big presentation.
A Clear And Confident Voice
One of the most important aspects of a great presentation is having a clear and confident voice. If you’re mumbling or speaking too quietly, your audience is going to have a hard time understanding you.
On the other hand, if you’re shouting or speaking too fast, they’re going to get overwhelmed and tune out. So, it’s important to find that happy medium where your voice is audible and easy to understand.
The Ability To Engage With Your Audience
Another key presentation skill is the ability to engage with your audience. This means making eye contact, using gestures, and speaking in a way that is relatable and easy to understand.
If you’re just standing there reading off a slide, chances are your audience is going to get bored pretty quickly. But if you can find ways to keep them engaged, they’ll be more likely to listen to what you have to say.
Good Eye Contact
One of the best ways to engage with your audience is through eye contact. When you make eye contact with someone, it shows that you’re interested in what they have to say and that you’re engaged in the conversation. It also helps to build trust and rapport.
So, if you can find ways to make eye contact with your audience members, it will go a long way in keeping them engaged.
Natural Gestures
Another great way to engage with your audience is through natural gestures. Using your hands and arms to gesture can help emphasize points and keep your audience engaged. Just be sure not to go overboard – too much gesturing can be distracting.
Positive Body Language
Your body language is also important when it comes to presentations. If you’re slouching or looking down at your feet, it’s going to show that you’re not confident in what you’re saying.
On the other hand, if you’re standing up straight and making strong eye contact, it’s going to give off a positive impression. So, be aware of your body language and try to project confidence through it.
The Use Of Visual Aids
Visual aids can be a great way to engage your audience and make your points more clear. Using slides, charts, and graphs can help illustrate your ideas and make them easier to understand. Similar to using gestures, just be sure not to overdo it – too many visuals can be overwhelming and confusing.
The Ability To Handle Questions
At some point during your presentation, you’re likely going to get questions from your audience; how you handle those questions can make or break your presentation. If you’re able to answer them confidently and without getting flustered, it’ll show that you know your stuff.
But if you start to get tongue-tied or defensive, it’s going to reflect poorly on you. So, be prepared for questions and try to stay calm when answering them.
An Organized Structure
Another important presentation skill is having a well-organized structure. This means having an introduction, main body, and conclusion to your presentation.
It also means using transitions between sections to help your audience follow along. If your presentation is all over the place, it’s going to be hard for your audience to stay engaged and they’ll quickly tune out.
The Use Of Storytelling
Storytelling is a great way to engage your audience and make your points more memorable. And while it might not seem like a traditional presentation skill, it can be extremely effective. So, if you can find ways to weave stories into your presentation, it’ll go a long way in captivating your audience.
Last but not least, confidence is one of the most important presentation skills you can have. If you’re not confident in what you’re saying, it’s going to show – and your audience is going to pick up on it.
So, even if you’re not feeling 100% sure of yourself, try to project confidence. It’ll make a big difference in how your audience perceives you and your message.
How To Identify & Master Presentation Skills
The good news is that presentation skills are not rocket science. Anyone can develop and master them with the right guidance.
Here’s a 5-step process to help you identify and master presentation skills.
Determine The Purpose Of Your Presentation
Are you trying to inform, persuade, or entertain your audience? Knowing the purpose of your presentation will help you focus on the right content and delivery.
Know Your Audience
Who will be watching or listening to your presentation? What are their needs, wants, and concerns? The better you understand your audience, the more effectively you can address their needs.
Structure Your Content
Organize your thoughts into an introduction, body, and conclusion. The introduction should grab your audience’s attention and set the stage for the rest of your presentation. The body should contain the meat of your argument, and the conclusion should drive home your main points.
Choose Your Delivery Method
Will you be using slides, props, or other visual aids? Will you be speaking extemporaneously or reading from a script? Choose a delivery method that best suits your content and audience.
Practice, Practice, Practice
The only way to become a master presenter is to practice, practice, practice! Experiment with different techniques and find what works best for you. Then keep practicing until it becomes second nature.
Also, consider that the right strengths test can help you understand your presentation skills better – both the strong ones and the ones to get better at. To this extent, the High5test.com strengths test is a great resource.
How To Improve Presentation Skills in The Workplace
The workplace is one of the most important places to hone your presentation skills. After all, in the business world, first impressions are key, and being able to deliver a polished and professional presentation can make all the difference in whether or not you’re successful.
Here are a few tips to help you improve your presentation skills in the workplace:
Preparation Is Key
This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s worth repeating. When you’re preparing for a presentation, take the time to do your research and gather all of the necessary information. This will help ensure that your presentation is well-organized and flows smoothly.
Be Aware Of Your Body Language
Your body language speaks volumes, so it’s important to be aware of what you’re communicating with your nonverbal cues. Make sure you’re standing up straight, making eye contact, and using gestures appropriately. These small tweaks can make a big difference in how your audience perceives you.
One of the best ways to improve your presentation skills is simply to practice as much as you can. The more you present, the more comfortable you’ll become and the better you’ll be at thinking on your feet and handling questions from the audience.
Seek Feedback
After each presentation, take some time to reflect on what went well and what could be improved. If possible, seek feedback from your colleagues or boss. This will help you learn from your mistakes and continue to improve.
By following these tips, you can start to improve your presentation skills and make a positive impression in the workplace.
How To Highlight Presentation Skills In Resume & Job Interview
Another important skill that is often overlooked is the ability to highlight presentation skills in both a resume and a job interview. This can be the difference between getting the job and not.
When you are applying for a job, your resume is often the first thing that potential employers will look at. It is important to make sure that your resume includes any relevant presentation skills that you may have.
You can do this by including any experience you have in public speaking, leading presentations, or teaching courses. If you do not have any experience in these areas, consider listing any other relevant skills that could transfer over into presenting, such as customer service or sales experience.
In addition to your resume, it is also important to be able to highlight your presentation skills during a job interview. This is often done through behavioral interviewing, where you will be asked to describe specific examples of times when you have presented in the past. It is important to be prepared for this type of question and to have a few examples ready to go.
When you are highlighting your presentation skills, it is important to focus on any successes that you have had. This could be anything from getting positive feedback from an audience to successfully teaching a new course.
No matter what the specific example is, it is important to focus on how you were able to positively impact the situation. This will show potential employers that you can effectively present information and that you are someone they would want on their team.
Bonus Tip: How to Improve Presentation Skills in School As a Student
School students often have to present in front of their classmates and teachers. This can be a daunting experience, especially if you don’t feel confident in your abilities. However, there are some things you can do to improve your presentation skills while you’re still in school.
Join A Club Or Organization That Requires Presentations
This will force you to get up in front of people regularly and hone your skills. If no club or organization at your school requires presentations, start one!
Give speeches in front of the mirror.
Practicing in front of a mirror can help you identify any nervous habits you have (like fidgeting or pacing) and correct them before you have to give a real speech.
Use Note Cards Instead Of A Script
Reading from a script can make you sound robotic and unauthentic. Note cards will help you stay on track without sounding like you’re reciting memorized lines.
Record Yourself Giving A Presentation
Then, watch the recording back to see how you can improve. This exercise can be painful, but it’s one of the best ways to identify your weaknesses and work on them.
Find A Mentor
Ask a teacher or another adult you trust to give you feedback on your presentations. They can offer helpful tips and criticism that will help you improve.
By following these tips, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a great presenter in no time!
Presentation Skills FAQs
What are the 7 presentation skills.
The 7 presentation skills are:
- Eye contact
What are the 4 types of presentation skills?
The 4 types of presentation skills are:
- Verbal communication
- Visual aids
- Non-verbal communication
- Listening skills
What is the rule of presentation?
The rule of presentation is to always keep the audience in mind. This means knowing who your audience is, what they want to hear, and how to best deliver your message so that they will listen and be able to understand it.
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Home Blog Education Presentation Skills 101: A Guide to Presentation Success
Presentation Skills 101: A Guide to Presentation Success
Getting the perfect presentation design is just a step toward a successful presentation. For the experienced user, building presentation skills is the answer to elevating the power of your message and showing expertise on any subject. Still, one can ask: is it the same set of skills, or are they dependable on the type of presentation?
In this article, we will introduce the different types of presentations accompanied by the skillset required to master them. The purpose, as always, is to retain the audience’s interest for a long-lasting and convincing message.
Table of Contents
The Importance of Presentation Skills
Persuasive presentations, instructional presentations, informative presentations, inspirational presentations, basic presentation skills, what are the main difficulties when giving a presentation, recommendations to improve your presentation skills, closing statement.
Effective communication is the answer to reaching business and academic goals. The scenarios in which we can be required to deliver a presentation are as diverse as one can imagine. Still, some core concepts apply to all presentations.
We define presentation skills as a compendium of soft skills that directly affect your presentation performance and contribute to creating a great presentation. These are not qualities acquired by birth but skills you ought to train and master to delve into professional environments.
You may ask: is it really that evident when a presenter is not prepared? Here are some common signs people can experience during presentations:
- Evasive body language: Not making eye contact with the audience, arms closed tightly to the body, hands in pockets all the time.
- Lack of interest in the presenter’s voice: dull tone, not putting an effort to articulate the topics.
- Doubting when asked to answer a question
- Irksome mood
The list can go on about common presenter mistakes , and most certainly, it will affect the performance of any presented data if the lack of interest by the presenter is blatantly obvious. Another element to consider is anxiety, and according to research by the National Institute of Mental Health, 73% of the population in the USA is affected by glossophobia , which is the fear of public speaking, judgment, or negative evaluation by other people.
Therefore, presentation skills training is essential for any business professional who wants to achieve effective communication . It will remove the anxiety from presentation performance and help users effectively deliver their message and connect with the audience.
Archetypes of presentations
Persuasive presentations aim to convince the audience – often in short periods – to acquire a product or service, adhere to a cause, or invest in a company. For business entrepreneurs or politicians, persuasive presentations are their tool for the trade.
Unless you aim to be perceived as an imposter, a proper persuasive presentation has the elements of facts, empathy, and logic, balanced under a well-crafted narrative. The central pillar of these presentations is to identify the single factor that gathered your audience: it could be a market need, a social cause, or a revolutionary concept for today’s society. It has to be something with enough power to gather critiques – both good and bad.
That single factor has to be backed up by facts. Research that builds your hypothesis on how to solve that problem. A deep understanding of the target audience’s needs , concerns, and social position regarding the solution your means can offer. When those elements are in place, building a pitch becomes an easy task.
Graphics can help you introduce information in a compelling format, lowering the need for lengthy presentations. Good presentation skills for persuasive presentations go by the hand of filtering relevant data and creating the visual cues that resonate with what your audience demands.
One powerful example of a persuasive presentation is the technique known as the elevator pitch . You must introduce your idea or product convincingly to the audience in a timeframe between 30 seconds and less than 2 minutes. You have to expose:
- What do you do
- What’s the problem to solve
- Why is your solution different from others
- Why should the audience care about your expertise
For that very purpose, using engaging graphics with contrasting colors elevates the potential power of your message. It speaks professionalism, care for details, and out-of-the-box thinking. Knowing how to end a presentation is also critical, as your CTAs should be placed with care.
Therefore, let’s resume the requirements of persuasive presentations in terms of good presentation skills:
- Identifying problems and needs
- Elaborating “the hook” (the element that grabs the audience’s attention)
- Knowing how to “tie” your audience (introducing a piece of information related to the hook that causes an emotional impact)
- Broad knowledge of body language and hand gestures to quickly convey your message
- Being prepared to argue a defense of your point of view
- Handling rejection
- Having a proactive attitude to convert opportunities into new projects
- Using humor, surprise, or personal anecdotes as elements to sympathize with the audience
- Having confidence
- Be able to summarize facts and information in visually appealing ways
You can learn more about persuasive presentation techniques by clicking here .
In the case of instructional presentations, we ought to differentiate two distinctive types:
- Lecture Presentations : Presentations being held at universities or any other educative institution. Those presentations cover, topic by topic, and the contents of a syllabus and are created by the team of teachers in charge of the course.
- Training Presentations : These presentations take place during in-company training sessions and usually comprise a good amount of content that is resumed into easy-to-take solutions. They are aimed to coach employees over certain topics relevant to their work performance. The 70-20-10 Model is frequently used to address these training situations.
Lecture presentations appeal to the gradual introduction of complex concepts, following a structure set in the course’s syllabus. These presentations often have a similar aesthetic as a group of professors or researchers created to share their knowledge about a topic. Personal experience does tell that course presentations often rely on factual data, adequately documented, and on the theoretical side.
An example of a presentation that lies under this concept is a Syllabus Presentation, used by the teaching team to introduce the subject to new students, evaluation methods, concepts to be learned, and expectations to pass the course.
On the other hand, training presentations are slide decks designed to meet an organization’s specific needs in the formal education of their personnel. Commonly known as “continuous education,” plenty of companies invest resources in coaching their employees to achieve higher performance results. These presentations have the trademark of being concise since their idea is to introduce the concepts that shall be applied in practice sessions.
Ideally, the training presentations are introduced with little text and easy-to-recognize visual cues. Since the idea is to summarize as much as possible, these are visually appealing for the audience. They must be dynamic enough to allow the presenter to convey the message.
Those key takeaways remind employees when they revisit their learning resources and allow them to ruminate on questions that fellow workers raise.
To sum up this point, building presentation skills for instructional presentations requires:
- Ability to put complex concepts into simpler words
- Patience and a constant learning mindset
- Voice training to deliver lengthy speeches without being too dense
- Ability to summarize points and note the key takeaways
- Empathizing with the audience to understand their challenges in the learning process
The informative presentations take place in business situations, such as when to present project reports from different departments to the management. Another potential usage of these presentations is in SCRUM or other Agile methodologies, when a sprint is completed, to discuss the advance of the project with the Product Owner.
As they are presentations heavily dependent on data insights, it’s common to see the usage of infographics and charts to express usually dense data in simpler terms and easy to remember.
Informative presentations don’t just fall into the business category. Ph.D. Dissertation and Thesis presentations are topics that belong to the informative presentations category as they condense countless research hours into manageable reports for the academic jury.
Since these informational presentations can be perceived as lengthy and data-filled, it is important to learn the following professional presentation skills:
- Attention to detail
- Be able to explain complex information in simpler terms
- Creative thinking
- Powerful diction
- Working on pauses and transitions
- Pacing the presentation, so not too much information is divulged per slide
The leading inspirational platform, TEDx, comes to mind when talking about inspirational presentations. This presentation format has the peculiarity of maximizing the engagement with the audience to divulge a message, and due to that, it has specific requirements any presenter must meet.
This presentation format usually involves a speaker on a stage, either sitting or better standing, in which the presenter engages with the audience with a storytelling format about a life experience, a job done that provided a remarkable improvement for society, etc.
Empathizing with the audience is the key ingredient for these inspirational presentations. Still, creativity is what shapes the outcome of your performance as people are constantly looking for different experiences – not the same recipe rephrased with personal touches. The human factor is what matters here, way above data and research. What has your experience to offer to others? How can it motivate another human being to pursue a similar path or discover their true calling?
To achieve success in terms of communication skills presentation, these inspirational presentations have the following requirements:
- Focus on the audience (engage, consider their interests, and make them a part of your story)
- Putting ego aside
- Creative communication skills
- Storytelling skills
- Body language knowledge to apply the correct gestures to accompany your story
- Voice training
- Using powerful words
After discussing the different kinds of presentations we can come across at any stage of our lives, a group of presentation skills is standard in any type of presentation. See below what makes a good presentation and which skills you must count on to succeed as a presenter.
Punctuality
Punctuality is a crucial aspect of giving an effective presentation. Nothing says more about respect for your audience and the organization you represent than delivering the presentation on time . Arriving last minute puts pressure on the tech team behind audiovisuals, as they don’t have enough preparation to test microphones, stage lights, and projector settings, which can lead to a less powerful presentation Even when discussing presentations hosted in small rooms for a reduced audience, testing the equipment becomes essential for an effective presentation.
A solution for this is to arrive at least 30 minutes early. Ideally, one hour is a sweet spot since the AV crew has time to check the gear and requirements for your presentation. Another benefit of this, for example, in inspirational presentations, is measuring the previous presenter’s impact on the audience. This gives insights about how to resonate with the public, and their interest, and how to accommodate your presentation for maximum impact.
Body Language
Our bodies can make emotions transparent for others, even when we are unaware of such a fact. Proper training for body language skills reduces performance anxiety, giving the audience a sense of expertise about the presented topic.
Give your presentation and the audience the respect they deserve by watching over these potential mistakes:
- Turning your back to the audience for extended periods : It’s okay to do so when introducing an important piece of information or explaining a graph, but it is considered rude to give your back to the audience constantly.
- Fidgeting : We are all nervous in the presence of strangers, even more, if we are the center of attention for that moment. Instead of playing with your hair or making weird hand gestures, take a deep breath to center yourself before the presentation and remember that everything you could do to prepare is already done. Trust your instincts and give your best.
- Intense eye contact : Have you watched a video where the presenter stared at the camera the entire time? That’s the feeling you transmit to spectators through intense eye contact. It’s a practice often used by politicians to persuade.
- Swearing : This is a no-brainer. Even when you see influencers swearing on camera or in podcasts or live presentations, it is considered an informal and lousy practice for business and academic situations. If you have a habit to break when it comes to this point, find the humor in these situations and replace your swear words with funny alternatives (if the presentation allows for it).
Voice Tone plays a crucial role in delivering effective presentations and knowing how to give a good presentation. Your voice is a powerful tool for exposing your ideas and feelings . Your voice can articulate the message you are telling, briefing the audience if you feel excited about what you are sharing or, in contrast, if you feel the presentation is a burden you ought to complete.
Remember, passion is a primary ingredient in convincing people. Therefore, transmitting such passion with a vibrant voice may help gather potential business partners’ interest.
But what if you feel sick prior to the presentation? If, by chance, your throat is sore minutes before setting foot on the stage, try this: when introducing yourself, mention that you are feeling a bit under the weather. This resonates with the audience to pay more attention to your efforts. In case you don’t feel comfortable about that, ask the organizers for a cup of tea, as it will settle your throat and relax your nerves.
Tech Skills
Believe it or not, people still feel challenged by technology these days. Maybe that’s the reason why presentation giants like Tony Robbins opt not to use PowerPoint presentations . The reality is that there are plenty of elements involved in a presentation that can go wrong from the tech side:
- A PDF not opening
- Saving your presentation in a too-recent PowerPoint version
- A computer not booting up
- Mac laptops and their never-ending compatibility nightmare
- Not knowing how to change between slides
- Not knowing how to use a laser pointer
- Internet not working
- Audio not working
We can come up with a pretty long list of potential tech pitfalls, and yet more than half of them fall in presenters not being knowledgeable about technology.
If computers aren’t your thing, let the organization know about this beforehand. There is always a crew member available to help presenters switch between slides or configure the presentation for streaming. This takes the pressure off your shoulders, allowing you to concentrate on the content to present. Remember, even Bill Gates can get a BSOD during a presentation .
Presentations, while valuable for conveying information and ideas, can be daunting for many individuals. Here are some common difficulties people encounter when giving presentations:
Public Speaking Anxiety
Glossophobia, the fear of public speaking, affects a significant portion of the population. This anxiety can lead to nervousness, trembling, and forgetfulness during a presentation.
Lack of Confidence
Many presenters struggle with self-doubt, fearing that they may not be knowledgeable or skilled enough to engage their audience effectively.
Content Organization
Organizing information in a coherent and engaging manner can be challenging. Presenters often grapple with how to structure their content to make it easily digestible for the audience.
Audience Engagement
Keeping the audience’s attention and interest throughout the presentation can be difficult. Distractions, disengaged attendees, or lack of interaction can pose challenges.
Technical Issues
Technology glitches, such as malfunctioning equipment, incompatible file formats, or poor internet connectivity, can disrupt presentations and increase stress.
Time Management
Striking the right balance between providing enough information and staying within time limits is a common challenge. Going over or under the allotted time can affect the effectiveness of the presentation.
Handling Questions and Challenges
Responding to unexpected questions, criticism, or challenges from the audience can be difficult, especially when presenters are unprepared or lack confidence in their subject matter.
Visual Aids and Technology
Creating and effectively using visual aids like slides or multimedia can be a struggle for some presenters. Technical competence is essential in this aspect.
Language and Articulation
Poor language skills or unclear articulation can hinder effective communication. Presenters may worry about stumbling over words or failing to convey their message clearly.
Maintaining appropriate and confident body language can be challenging. Avoiding nervous habits, maintaining eye contact, and using gestures effectively requires practice.
Overcoming Impersonal Delivery
In virtual presentations, maintaining a personal connection with the audience can be difficult. The absence of face-to-face interaction can make it challenging to engage and read the audience.
Cultural and Diversity Awareness
Presenting to diverse audiences requires sensitivity to cultural differences and varying levels of familiarity with the topic.
In this section, we gathered some tips on how to improve presentation skills that can certainly make an impact if applied to your presentation skills. We believe these skills can be cultivated to transform into habits for your work routine.
Tip #1: Build a narrative
One memorable way to guarantee presentation success is by writing a story of all the points you desire to cover. This statement is based on the logic behind storytelling and its power to connect with people .
Don’t waste time memorizing slides or reading your presentation to the audience. It feels unnatural, and any question that diverts from the topic in discussion certainly puts you in jeopardy or, worse, exposes you as a fraud in the eyes of the audience. And before you ask, it is really evident when a presenter has a memorized speech.
Build and rehearse the presentation as if telling a story to a group of interested people. Lower the language barrier by avoiding complex terms that maybe even you aren’t fully aware of their meaning. Consider the ramifications of that story, what it could lead to, and which are the opportunities to explore. Then, visualize yourself giving the presentation in a natural way.
Applying this technique makes the presentation feel like second nature to you. It broadens the spectrum in which you can show expertise over a topic or even build the basis for new interesting points of view about the project.
Tip #2: Don’t talk for more than 3 minutes per slide
It is a common practice of presenters to bombard the audience with facts and information whilst retaining the same slide on the screen. Why can this happen? It could be because the presenter condensed the talk into very few slides and preferred to talk. The reality is that your spectators won’t retain the information you are giving unless you give visual cues to help that process.
Opt to prepare more slides and pace your speech to match the topics shown on each slide. Don’t spend more than 3 minutes per slide unless you have to introduce a complex piece of data. Use visual cues to direct the spectators about what you talk about, and summarize the principal concepts discussed at the end of each section.
Tip #3: Practice meditation daily
Anxiety is the number one enemy of professional presenters. It slowly builds without you being aware of your doubts and can hinder your performance in multiple ways: making you feel paralyzed, fidgeting, making you forget language skills or concepts, affecting your health, etc.
Meditation is an ancient practice taken from Buddhist teachings that train your mind to be here in the present. We often see the concepts of meditation and mindfulness as synonyms, whereas you should be aware that meditation is a practice that sets the blocks to reach a state of mindfulness. For presenters, being in the here and now is essential to retain focus, but meditation techniques also teach us to control our breathing and be in touch with our body signals when stress builds up.
The customary practice of meditation has an impact on imagination and creativity but also helps to build patience – a skill much needed for connecting with your audience in instructional presentations.
Having the proper set of presentation skills can be quite subjective. It goes beyond presentation tips and deepens into how flexible we can be in our ability to communicate ideas.
Different presentations and different audiences shape the outcome of our efforts. Therefore, having a basic understanding of how to connect, raise awareness, and empathize with people can be key ingredients for your career as a presenter. A word of advice: success doesn’t happen overnight. It takes dedication and patience to build communication skills . Don’t condition your work to believe you will be ready “someday”; it’s best to practice and experience failure as part of the learning process.
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6 presentation skills and how to improve them
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What are presentation skills?
The importance of presentation skills, 6 presentation skills examples, how to improve presentation skills.
Tips for dealing with presentation anxiety
Learn how to captivate an audience with ease
Capturing an audience’s attention takes practice.
Over time, great presenters learn how to organize their speeches and captivate an audience from start to finish. They spark curiosity, know how to read a room , and understand what their audience needs to walk away feeling like they learned something valuable.
Regardless of your profession, you most likely use presentation skills on a monthly or even weekly basis. Maybe you lead brainstorming sessions or host client calls.
Developing effective presentation skills makes it easier to contribute ideas with confidence and show others you’re someone to trust. Although speaking in front of a crowd sometimes brings nerves and anxiety , it also sparks new opportunities.
Presentation skills are the qualities and abilities you need to communicate ideas effectively and deliver a compelling speech. They influence how you structure a presentation and how an audience receives it. Understanding body language , creating impactful visual aids, and projecting your voice all fall under this umbrella.
A great presentation depends on more than what you say. It’s about how you say it. Storytelling , stage presence, and voice projection all shape how well you express your ideas and connect with the audience. These skills do take practice, but they’re worth developing — especially if public speaking makes you nervous.
Engaging a crowd isn’t easy. You may feel anxious to step in front of an audience and have all eyes and ears on you.
But feeling that anxiety doesn’t mean your ideas aren’t worth sharing. Whether you’re giving an inspiring speech or delivering a monthly recap at work, your audience is there to listen to you. Harness that nervous energy and turn it into progress.
Strong presentation skills make it easier to convey your thoughts to audiences of all sizes. They can help you tell a compelling story, convince people of a pitch , or teach a group something entirely new to them. And when it comes to the workplace, the strength of your presentation skills could play a part in getting a promotion or contributing to a new initiative.
To fully understand the impact these skills have on creating a successful presentation, it’s helpful to look at each one individually. Here are six valuable skills you can develop:
1. Active listening
Active listening is an excellent communication skill for any professional to hone. When you have strong active listening skills, you can listen to others effectively and observe their nonverbal cues . This helps you assess whether or not your audience members are engaged in and understand what you’re sharing.
Great public speakers use active listening to assess the audience’s reactions and adjust their speech if they find it lacks impact. Signs like slouching, negative facial expressions, and roaming eye contact are all signs to watch out for when giving a presentation.
2. Body language
If you’re researching presentation skills, chances are you’ve already watched a few notable speeches like TED Talks or industry seminars. And one thing you probably noticed is that speakers can capture attention with their body language.
A mixture of eye contact, hand gestures , and purposeful pacing makes a presentation more interesting and engaging. If you stand in one spot and don’t move your body, the audience might zone out.
3. Stage presence
A great stage presence looks different for everyone. A comedian might aim for more movement and excitement, and a conference speaker might focus their energy on the content of their speech. Although neither is better than the other, both understand their strengths and their audience’s needs.
Developing a stage presence involves finding your own unique communication style . Lean into your strengths, whether that’s adding an injection of humor or asking questions to make it interactive . To give a great presentation, you might even incorporate relevant props or presentation slides.
4. Storytelling
According to Forbes, audiences typically pay attention for about 10 minutes before tuning out . But you can lengthen their attention span by offering a presentation that interests them for longer. Include a narrative they’ll want to listen to, and tell a story as you go along.
Shaping your content to follow a clear narrative can spark your audience’s curiosity and entice them to pay careful attention. You can use anecdotes from your personal or professional life that take your audience along through relevant moments. If you’re pitching a product, you can start with a problem and lead your audience through the stages of how your product provides a solution.
5. Voice projection
Although this skill may be obvious, you need your audience to hear what you’re saying. This can be challenging if you’re naturally soft-spoken and struggle to project your voice.
Remember to straighten your posture and take deep breaths before speaking, which will help you speak louder and fill the room. If you’re talking into a microphone or participating in a virtual meeting, you can use your regular conversational voice, but you still want to sound confident and self-assured with a strong tone.
If you’re unsure whether everyone can hear you, you can always ask the audience at the beginning of your speech and wait for confirmation. That way, they won’t have to potentially interrupt you later.
Ensuring everyone can hear you also includes your speed and annunciation. It’s easy to speak quickly when nervous, but try to slow down and pronounce every word. Mumbling can make your presentation difficult to understand and pay attention to.
6. Verbal communication
Although verbal communication involves your projection and tone, it also covers the language and pacing you use to get your point across. This includes where you choose to place pauses in your speech or the tone you use to emphasize important ideas.
If you’re giving a presentation on collaboration in the workplace , you might start your speech by saying, “There’s something every workplace needs to succeed: teamwork.” By placing emphasis on the word “ teamwork ,” you give your audience a hint on what ideas will follow.
To further connect with your audience through diction, pay careful attention to who you’re speaking to. The way you talk to your colleagues might be different from how you speak to a group of superiors, even if you’re discussing the same subject. You might use more humor and a conversational tone for the former and more serious, formal diction for the latter.
Everyone has strengths and weaknesses when it comes to presenting. Maybe you’re confident in your use of body language, but your voice projection needs work. Maybe you’re a great storyteller in small group settings, but need to work on your stage presence in front of larger crowds.
The first step to improving presentation skills is pinpointing your gaps and determining which qualities to build upon first. Here are four tips for enhancing your presentation skills:
1. Build self-confidence
Confident people know how to speak with authority and share their ideas. Although feeling good about your presentation skills is easier said than done, building confidence is key to helping your audience believe in what you’re saying. Try practicing positive self-talk and continuously researching your topic's ins and outs.
If you don’t feel confident on the inside, fake it until you make it. Stand up straight, project your voice, and try your best to appear engaged and excited. Chances are, the audience doesn’t know you’re unsure of your skills — and they don’t need to.
Another tip is to lean into your slideshow, if you’re using one. Create something colorful and interesting so the audience’s eyes fall there instead of on you. And when you feel proud of your slideshow, you’ll be more eager to share it with others, bringing more energy to your presentation.
2. Watch other presentations
Developing the soft skills necessary for a good presentation can be challenging without seeing them in action. Watch as many as possible to become more familiar with public speaking skills and what makes a great presentation. You could attend events with keynote speakers or view past speeches on similar topics online.
Take a close look at how those presenters use verbal communication and body language to engage their audiences. Grab a notebook and jot down what you enjoyed and your main takeaways. Try to recall the techniques they used to emphasize their main points, whether they used pauses effectively, had interesting visual aids, or told a fascinating story.
3. Get in front of a crowd
You don’t need a large auditorium to practice public speaking. There are dozens of other ways to feel confident and develop good presentation skills.
If you’re a natural comedian, consider joining a small stand-up comedy club. If you’re an avid writer, participate in a public poetry reading. Even music and acting can help you feel more comfortable in front of a crowd.
If you’d rather keep it professional, you can still work on your presentation skills in the office. Challenge yourself to participate at least once in every team meeting, or plan and present a project to become more comfortable vocalizing your ideas. You could also speak to your manager about opportunities that flex your public speaking abilities.
4. Overcome fear
Many people experience feelings of fear before presenting in front of an audience, whether those feelings appear as a few butterflies or more severe anxiety. Try grounding yourself to shift your focus to the present moment. If you’re stuck dwelling on previous experiences that didn’t go well, use those mistakes as learning experiences and focus on what you can improve to do better in the future.
Tips for dealing with presentation anxiety
It’s normal to feel nervous when sharing your ideas. In fact, according to a report from the Journal of Graduate Medical Education, public speaking anxiety is prevalent in 15–30% of the general population .
Even though having a fear of public speaking is common, it doesn’t make it easier. You might feel overwhelmed, become stiff, and forget what you were going to say. But although the moment might scare you, there are ways to overcome the fear and put mind over matter.
Use these tactics to reduce your stress when you have to make a presentation:
1. Practice breathing techniques
If you experience anxiety often, you’re probably familiar with breathing techniques for stress relief . Incorporating these exercises into your daily routine can help you stop worrying and regulate anxious feelings.
Before a big presentation, take a moment alone to practice breathing techniques, ground yourself, and reduce tension. It’s also a good idea to take breaths throughout the presentation to speak slower and calm yourself down .
2. Get organized
The more organized you are, the more prepared you’ll feel. Carefully outline all of the critical information you want to use in your presentation, including your main talking points and visual aids, so you don’t forget anything. Use bullet points and visuals on each slide to remind you of what you want to talk about, and create handheld notes to help you stay on track.
3. Embrace moments of silence
It’s okay to lose your train of thought. It happens to even the most experienced public speakers once in a while. If your mind goes blank, don’t panic. Take a moment to breathe, gather your thoughts, and refer to your notes to see where you left off. You can drink some water or make a quick joke to ease the silence or regain your footing. And it’s okay to say, “Give me a moment while I find my notes.” Chances are, people understand the position you’re in.
4. Practice makes progress
Before presenting, rehearse in front of friends and family members you trust. This gives you the chance to work out any weak spots in your speech and become comfortable communicating out loud. If you want to go the extra mile, ask your makeshift audience to ask a surprise question. This tests your on-the-spot thinking and will prove that you can keep cool when things come up.
Whether you’re new to public speaking or are a seasoned presenter, you’re bound to make a few slip-ups. It happens to everyone. The most important thing is that you try your best, brush things off, and work on improving your skills to do better in your next presentation.
Although your job may require a different level of public speaking than your favorite TED Talk , developing presentation skills is handy in any profession. You can use presentation skills in a wide range of tasks in the workplace, whether you’re sharing your ideas with colleagues, expressing concerns to higher-ups, or pitching strategies to potential clients.
Remember to use active listening to read the room and engage your audience with an interesting narrative. Don’t forget to step outside your comfort zone once in a while and put your skills to practice in front of a crowd. After facing your fears, you’ll feel confident enough to put presentation skills on your resume.
If you’re trying to build your skills and become a better employee overall, try a communications coach with BetterUp.
Elizabeth Perry
Content Marketing Manager, ACC
The importance of good speech: 5 tips to be more articulate
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Most Important Presentation Skills (With Examples)
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Presentation skills are important to your professional and personal life. Effective presentation skills can help you get ahead in your career. With the proper presentation skills, you’ll open up new doors for professional growth and be a more confident individual overall.
Whether you want to know the different types of presentation skills or improve your presentation skills, we’ll cover what presentation skills are, how to improve your ability to present, and showcase your new skills.
Key Takeaways:
Presentation skills are important in the workplace because they can be used for meetings, interviews, and conferences.
Some presentation skills examples include research, organization, and adaptability
Practice as much as possible before a presentation so that it becomes muscle memory, however, to engage the audience, be flexible with your presentation’s performance.
Good presentations are informative, engaging, and precise.
Different types of presentation skills
How to improve your presentation skills, examples of using presentation skills, presentation skills faq, final thoughts.
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Being a skilled presenter requires a constellation of hard and soft skills . Some different types of presentation skills include research, planning, and organization.
Below are more common types of presentation skills. As you read through this list, think about where you’re naturally strong and where you could do with some improvement:
Research. The first step of any successful presentation is the research and preparation phase. First and foremost, you have to become an expert on the content you hope to deliver. It’s also essential to research your audience to know which information is most pertinent for them.
Planning. Once you’ve completed your research, it’s time to develop a plan. During this phase, you’ll prioritize which information gets put front-and-center, and which is less vital for your ultimate goal.
Before you start drafting your presentation, it’s crucial to keep your goal at the forefront: what do you want the audience to do after listening to your presentation?
Organization . Audiences prefer presentations that are well-thought-out and delivered in a logical order. Before you even step foot in the room, you should know what you need to do to set up, have all your notes in order, and be aware of your allotted time.
Verbal communication. No surprises here, verbal communication skills are downright essential for an effective presentation. Even if you have very rigid notes to follow, being quick on your feet to answer questions or alter your content for the audience’s benefit will serve you well during presentations.
Nonverbal communication . Good body language means standing up straight, not fidgeting too much, and maintaining eye contact with your audience members.
Public speaking . Some people get nervous just thinking about speaking publicly. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it is crucial to keep your nerves under wraps for delivering the most effective presentation possible. Audiences are less likely to trust presenters who don’t appear confident.
Memorization. We’ve all seen presentations where the presenter is just reading directly off his Powerpoint slides – we don’t need to tell you that those presentations are unequivocally bad. It’s fine to have notes as a reference, but the more time you can spend looking at your audience rather than the sheet in front of you, the better.
Writing. Being a good writer will help keep your presentation organized and give a boost to your credibility. Before you can commit your content to memory, you need to develop that content.
Story-telling. Not all presentations require story-telling, but it can be a very effective method of grabbing your listeners’ attention. It can be a hypothetical story that presents a question or problem, a real story that leads into your main argument, or a story that continues throughout to illustrate the duller facts your presentation covers.
Rhetorical skills . Rhetoric is all about persuasion: how are your words going to induce action from the listener(s)? Rhetorical appeals are classified under three headings: ethos, logos, and pathos.
Ethos establishes credibility in the speaker and trust in the listeners through confident delivery and expert testimony. Logos covers your presentation’s logical thrust through statistics, models, comparisons, analogies, etc. Pathos is your presentation’s emotional appeal, supported by vivid language and stories that promote certain values.
Active listening . Pay attention to which parts of your presentation are grabbing listeners and which are falling flat. If your audience’s eyes start glazing over or phones start coming out, you know you’re losing them.
Adaptability . Like the above point, being able to adapt on the fly sets top-tier presenters apart from merely good ones. For instance, if you can tell your presentation isn’t working, you can open up the floor and ask questions as a way of determining your audience’s priorities.
Delivery. We bet you’ve heard some of the same Dad jokes multiple times in your life. Sometimes they’re hilarious, and sometimes they induce an eye-roll. The difference? Delivery. Pace, timing, tone, and enunciation/inflection are all important elements of good delivery.
Technical skills . All right, you’re all set with the perfect presentation, you walk into the room, and the A/V setup isn’t what you were expecting. Well, if you followed our advice above, you showed up a bit early and had time to fix it.
Analysis . Phew, your presentation is done. Time to forget about presenting until the next one comes up, right? No siree – now is the time for you to take a step back and evaluate your performance.
To improve your presentation skills, you should watch and learn what works and doesn’t work from others and practice with an audience of friends. Here are more ways to improve your presentation skills:
Watch and learn. You’ve seen presentations before, but to prepare for your own, try watching presentations to learn what works and what doesn’t. If you’re presenting at a conference, attend other presentations and pay attention to how the audience responds. Your audience probably won’t be much different.
Practice. Practice makes perfect, as the saying goes. Rehearse what you want to say, either on your own or with an audience of friends. You can even record yourself speaking and pinpoint weak areas and strengths . The more you perform your presentation, the more comfortable you’ll be delivering the real thing.
Visualize success. What speakers often forget is that audiences want you to do well. They’re there (more or less) of their own volition, and they want to hear what you have to say. Take that nervousness you’re feeling and transform it into excitement.
Exercise/drink water beforehand. The human body responds to stressful situations with a whole host of unwelcome physical side effects. If you stay hydrated and get some light exercise in beforehand, you’ll flush the adrenaline and cortisol (stress hormones) right out of your body.
Adopt a power stance and smile. Just as exercise and hydration help keep your body regulated, so does powerful body language . Standing straight with shoulders squared and a smile on your face, and your body will be tricked into thinking you’re in a confident and commanding position.
Engage your audience. The best presenters are also first-class entertainers. Don’t go overboard and start practicing your comedy routine, but lightening the mood with a joke or two can go a long way. Be sure to greet your audience enthusiastically.
Don’t get defensive if you’re stumped. There might be moments when an audience member asks a question, and you don’t have an answer . Don’t try to equivocate or dodge the question because people will see what you’re doing. It’s okay not to know everything, but pretending you do will only deteriorate your listeners’ faith in you.
Keep it concise. People won’t be upset if you wrap up earlier than expected, but they might be a little peeved if you start running over your allotted time. Cut irrelevant information, and your audience will thank you .
Take your time. All right, so we just suggested keeping things short, and now we’re telling you to take your time. What gives? Well, you should always include a bit of padding in your presentation. For example, if your presentation is meant to be a half-hour, try to get it down to 25 minutes, so you have some wiggle room.
Presentation skills cover a range of abilities that allow one to effectively engage their audience and get information across in a clear way. In today’s world, the persuasive power of presentations is more important than ever.
There are many different example scenarios in which you might give a presentation:
Delivering a presentation to colleagues, employees, or subordinates about new technology, processes, goals, etc.
Drumming up investor interest, either for a new business or for your current business’s expansion.
Teaching your team a new skill.
Deciding between two or more alternative options or solving a problem with a current system.
Progress reports.
Selling a product or service to a client.
Motivational speech
Interviewing for a new job or promotion
Saying goodbye to a colleague (or introducing a new one )
Giving a speech at a family function, like a wedding.
What are the four types of presentation?
The four types of presentation are: informative, instructional, arousing, and persuasive. Informative presentations briefly educate your audience on a specific topic. Instructional presentations teach your audience more thoroughly and generally come with more details and/or directions.
Arousing presentations are meant to evoke some kind of emotion in the audience. Persuasive presentations are designed to convince the audience of a particular viewpoint.
What are the four P’s of presentation?
The four P’s of presentation are planning, preparation, practice, and performance. As the four P’s imply, you need to plan and prepare your presentation, as well as practice. Finally, you need to be aware of your performance during your presentation to make sure you use your skills in an engaging manner.
What is the 10-20-30 rule of presentation?
The 10-20-30 rule is for a slide presentation and means you should use no more than 10 slides, present no longer than 20 minutes, and use no less than 30-point font. Considering these factors helps make a presentation efficient with its time. Remember you want to take your time and be direct with your information. Using the 10-20-30 rule helps you find a balance between these needs.
What is the most important part of using presentation skills?
An important part of using presentation skills would be speaking the language of the audience. Knowing your audience helps you get your point across. To help speak the language of the audience, you can use appropriate analogies and anecdotes and avoid any foreign words.
For example, if you are presenting a topic to a group of college freshmen about a topic you’re an expert in, try to use language that they would understand. Using language the audience will understand helps you get your point across better.
Whether you’re a natural showman or a super-shy introvert , keep the above tips in mind to improve your presentation skills. Because the chances are, you’ll have to give a presentation at some point in your life. With a little practice, you’ll have audiences clamoring for more.
Johns Hopkins Carey Business School – Presentation Skills
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Matthew Zane is the lead editor of Zippia's How To Get A Job Guides. He is a teacher, writer, and world-traveler that wants to help people at every stage of the career life cycle. He completed his masters in American Literature from Trinity College Dublin and BA in English from the University of Connecticut.
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Powerful and Effective Presentation Skills: More in Demand Now Than Ever
When we talk with our L&D colleagues from around the globe, we often hear that presentation skills training is one of the top opportunities they’re looking to provide their learners. And this holds true whether their learners are individual contributors, people managers, or senior leaders. This is not surprising.
Effective communications skills are a powerful career activator, and most of us are called upon to communicate in some type of formal presentation mode at some point along the way.
For instance, you might be asked to brief management on market research results, walk your team through a new process, lay out the new budget, or explain a new product to a client or prospect. Or you may want to build support for a new idea, bring a new employee into the fold, or even just present your achievements to your manager during your performance review.
And now, with so many employees working from home or in hybrid mode, and business travel in decline, there’s a growing need to find new ways to make effective presentations when the audience may be fully virtual or a combination of in person and remote attendees.
Whether you’re making a standup presentation to a large live audience, or a sit-down one-on-one, whether you’re delivering your presentation face to face or virtually, solid presentation skills matter.
Even the most seasoned and accomplished presenters may need to fine-tune or update their skills. Expectations have changed over the last decade or so. Yesterday’s PowerPoint which primarily relied on bulleted points, broken up by the occasional clip-art image, won’t cut it with today’s audience.
The digital revolution has revolutionized the way people want to receive information. People expect presentations that are more visually interesting. They expect to see data, metrics that support assertions. And now, with so many previously in-person meetings occurring virtually, there’s an entirely new level of technical preparedness required.
The leadership development tools and the individual learning opportunities you’re providing should include presentation skills training that covers both the evergreen fundamentals and the up-to-date capabilities that can make or break a presentation.
So, just what should be included in solid presentation skills training? Here’s what I think.
The fundamentals will always apply When it comes to making a powerful and effective presentation, the fundamentals will always apply. You need to understand your objective. Is it strictly to convey information, so that your audience’s knowledge is increased? Is it to persuade your audience to take some action? Is it to convince people to support your idea? Once you understand what your objective is, you need to define your central message. There may be a lot of things you want to share with your audience during your presentation, but find – and stick with – the core, the most important point you want them to walk away with. And make sure that your message is clear and compelling.
You also need to tailor your presentation to your audience. Who are they and what might they be expecting? Say you’re giving a product pitch to a client. A technical team may be interested in a lot of nitty-gritty product detail. The business side will no doubt be more interested in what returns they can expect on their investment.
Another consideration is the setting: is this a formal presentation to a large audience with questions reserved for the end, or a presentation in a smaller setting where there’s the possibility for conversation throughout? Is your presentation virtual or in-person? To be delivered individually or as a group? What time of the day will you be speaking? Will there be others speaking before you and might that impact how your message will be received?
Once these fundamentals are established, you’re in building mode. What are the specific points you want to share that will help you best meet your objective and get across your core message? Now figure out how to convey those points in the clearest, most straightforward, and succinct way. This doesn’t mean that your presentation has to be a series of clipped bullet points. No one wants to sit through a presentation in which the presenter reads through what’s on the slide. You can get your points across using stories, fact, diagrams, videos, props, and other types of media.
Visual design matters While you don’t want to clutter up your presentation with too many visual elements that don’t serve your objective and can be distracting, using a variety of visual formats to convey your core message will make your presentation more memorable than slides filled with text. A couple of tips: avoid images that are cliched and overdone. Be careful not to mix up too many different types of images. If you’re using photos, stick with photos. If you’re using drawn images, keep the style consistent. When data are presented, stay consistent with colors and fonts from one type of chart to the next. Keep things clear and simple, using data to support key points without overwhelming your audience with too much information. And don’t assume that your audience is composed of statisticians (unless, of course, it is).
When presenting qualitative data, brief videos provide a way to engage your audience and create emotional connection and impact. Word clouds are another way to get qualitative data across.
Practice makes perfect You’ve pulled together a perfect presentation. But it likely won’t be perfect unless it’s well delivered. So don’t forget to practice your presentation ahead of time. Pro tip: record yourself as you practice out loud. This will force you to think through what you’re going to say for each element of your presentation. And watching your recording will help you identify your mistakes—such as fidgeting, using too many fillers (such as “umm,” or “like”), or speaking too fast.
A key element of your preparation should involve anticipating any technical difficulties. If you’ve embedded videos, make sure they work. If you’re presenting virtually, make sure that the lighting is good, and that your speaker and camera are working. Whether presenting in person or virtually, get there early enough to work out any technical glitches before your presentation is scheduled to begin. Few things are a bigger audience turn-off than sitting there watching the presenter struggle with the delivery mechanisms!
Finally, be kind to yourself. Despite thorough preparation and practice, sometimes, things go wrong, and you need to recover in the moment, adapt, and carry on. It’s unlikely that you’ll have caused any lasting damage and the important thing is to learn from your experience, so your next presentation is stronger.
How are you providing presentation skills training for your learners?
Manika Gandhi is Senior Learning Design Manager at Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning. Email her at [email protected] .
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How to make a great presentation
Stressed about an upcoming presentation? These talks are full of helpful tips on how to get up in front of an audience and make a lasting impression.
The secret structure of great talks
The beauty of data visualization
TED's secret to great public speaking
How to speak so that people want to listen
How great leaders inspire action
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- Career Planning
- Skills Development
Important Presentation Skills for Workplace Success
- What Are Presentation Skills?
Steps To Create a Presentation
Skills that help make an effective presentation, how to make your skills stand out.
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Whether you’re a high-level executive or an administrative assistant, developing your presentation skills is one key way to climb in an office-based job. Leaders make decisions based on information shared in presentation format, and hardly any business changes its mind without first seeing a persuasive presentation.
It is important for any office employee to know what steps go into creating an effective presentation and what presentation skills are most important to employers. Highlighting these skills will also help you stand out during your job search.
Key Takeaways
- Presentation skills are what you need to know to be able to give an engaging, effective presentation.
- The steps to creating a successful presentation are preparation, delivery, and follow-up.
- Employers want to know you have the necessary skills to research, analyze, and create a presentation, plus the communication skills needed to deliver it and field questions afterward.
- You can highlight your skills to employers through your resume, cover letter, and interview.
What Are Presentation Skills?
Presentation skills refer to all the qualities you need to create and deliver a clear and effective presentation. While what you say during a presentation matters, employers also value the ability to create supporting materials, such as slides.
Your prospective employer may want you to deliver briefings and reports to colleagues, conduct training sessions, present information to clients, or perform any number of other tasks that involve speaking before an audience.
Giving engaging and easy-to-understand talks is a major component of the strong oral communication skills that are a job requirement for many positions. Not all presentations take place in a formal meeting. Many presentation skills are relevant to one-on-one consults or sales calls.
Any presentation has three phases: preparation, delivery, and follow-up. All presentation skills fit into one of these three phases.
Preparation
Preparation involves research and building the presentation. Consider the audience you'll be presenting to and what most interests them. This may mean crafting the entire text (or at least writing notes) and creating any slides and other supporting audio/visual materials.
You will also have to make sure that the appropriate venue is available, properly set up beforehand, and ensure the projector (if you'll need one) works and connects with your laptop.
You'll also want to practice your presentation as many times as you need to to feel comfortable delivering it with ease and confidence within the time allotted for the presentation.
Skills related to preparation include conducting research related to your presentation topic, devising charts and graphs depicting your research findings, and learning about your audience to better tailor your presentation to their needs. You'll also need to create digital slides, using statistics, examples, and stories to illustrate your points and effectively to persuade the audience.
Preparing handouts or digital references is an added courtesy that will help the audience pay attention because they won't be preoccupied with note-taking.
Your delivery is the part of the presentation that the audience sees. A good delivery depends on careful preparation and confident presentation and requires its own distinctive skill set .
Skills related to delivery include giving an attention-grabbing opening for a talk, providing a summary of what will be covered to introduce the presentation and provide context, and using body language and eye contact to convey energy and confidence.
Make sure you pause to emphasize key points, modulate your vocal tone for emphasis, and articulate your speech clearly and smoothly.
Don't be afraid of injecting humor or speaking with enthusiasm and animation—these techniques can help you in projecting confidence to your audience.
Summarize key points at the conclusion of the presentation, and be sure to have a plan for how you'll field any audience questions.
Presentation follow-up includes properly breaking down and storing any equipment, contacting any audience members with whom you agreed to communicate further, and soliciting, collecting, and analyzing feedback.
In some presentations, you may collect information from audience members—such as names and contact information or completed surveys—that you also must organize and store.
Skills related to follow-up include creating an evaluation form to solicit feedback from attendees, interpreting feedback from evaluations, and modifying the content and/or delivery for future presentations. Other follow-up skills include organizing a database of attendees for future presentations, interviewing key attendees to gain additional feedback, and emailing presentation slides to attendees.
To create and deliver the most effective presentation takes a variety of skills, which you can always work to improve.
You must be able to look honestly at your performance, assess the feedback you get, and figure out what you need to do to get better. That takes analytical thinking .
More importantly, you need to have a firm grasp of the information you are about to communicate to others. You need to analyze your audience and be prepared to think quickly if asked questions that force you to demonstrate that you are fully aware of the material and its implications.
The kind of analytical skills you need to be an effective presenter include problem sensitivity, problem-solving , reporting and surveying, optimization, and predictive modeling. It also helps to be adept at strategic planning, integration, process management, and diagnostics. With these skills, you'll be better able to objectively analyze, evaluate, and act on your findings.
Organization
You do not want to be the person who spends half of their presentation time trying to find a cable to connect their laptop to the projector. Many things can and do go wrong just before a presentation unless you are organized .
Presentation preparation also means keeping track of notes, information, and start/stop times. You will want to proofread and fine-tune all the materials you plan to use for the presentation to catch any mistakes. Make sure you time yourself when you rehearse so you know how long it will take to deliver the presentation.
A presentation that's finished in half the time allotted is as problematic as one that's too long-winded.
Some key organizational skills to work on include event planning, auditing, benchmarking, prioritization, and recordkeeping. Make sure your scheduling is on point and pay close attention to detail. Quick thinking is an important skill to have for when things inevitably go wrong.
Nonverbal Communication
When speaking to an audience, the way you present yourself can be just as important as how you present your information. You want to appear confident and engaging. You can do this through good posture, the use of hand gestures, and making eye contact with the audience.
Practice your nonverbal communication by filming yourself doing a practice presentation and observing your body language carefully. Your physical bearing and poise should convey a degree of comfort and confidence in front of an audience, while active listening , respect, and emotional intelligence will help you in facilitating group discussions.
Presentation Software
Microsoft PowerPoint is the dominant software used to create visual aids for presentations. Learn to use it well, including the special features outside of basic templates that can really bring a presentation to life. Even if someone else is preparing your slideshow for you, it will help to know how to use the software in case of last-minute changes.
Other software that is good to learn includes Microsoft Office, Apple Keynote, Google Slides, and Adobe Presenter.
Public Speaking
You need to appear comfortable and engaging when speaking before a live audience, even if you're not. This can take years of practice, and sometimes public speaking just isn't for certain people. An uncomfortable presenter is a challenge for everyone. Fortunately, public speaking skills can improve with practice . Some skills to work on include articulation, engagement, and memorization. You should be able to assess the needs of the audience and handle difficult questions. Controlling your performance anxiety will help you communicate more effectively.
Research is the first step in preparing most presentations and could range from a multi-year process to spending 20 minutes online, depending on context and subject matter. At the very least, you must be able to clearly frame research questions, identify appropriate information sources, and organize your results. Other useful skills include brainstorming, collaboration , comparative analysis, data interpretation, and deductive and inductive reasoning. Business intelligence is a skill that will help you evaluate what information you need to support the bottom line, while case analysis and causal relationships will help you parse and evaluate meaning.
Verbal Communication
Public speaking is one form of verbal communication , but you will need other forms to give a good presentation. Specifically, you must know how to answer questions. You should be able to understand questions asked by your audience (even if they're strange or poorly worded) and provide respectful, honest, and accurate answers without getting off-topic. Use active listening, focus, and empathy to understand your audience. Skills such as assertiveness, affirmation, and enunciation will help you restate and clarify your key points as it relates to their questions or concerns.
You may or may not need a written script, but you do need to pre-plan what you are going to say, in what order you will say it, and at what level of detail. If you can write a cohesive essay, you can plan a presentation.
Typical writing skills apply to your presentation just as they do to other forms of writing, including grammar, spelling, vocabulary, and proofreading. The ability to build outlines, take notes, and mark up documents will also be useful.
More Presentation Skills
In addition to the skills previously mentioned, there are other important skills that can apply to your presentation. The other skills you need will depend on what your presentation is about, your audience, and your intended results. Some of these additional skills include:
- Summarizing
- Providing anecdotes to illustrate a point
- Designing handouts
- Recognizing and countering objections
- Posing probing questions to elicit more detail about specific issues
- Awareness of ethnic, political, and religious diversity
- Receiving criticism without defensiveness
- Refraining from speaking too often or interrupting others
- Anticipating the concerns of others
- Product knowledge
- SWOT analysis format
- Supporting statements with evidence
- Multilingual
- Working with reviewers
- Consistency
- Developing and maintaining standard operating procedures (SOPs)
- Developing a proposition statement
- Creating and managing expectations
Include skills on your resume. If applicable, you might mention these words in your resume summary or headline .
Highlight skills in your cover letter. Mention one or two specific presentation skills and give examples of instances when you demonstrated these traits in the workplace.
Show your presentation skills in job interviews. During the interview process, you may be asked to give a sample presentation. In this case, you will want to embody these skills during the presentation. For example, you will want to demonstrate your oral communication skills by speaking clearly and concisely throughout the presentation.
PennState. " Steps in Preparing a Presentation ."
Harvard Division of Continuing Education. " 10 Tips for Improving Your Public Speaking Skills ."
Northern Illinois University. " Delivering the Presentation ."
21 Ways To Improve Your Presentation Skills
Published: April 07, 2023
You know the feeling of sitting through a boring presentation. A text distracts you. A noise outside pulls your gaze. Your dog begs for attention. By the time the presentation ends, you question why you needed to sit and listen in the first place.
Effective presentation skills can stop you from boring an audience to oblivion. Delivering strong presentations can help you stand out as a leader, showcase your expertise, and build confidence.
Table of contents:
- Presentation skills definition
- Importance of presentation skills
- How to improve presentation skills
- Effective presentation skills
- Presentation skills for executives
Presentation Skills Definition
Presentation skills include anything you need to create and deliver clear, effective presentations to an audience. This includes creating a compelling set of slides , ensuring the information flows, and keeping your audience engaged.
Speakers with strong presentation skills can perform the following tasks:
- Bring together different sources of information to form a compelling narrative
- Hook audiences with a strong beginning and end
- Ensure audiences engage with their content through questions or surveys
- Understand what their audience wants and needs from their presentation
Importance of Presentation Skills
At some point in your career, you will present something. You might pitch a startup to a group of investors or show your research findings to your manager at work. Those in leading or executive roles often deliver presentations on a weekly or monthly basis.
Improving your presentation skills betters different aspects of your working life, including the following:
Communication: Improving your presentation skills can make you a better communicator with your co-workers and friends.
Confidence: 75% of people fear public speaking. By working on your presentation skills, you can gain confidence when speaking in front of a crowd.
Creativity: You learn to understand how to use imagery and examples to engage an audience.
Management: Presentations involve pulling together information to form a succinct summary, helping you build project and time management skills.
How To Improve Presentation Skills
1. create an outline.
Before designing slides and writing a script, outline your presentation. Start with your introduction, segue into key points you want to make, and finish with a conclusion.
2. Practice, Practice, Practice
Almost 8 in 10 professionals practice their presentations for at least an hour. So, practice your presentation in the mirror or to a close friend.
3. Start With a Hook
When presenting, grab your audience with a hook. Consider starting with a surprising statistic or a thoughtful question before diving into the core information.
4. Stay Focused on Your Topic
You might want to cover everything under the sun, but information overload can overwhelm your audience. Instead, stay focused on what you want to cover. Aim for key points and avoid including unnecessary details.
5. Remember To Introduce Yourself
At the beginning of the presentation, introduce yourself. Kill any tension in the room by mentioning your name, your role, and any other helpful details. You could even mention a fun fact about yourself, putting the audience at ease.
6. Work on Your Body Language
55% of people look to nonverbal communication when judging a presentation. Straighten your back, minimize unnecessary gestures, and keep your voice confident and calm. Remember to work on these aspects when practicing.
7. Memorize Structure, Not Words
You might feel better knowing exactly what you want to say. But skip the script and stick to memorizing the key points of your presentation. For example, consider picking three to four phrases or insights you want to mention for each part of your presentation rather than line-by-line memorization.
8. Learn Your Audience
Before crafting a killer outline and slide deck, research your audience. Find out what they likely already know, such as industry jargon, and where they might need additional information. Remember: You're presenting for them, not you.
9. Reframe Your Anxiety as Excitement
A study conducted by Harvard Business School demonstrates that reframing your anxiety as excitement can improve performance. For example, by saying simple phrases out loud, such as “I’m excited,” you then adopt an opportunity-oriented mentality.
10. Get Comfortable With the Setting
If you plan to present in person, explore the room. Find where you’re going to stand and deliver your presentation. Practice looking into the seats. By decreasing the number of unknowns, you can clear your head and focus on the job.
11. Get Familiar With Technology
Presenting online has unique challenges, such as microphone problems and background noise. Before a Zoom presentation, ensure your microphone works, clean up your background, test your slides, and consider any background noise.
12. Think Positively
Optimistic workers enjoy faster promotions and happier lives. By reminding yourself of the positives — for example, your manager found your last presentation impressive — you can shake off nerves and find joy in the process.
13. Tell a Story
To engage your audience, weave storytelling into your presentation — more than 5 in 10 people believe stories hold their focus during a presentation. Consider ways to connect different parts of your slides into a compelling narrative.
14. Prepare for Questions
At the end of your presentation, your audience will likely have questions. Brainstorm different questions and potential answers so you’re prepared.
15. Maintain Eye Contact
Eye contact signals honesty. When possible, maintain eye contact with your audience. For in-person presentations, pay attention to each audience member. For online ones, stare at your camera lens as you deliver.
16. Condense Your Presentation
After you finish the first draft of your outline, think about ways to condense it. Short and sweet often keeps people interested instead of checking their phones.
17. Use Videos
Keep your audience’s attention by incorporating video clips when relevant. For example, videos can help demonstrate examples or explain difficult concepts.
18. Engage With Your Audience
Almost 8 in 10 professionals view presentations as boring. Turn the tide by engaging with your audience. Encourage audience participation by asking questions or conducting a live survey.
19. Present Slowly and Pause Frequently
When you get nervous, you talk faster. To combat this, remember to slow yourself down when practicing. Place deep pauses throughout your presentation, especially when transitioning between slides, as it gives you time to breathe and your audience time to absorb.
20. Start and End With a Summary
A summary at the start of a presentation can pique your audience’s interest. One at the end brings everything together, highlighting key points your audience should take with them.
21. Ask for Feedback
You will never deliver the perfect presentation, so ask for feedback. Talk to your managers about where you could improve. Consider surveying your audience for an unbiased look into your presentation skills.
Effective Presentation Skills
Effective presentation skills include communicating clearly, presenting with structure, and engaging with the audience.
As an example, say a content manager is presenting a quarterly review to their team. They start off with a summary. Their introduction mentions an unprecedented 233% growth in organic traffic — numbers their team has not seen in years. Immediately, the presenter grabs their team’s attention. Now, everyone wants to know how they achieved that in one quarter.
Alternatively, think of an entrepreneur delivering their pitch to a group of investors. They start with a question: How many of you struggle to stay awake at work? They then segue into an exciting product designed to improve the sleep quality of working professionals. Their presentation includes videos demonstrating the science behind sleep and surprising statistics about the demand for their product.
Both examples demonstrate effective presentation skills. They incorporate strong attention grabbers, summaries, and attempts to engage the audience.
Think back to strong presentations you viewed as an audience member. Ask yourself: What made them so memorable, and how can I incorporate those elements into my presentations?
Presentation Skills for Executives
Presentations take up a significant portion of an executive’s workload. Executives regularly showcase key company initiatives, team changes, quarterly and annual reviews, and more. Improving your presentation skills as a leader can help with different parts of your job, such as:
Trust: Delivering great, effective presentations can build trust between you and your team.
Confidence: Most people dread presentations — so a strong presenter projects the confidence needed by a leader.
Emotional intelligence: A great presentation taps into the audience’s perspectives, helping executives improve their emotional intelligence .
Expertise: Presentations help executives display their subject-matter expertise, making employees safe in their hands.
Delegation: At times, executives might need to pull information from different sources for a presentation — improving their ability to delegate as managers.
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- PRESENTATION SKILLS
Search SkillsYouNeed:
Presentation Skills:
- A - Z List of Presentation Skills
- Top Tips for Effective Presentations
- General Presentation Skills
- What is a Presentation?
- Preparing for a Presentation
- Organising the Material
- Writing Your Presentation
- Deciding the Presentation Method
- Managing your Presentation Notes
- Working with Visual Aids
- Presenting Data
- Managing the Event
- Coping with Presentation Nerves
- Dealing with Questions
- How to Build Presentations Like a Consultant
- Self-Presentation in Presentations
- Specific Presentation Events
- Remote Meetings and Presentations
- Giving a Speech
- Presentations in Interviews
- Presenting to Large Groups and Conferences
- Giving Lectures and Seminars
- Managing a Press Conference
- Attending Public Consultation Meetings
- Managing a Public Consultation Meeting
- Crisis Communications
- Elsewhere on Skills You Need:
- Communication Skills
- Facilitation Skills
- Teams, Groups and Meetings
- Effective Speaking
- Question Types
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Presentation Skills
Presenting information clearly and effectively is a key skill in getting your message across. Today, presentation skills are required in almost every field, and most of us are required to give presentations on occasions. While some people take this in their stride, others find it much more challenging.
It is, however, possible to improve your presentation skills with a bit of work. This section of SkillsYouNeed is designed to help.
Many people feel terrified when asked to talk in public, especially to bigger groups. However, these fears can be reduced by good preparation, which will also lay the groundwork for making an effective presentation.
There are Different Types of Presentations, but They’re All Presentations
There are any number of occasions when you may be asked to speak in public or to a group of people. They include:
- Presenting or making a speech at a conference or event.
- Objecting to a planning proposal at a council meeting.
- Making a speech at a wedding.
- Proposing a vote of thanks to someone at a club or society.
- On behalf of a team, saying goodbye and presenting a gift to a colleague who is leaving.
- Seeking investment or a loan to help you set up a new business.
These can all be considered presentations.
They do not, however, all require the same approach. You would not, for example, use PowerPoint to thank a colleague who was leaving. It would be unusual (though it has been done) to use it in a speech at a wedding. However, a conference audience would be somewhat surprised NOT to see slides projected onto a screen.
It follows, therefore, that there is no single set of rules that apply to all presentations. There are, however, some things that every presentation opportunity has in common. These include:
You will present better if you have prepared effectively . This does NOT necessarily mean that you have written out your speech verbatim and rehearsed it until you know it off by heart—although that might work for some people. It does, however, mean that you have to be confident that you are saying the right thing, in the right way, to the right people.
You need to be clear about your audience and your message . Every presentation will be better if you have clearly considered the message that you want or need to convey, and how best to convey it to your audience. These two pieces of information drive your style, structure, content, and use of visual aids.
You must never overrun your allocated time . In other words, don’t outstay your welcome. Almost every speech or presentation is better if it is shorter. Nobody minds going for coffee early or finishing before they expected to do so. Everybody minds being held up.
Generally speaking, your audience starts on your side. As a rule, your audience is there (more or less) voluntarily. They have chosen to listen to you, and they want to enjoy your presentation. The occasion is yours to lose.
An Important Point
There is one very important point to remember: if what you’re doing or saying is not working, do something else.
One of the worst feelings as a presenter is that you have lost your audience. You know that’s happened, but you continue to stumble through your remaining PowerPoint slides for the next 15 minutes, as your audience checks their phones and wishes it was coffee time. You think you have no choice, but that’s not actually true.
When you present, you are in charge of the room . The audience has effectively handed you control and is sitting back waiting for you to do something. You may have prepared a specific talk, but if you see that isn’t working, you can always change it. You are, after all, the expert.
You can, for example:
- Skip through some slides to a section that they may find more interesting;
- Ask your audience whether there is particular information that they were expecting that you are not providing;
- Suggest that everyone looks a bit sleepy, and maybe it would be better to start questions early, or have a discussion; or
- Ask the audience at the start of the presentation what they are expecting and what they want you to cover. That way, you can tailor the presentation to fit their expectations.
Just as when you are facilitating, you want to help your audience get the most out of your presentation. The best way to do that is to accept feedback—which may include smiles, nods of interest, or people getting their phones out.
Quick Guide to Effective Presentations
If you need to improve your presentation skills quickly, then a really good place to start is with our Top Tips for Effective Presentations .
This will give you some ‘quick wins’ that will help you improve your presentations. If you’re already an experienced presenter, this page should be a useful refresher, or even take your skills from good to great.
Our tips include general ideas about connecting with your audience, information about the importance of voice and body language, and detailed tips about preparing slide-shows.
The most important tip of all, however, is to remember that it's all about your audience.
Keep that in mind, and your presentation skills will almost instantly improve.
If you have more time to develop your presentation skills…
…then the Presentation Skills section of SkillsYouNeed is designed to help.
Our Presentation Skills section is split into two parts.
- The first gives you a step-by-step guide to putting together and delivering a professional and effective presentation .
- The second provides more detailed information about presenting and communicating in particular circumstances .
You can either use our step-by-step guide to walk you through the presentation preparation and delivery process, or you can focus on particular areas that are an issue for you.
Preparing for Your Presentation
The guide starts by explaining What is a Presentation?
We define a presentation as a means of communication that can be adapted to various speaking situations, such as talking to a group, addressing a meeting or briefing a team. Effective presentations usually require careful thought and preparation—although this preparation need not take very long.
Preparation is the most important part of making a successful presentation. Our page on Preparing For A Presentation explains what information you need before you can really start to plan your presentation and decide what you are going to say. The most important aspects include the objective of the presentation, the subject, and the audience.
Irrespective of whether the occasion is formal or informal, you should always aim to give a clear, well-structured delivery. To do so, you need to organise your presentation material . You can either do this in your head, or use a technique like mind-mapping to help you identify links and good flow.
By the time you come to write your presentation , you should know exactly what you want to say and the order in which you want to say it. You may want to use one of the standard presentation structures, such as ‘What, Why, How?’. You will also find it helpful to consider how to tell your story most effectively, and to use stories in your presentation to illustrate points. There is more about this in our page on writing your presentation .
You also need to decide on your presentation method . Presentations range from the formal to the informal. Your choice of presentation method will depend on many factors, including the audience, the venue, the facilities, and your own preferences.
Visual aids can add another dimension to your presentation, helping to hold your audience’s attention, and also act as a reminder of what you wanted to say. However, they need handling with care. Only use visual aids if they are necessary to maintain interest and assist comprehension . If visual aids are not used well, they can ruin a presentation.
See Working with Visual Aids to avoid falling into the trap of the dreaded ‘ Death by PowerPoint’ .
A particular case of visual aids is the use of data in a presentation.
There are times when using data in a presentation can really help you to tell the story better. It is, however, important not to blind your audience with statistics. You also need to remember that many people find numbers difficult to understand. Our page on Presenting Data gives some hints and tips about using data effectively in a presentation situation.
On the Day of the Presentation
There are a number of aspects to delivering your presentation on the day.
The practicalities of how you manage your presentation can make a significant difference to its success, and to your nerves! For example, turning up early means that you have will have a chance to see the room, and ensure that you can operate all the necessary equipment. There is more about how to cope, including managing sound systems, audio-visual equipment and lecterns in our page on Managing the Presentation Event .
Many people also feel very nervous before and during a presentation. This is entirely normal, and can even be helpful if you can channel it in the right way. There are some tried and tested strategies and techniques to manage your nerves so that you can concentrate on delivering an effective and engaging presentation.
See Coping with Presentation Nerves for some ideas that will help.
How you present yourself can also affect how your audience responds to your presentation.
You need to fit with your audience's expectations if they are not going to spend quite a large chunk of your presentation dealing with the differences between expectations and reality.
For more about aspects of self-presentation, see our page on Self-Presentation in Presentations .
You also need to consider how to manage your presentation notes .
Few people are able to give a presentation without notes. You will need to know your own abilities and decide how best to make the presentation. You might manage your talk by using full text, notes on cue cards, keywords on cue cards, or mind maps. There is more about this in our page on Managing your Presentation Notes .
After the presentation, you may be faced with a question-and-answer session. For many people, this is the worst part of the event.
Decide in advance how and when you wish to handle questions. Some speakers prefer questions to be raised as they arise during the presentation whilst others prefer to deal with questions at the end. At the start of your presentation, you should make clear your preferences to the audience. See our page on Dealing with Questions for more ideas about how to make the question session pleasant and productive, rather than something to dread.
Presenting Under Particular Circumstances
You may find that you need to give a presentation under certain circumstances, where your previous experience is less helpful.
Circumstances that may be new to you include:
- Giving a Speech , for example, at a wedding.
One particular special case is attending public consultation meetings.
Our pages on Attending Public Consultation Meetings , and Managing Public Consultation Meetings provide information to help whether you are a concerned member of the public, or responsible for organising a public meeting.
You may also find yourself required to organise or manage a press conference.
Although this may not strictly be what you would describe as a ‘presentation’, it is nonetheless an event at which you are required to present your organisation in a particular light.
Our page on Managing a Press Conference gives some ideas about how best to do that.
Finally, should you be unlucky enough to be involved in a serious crisis or disaster that affects your organisation, our page on Crisis Communications gives some ideas about how to manage press and public relations on these occasions.
Start with: What is a Presentation? Top Tips for Effective Presentations
See also: Personal Appearance Interpersonal Communication Skills
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9 Tips for Improving Your Presentation Skills For Your Next Meeting
By Hannah Tow , Feb 03, 2020
Presenting to an audience is one thing, but presenting ideas in a persuasive manner to the key stakeholders of your business is a whole other ball game.
The fact of the matter is that successfully presenting to a room full of people is a skill that’s mastered by very few. It takes practice, practice, and even more practice to start feeling comfortable with everyone’s eyes focused on you so you can effectively get your point across.
The reality of presenting is that you can’t escape it. Especially as you start to move up in your career. If you’re yearning to improve, this article will walk you through the top nine tips to use to enhance your presentation skills for your next big meeting as well as throughout your life. Let’s get started.
9 top tips for improving your presentation skills:
- Practice speaking in front of others
- Use less text and more visuals in your presentation
- Leverage your personality
- Welcome questions and comments during
- Be passionate and engaging
- Maintain eye contact with your audience
- Obsess over your listeners
- Focus on confident body language
- Keep it as short as possible
Constantly practicing, refining and improving upon your presentation skills will not only make you a more confident individual, but you will find that you rise quicker to success in your career. However, having great presentation skills does not just affect your work-life. Great presentation skills are truly life skills that you should integrate into more areas than just the conference room.
1. Practice speaking in front of others
Practice always makes perfect.
It doesn’t matter how well you know what you’re talking about, the moment you have to persuade, engage, or teach in front of an audience, you will probably stumble a bit. This is a natural reaction that affects pretty much everyone when all eyes are pointed in one direction and the anxiety sets in.
It’s important to remember that the overwhelming feeling of stress you probably feel is the result of your unfamiliarity with the situation, not from your lack of preparedness. The more comfortable you are with taking the stage and having everyone’s attention on you, the less nervous you’ll get.
The greater confidence you have in your presentation skills will allow you to focus on what actually matters–which is the material that you’re presenting.
The best way to implement this practice is by starting off small. Prepare a presentation to give to your friends, family, or closest co-workers. This sounds easy, but you will learn that it’s not necessarily who is listening to you that causes nerves, but it’s the fact that all of the attention is on you.
You’ll become more comfortable with the attention when you begin practicing in front of others more often, which will allow you to effectively present your ideas next time it’s your turn to speak in the conference room.
RELATED: Learn the top ten public speaking tips to better prepare you for your practice sessions.
2. Use less text and more visuals in your presentation
We’ve all been there before: sitting at the conference table trying our very best to stay interested and engaged with the presentation before us. The presentation lacks color, images, and all sense of creativity while containing an over-abundance of text and long-form paragraphs.
These types of presentations are horrible for two reasons:
The first reason being that the minute you have words on the screen, your audience will direct their attention away from you to begin reading and completely tune you out.
The second reason is if your presentation skills are poor, not only will your presentation be dull to listen to, but it will be unbelievably boring to look at as well. You’ll quickly find out how easy it is to lose most of the room’s attention when you create a lackluster presentation.
If you feel lost attempting to design your slides into an exciting work of art, try using creative presentation templates . PowerPoint templates make it simple to produce something beautiful, and they can also make you feel like an accomplished designer after seeing the outcome, such as this business presentation example .
In addition to nicely designed slides, you should always try to use infographics and charts to help you better summarize the complex information you’re relaying to your audience. It will be much easier for your listeners to understand what you’re explaining when they have something to visualize it with. Plus, there are plenty of resources out there to help you craft these visuals.
Learn how to make an infographic in five easy steps or produce an impressive graph .
If you feel worried that your presentation doesn’t hold enough content, you must remember the main reason for visual aids:
They are to enhance what you’re speaking about, not lead it!
If you’ve done enough practicing, you should feel confident in your presentation skills to thoroughly explain your main ideas and you won’t need to rely on the screen anyhow.
TIP: If you’re looking for even more ways to engage your audience with your visuals, check out 120+ presentation ideas that are sure to wow and delight!
3. Leverage your personality
As cliche as it sounds, you should always be true to who you are, especially if when you’re presenting.
It’s incredibly easy to tell if someone is faking it for the sake of their audience, so you should never pretend to act in a way that you don’t typically do. Not only will you feel unnatural and uncomfortable doing it, but you can also risk embarrassment when you try to tell a forced joke and no one laughs or your new-found trait of sarcasm doesn’t sit well with your boss.
It should bring you comfort knowing that most everyone in your meeting knows who you are. Use this to your advantage and start the presentation by playing up your best personality traits. Use your humor if you’re known to crack jokes or throw in your typical mannerisms.
These little additions will make your presentation feel much more relaxed for everyone involved. In addition to your own unique quirks, you should also bring a level of personability to your meeting.
Be empathetic, smile more, and look around the room. Doing so will improve your presentation skills, make you more likable, and allow your audience to be more receptive to you.
In many cases, you may be presenting virtually, rather than in person. You can still allow your personality to shine through and energize your virtual presentation. Lisa Schneider, Chief Growth Officer at Merriam-Webster, wrote for Venngage on how to adapt an in-person presentation into a virtual presentation . Check it out.
4. Welcome questions and comments during your presentation
Be flexible throughout your presentation. Answer questions and respond to any comments your audience may have either through hand raising or an audience response tool . Don’t worry if it veers you off your script. Chances are if one person has a question or comment, the others in the room are thinking it too.
Use this as an opportunity to prove how well you understand the material you’re presenting–your audience will take notice.
Also, take some time out at the start or your presentation to ask your audience some icebreaker questions and slowly transition into the more important stuff.
Taking this minute to talk through anything that your audience is thinking of is a good thing because it means they are engaged with you and really paying attention to the words coming out of your mouth. Doing so will also relax the format of your presentation, allowing you to feel more confident and relaxed as well.
5. Be passionate and engaging
When creating your presentation, craft it in such a way that makes your audience curious and makes them have questions for you. A persuasive presentation is the best way to get the positive reactions you are looking for, so be as passionate as you can be about your subject matter to seal the deal.
Remember that questions and comments during your presentation are a good thing, especially if you’re the one prompting them!
The more excited you are to present your ideas and show off your expertise, the more excited and engaged your audience will be. Own your subject matter and know what you’re talking about, it’s one of the most important presentation skills to have.
6. Maintain eye contact with your audience
This is a very obvious tip that will go a long way with your audience.
When the people you’re speaking to feel like you’re taking notice of them, they are much more likely to take notice of you and pay better attention to everything that you’re saying.
It’s important to remember that losing eye contact and looking everywhere but at the people that you’re presenting to is a common nervous behavior. Pay extra close attention to whether or not you’re guilty of that, and work to ensure you have your eyes on at least one person.
7. Obsess over your listeners
Be receptive to your listeners. You can’t forget that what you’re presenting is for the audience, and it has nothing to do about you!
Focus on the value you can provide to the people in the room. The more serving you are to them, the greater chance you have at driving your point home and nailing your presentation.
It’s also important not to forget about those listening to you remotely over video conferencing . Make sure they know you’re aware of them and engage them as well!
8. Focus on confident body language
Smiling, hand gestures, eye contact, and a powerful stance all exude confidence.
If you don’t have strong body language and are showing physical signs of nervousness (ie. tapping, bouncing, shaking, darting eyes, and more) your audience will have a hard time focusing on the material you’re presenting and hone in on the fact that you’re nervous and probably don’t know what you’re talking about as much as you say you do.
No matter how nervous you are, take a deep breath and pretend otherwise. You might actually start to believe it!
9. Keep it as short as possible
Every single person’s time is valuable ( especially at work), so don’t waste precious meeting time. If you can say everything you need to in half of the time that is allotted, you should do so.
Ensure that you’re only sharing the most important information. All of the extra fluff will bore your audience and you will lose their attention very quickly.
It’s a great idea to wrap up your presentation with key takeaways and action items. Doing so will ensure that no matter how quickly your meeting ended, your team understands their next steps. You can send out a quick, summarizing slide deck or an easy to read one-pager for their reference later. These visuals will make sure all of your bases are covered and that everyone is on the same page upon leaving the meeting.
A good presentation makes all the difference. Check out the top qualities of awesome presentations and learn all about how to make a good presentation to help you nail that captivating delivery.
Never stop refining your presentation skills
Possessing great presentation skills doesn’t come naturally to most people–it’s something that’s learned and practiced over time. As with most things in life, you must continuously work on refining your skills to get better and better.
Use these nine proven presentation tips that we covered in this article to improve your presentation skills and ace different presentation styles . By doing so, you will find that presenting at your key meetings becomes easier and easier and you’ll begin to nail it every single time.
More presentation guides:
How to Make a Persuasive Presentation
120+ Best Presentation Ideas, Design Tips & Examples
33 Presentation Templates and Design Tips to Hold Your Audience’s Attention
Presentation Design Guide: How to Summarize Information for Presentations
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Self-Assessment • 18 min read
How Good Are Your Presentation Skills?
Understanding your impact.
By the Mind Tools Content Team
How do you feel when you have to make a presentation? Are you well prepared and relaxed, confident that your performance will have the desired impact on your audience? new score
Or is the thought of standing on a podium, holding a microphone, enough to give you stage fright?
Enjoy it or not, presenting – in some form – is usually a part of business. Whether you get up in front of formal audiences on a regular basis, or you simply have to make your voice heard in a meeting, you're using presentation skills.
Many believe that good presenters are born, not made. This is simply not true . Sure, some people are more relaxed and comfortable speaking in front of others – but everyone can learn the skills and techniques they need to increase their level of confidence and performance when presenting.
From sales pitches to training lectures, good presentation and public speaking skills are key to many influential roles in today's business world. The good news about presenting is that you can improve with practice.
So do you have the skills you need to do a good job? And how effective are you when you have to "perform?" Take this short quiz to help you assess your skills.
Instructions
For each statement, click the button in the column that best describes you. Please answer questions as you actually are (rather than how you think you should be), and don't worry if some questions seem to score in the "wrong direction." When you are finished, please click the "Calculate My Total" button at the bottom of the test.
Becoming a Better Presenter
Effective presentations are a mixture of a variety of elements. You have to know what your audience wants. You need to prepare good, interesting, engaging content. You must be confident in presenting the material, you have to know how to manage your environment successfully, and you need to make sure that your message has maximum impact.
Balancing all four elements is no easy task. And, when combined with the natural anxiety often felt before giving presentations, it's no wonder that many people struggle with this skill. In fact, fear of public speaking is extremely common.
However, you don't have to remain fearful and stressed by the thought of giving a presentation. With the right tools and material, along with planning and preparation, you can present with energy and confidence.
Let's now look in detail at those four key elements of effective presentations:
- Understanding your audience.
- Preparing your content.
- Delivering confidently.
- Controlling the environment.
Understanding Your Audience
(Questions 2, 5, 9)
The success of most presentations is generally judged on how the audience responds. You may think you did a great job, but unless your audience agrees with you, that may not be the case. Before you even begin putting your PowerPoint slides together, the first thing you need to do is understand what your audience wants. Try following these three steps:
Determine who the members of the audience are.
Find out what they want and expect from your presentation. What do they need to learn? Do they have entrenched attitudes or interests that you need to respect? And what do they already know that you don't have to repeat?
Create an outline for your presentation, and ask for advance feedback on your proposed content.
When what you say is what your audience wants or needs to hear, then you'll probably receive positive reinforcement throughout your presentation. If you see nods and smiles, or hear murmurs of agreement, for example, then this will motivate you to keep going and do a great job.
When your audience is satisfied, it doesn't matter if your delivery wasn't absolutely perfect. The primary goal of the people listening to your presentation is to get the information they need. When that happens, you've done a good job. Of course, you want to do a great job, not just a good job – and that's where the rest of the tips can help.
Preparing Your Content
(Questions 6, 11, 13, 14)
The only way to satisfy your audience's needs and expectations is to deliver the content they want. That means understanding what to present, and how to present it. Bear in mind that if you give the right information in the wrong sequence, this may leave the audience confused, frustrated, or bored.
If you provide the information in a well-structured format, and you include various techniques to keep the audience engaged and interested, then they'll probably remember what you said – and they'll remember you.
There are a variety of ways to structure your content, depending on the type of presentation you'll give. Here are some principles that you can apply:
Identify a few key points - To help the audience retain the messages you're giving them, use the chunking principle to organize your information into five to seven key points.
Don't include every detail - Good presentations inspire the audience to learn more, and ask further statements to maximize their understanding of the issue.
Use an outline - At the beginning, tell your audience what you intend to cover, and let them know what to expect. This helps build anticipation and interest from the start.
Start and end strongly - Capture people's interest as soon as you begin, and leave them with a message they won't forget. It's tempting to put all of your effort into the main body of the presentation. However, if you don't get people's attention at the start, they'll probably lose interest, and not really hear the rest anyway.
Use examples - Where possible, use lots of examples to support your points. A lecture is often the least interesting and engaging form of presentation. Look for ways to liven things up by telling stories, talking about real-life examples, and using metaphors to engage your audience fully.
A special type of presentation is one that seeks to persuade. Monroe's Motivated Sequence , consisting of five steps, gives you a framework for developing content for this kind of presentation:
1. Get the attention of your audience - Use an interesting 'hook' or opening point, like a shocking statistic. Be provocative and stimulating, not boring or calm.
2. Create a need - Convince the audience there's a problem, explain how it affects them – and persuade them that things need to change.
3. Define your solution - Explain what you think needs to be done.
4. Describe a detailed picture of success (or failure) - Give the audience a vision; something they can see, hear, taste, and touch.
5. Ask the audience to do something right away - Get the audience involved right from the start. Then it's usually much easier to keep them engaged and active in your cause.
To brush up on your skills of persuasion, look at The Rhetorical Triangle . This tool asks you to consider your communication from three perspectives: those of the writer, the audience, and the context. It's a method that builds credibility and ensures that your arguments are logical.
Delivering Confidently
(Questions 1, 4, 7, 10)
Even the best content can be ineffective if your presentation style contradicts or detracts from your message. Many people are nervous when they present, so this will probably affect their delivery. But it's the major distractions that you want to avoid. As you build confidence, you can gradually eliminate the small and unconstructive habits you may have. These tips may help you:
Practice to build confidence – Some people think that if you practice too much, your speech will sound rehearsed and less genuine. Don't necessarily memorize your presentation, but be so familiar with the content that you're able to speak fluently and comfortably, and adjust as necessary.
Be flexible – This is easier to do if you're comfortable with the material. Don't attempt to present something you just learned the previous night. You want to know your material well enough to answer statements. And, if you don't know something, just admit it, and commit to finding the answer.
Welcome statements from the audience – This is a sign that a presenter knows what he or she is talking about. It builds audience confidence, and people are much more likely to trust what you say, and respect your message.
Use slides and other visual aids – These can help you deliver a confident presentation. The key point here is to learn how much visual information to give the audience, and yet not distract them from what you're saying.
Keep your visuals simple and brief – Don't use too many pictures, charts, or graphs. Your slides should summarize or draw attention to one or two items each. And don't try to fit your whole presentation onto your slides. If the slides cover every single detail, then you've probably put too much information on them. Slides should give the overall message, and then the audience should know where to look for supporting evidence. Manage your stress – Confidence has a lot to do with managing your stress levels. If you feel particularly nervous and anxious, then those emotions will probably show. They're such strong feelings that you can easily become overwhelmed, which can affect your ability to perform effectively. A little nervousness is useful because it can build energy. But that energy may quickly turn negative if nerves build to the point where you can't control them.
If you have anxiety before a presentation, try some of these stress management tools:
Use physical relaxation techniques , like deep breathing and visualization, to calm your body and ease your tension.
Use imagery to help keep calm, and visualize yourself delivering a successful presentation.
Learn strategies to build your self-confidence in general. The more assured you are about yourself and your abilities, the better you'll feel when you get up in front of people, and say what you want to say.
When you present with confidence and authority, your audience will likely pay attention and react to you as someone who's worth listening to. So "pretend" if you need to, by turning your nervousness into creative and enthusiastic energy.
For other tips on delivering confidently, see Delivering Great Presentations , Speaking to an Audience , Managing Presentation Nerves , and our Skillbook Even Better Presentations .
Controlling the Environment
(Questions 3, 4, 8, 12)
While much of the outside environment is beyond your control, there are still some things you can do to reduce potential risks to your presentation.
Practice in the presentation room – This forces you to become familiar with the room and the equipment. It will not only build your confidence, but also help you identify sources of risk. Do you have trouble accessing your PowerPoint file? Does the microphone reach the places you want to walk? Can you move the podium? Are there stairs that might cause you to trip? These are the sorts of issues you may discover and resolve by doing one or two practice presentations.
Do your own setup – Don't leave this to other people. Even though you probably want to focus on numerous other details, it's a good idea not to delegate too much of the preparation to others. You need the hands-on experience to make sure nothing disastrous happens at the real event. Test your timing – When you practice, you also improve your chances of keeping to time. You get a good idea how long each part of the presentation will actually take, and this helps you plan how much time you'll have for statements and other audience interactions.
Members of the audience want you to respect their time. If you end your presentation on time or early, this can make a huge, positive impression on them. When speakers go over their allowed time, they may disrupt the whole schedule of the event and/or cause the audience unnecessary inconvenience. Be considerate, and stick to your agenda as closely as possible.
Presenting doesn't have to be scary, or something you seek to avoid. Find opportunities to practice the tips and techniques discussed above, and become more confident in your ability to present your ideas to an audience. We all have something important to say, and sometimes it takes more than a memo or report to communicate it. You owe it to yourself, and your organization, to develop the skills you need to present your ideas clearly, purposefully, engagingly, and confidently.
This assessment has not been validated and is intended for illustrative purposes only. It is just one of many that help you evaluate your abilities in a wide range of important career skills.
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Hello, This was really an excellent overview with concise instructions, using clear communication methods. I found the article to be captivating and poignant. Thank You
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Home » Blog » Trainers » 7 Essential Presentation Skills Examples, Techniques & Tips for Freelance Trainers
7 Essential Presentation Skills Examples, Techniques & Tips for Freelance Trainers
Page Updated on January 29, 2024
With some very simple and basic but essential tips, you can quite quickly learn effective presentation skills and become a more effective trainer or teacher. So in this post, here are 7 tips for you that you can use, whether you are a freelance or corporate trainer, teacher, someone doing a presentation at work, or a student learning to do presentations. These tips should help you all!
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Taken from our >> ‘ Online Train the Trainer Course ‘.
Page Contents
Tip 1: Body Language (Face and Hands)
One of the first things to consider when presenting is to think about how you use your face and hands.
Always make eye contact and look at all of your participants . Do not stare at them but do make an effort to appear to speak to each and every person present.
If the venue is big and the number of attendees numerous (let’s say more than 20) then at least look or glance at each section of people from time to time.
A word of warning though! In some cultures, it is considered rude or aggressive to look someone in the eye . So do factor in the culture and audience to whom you are speaking or teaching, and adapt accordingly.
KEY TIP : Make a point to sometimes speak and do gestures (positive ones of course) to those sitting the furthest from you to make them feel included.
Do also remember to use facial expressions that are congruent with your words. In other words, what you say should match your facial expression so as to avoid confusion. If you are saying something exciting try and look excited by it, for example.
Avoid : No playing with markers, touching your head, or crossing your arms; no hands in pockets unless it is to show informality and relaxation! A great way to avoid these things is to record yourself at home with any camera (a cellphone will do) and practice presenting. You will soon see the habits you have!
Tip 2: Posture and Body Language When Presenting
If you want to make the right impression with your students or whoever you are presenting to, it is important to maintain good posture .
Good posture also helps to project the voice better , in addition to making you look more confident.
If you wish to, you can also highlight a new section in the presentation by changing your posture or position. Opening up your shoulders and arms, for example, could be used to express the idea of something starting.
KEY TIP: The key from our experience is that it often simply comes down to practice! The more times you run through your speech or lesson, the smoother and more fluent you will become. The TRUTH is that most great speakers are only the best because they practice and practice. It is that simple. With this in mind, avoid continuously reading off a piece of paper or script.
Tip 3: Positioning Your Body When Presenting
Body language is also important and given that most eyes will be on you, as the trainer at the front of the room, any unusual actions you do will of course easily be noticed and can distract your audience from focusing on the content that you are delivering.
So, when standing at the front of the room, plant your feet and do not shift your weight, and avoid pacing back and forth on the same spot.
Also, be aware that sitting changes the tone and makes the atmosphere informal. If teaching or presenting to a small group of people (i.e. everyone can easily see you if you are sitting down), you might want to use sitting down as a strategy for mixing the formal with informal.
Never have your back to the group (or as little as possible if you are writing on a board).
Tip 4: Voice – Volume, Pitch, and Pauses
I was at a conference recently and a well-renowned academic was presenting in front of 100+ people and, despite being in the front row, it was impossible to make out what he was saying.
Make sure when presenting to project your voice ! Also, change the volume and pitch of your voice to add emphasis! If you need to, just ask the people at the back of the venue if they can hear you okay?
KEY TIP : Also learn to use pauses to emphasize something important. Furthermore, pauses are also useful to give time to reflect and for you to observe participants. Do not be afraid of silence!
Tip 5: Fillers and Elocution
One of the things that most of us do when first learning how to give effective presentations, is to use fillers!
Fillers are the words we unconsciously use to try and fill in between the things we are meant to say. Common fillers include ‘ah’, ‘err’, ‘ok’, ‘like’, ‘er’, ‘um’, and ‘right then’.
We all use fillers and trying to avoid using them is not easy at first.
To learn to stop using fillers the best way is the tip I gave earlier and which is to record yourself speaking and play it back. Just grab your iPhone and use the camera on the phone, for example, and record a 3-minute speech (it doesn’t matter what you speak about or how you look). Then play the video back and see what fillers you used when speaking. Keep practicing and you will begin to avoid fillers very quickly.
Finally, do not rush the end of sentences, and do not be afraid to use an informal voice. You want to sound professional of course, but you also want to speak in a way that is friendly and warm.
Tip 6: Making Use of Space in the Training Room or Classroom
Think carefully also about the space that you have available to you in the training room or classroom.
It can be a great idea to move around among participants . Move around the room looking first at a group, then another group. Do not neglect any section of the room.
Also, never sit behind a desk (unless used temporarily and as part of an intentional informal act). You might, for example, want to sit down whilst your participants are doing an activity or task that you have set them.
Or you might sit to emphasize something. Generally speaking though, for the most part, you should be standing when presenting. Also, stand close to the class unless you are using the board a lot.
Tip 7: Extra Presentation Skills Ideas
Let’s finish with four final tips.
It can be difficult when teaching or providing training to find the balance between providing enough explanation and information and giving too much.
Do not though, go on and on about something and be too repetitive. You can lose the attention of your audience if you do this too much.
Be Careful with Jargon
You will also want to be careful with the jargon you use (or what is known as ‘discourse’ in academia). In different social and cultural circles, we have different ways of speaking in terms of terminology. Even between the UK and the United States, for example, our ways of speaking are different. Differences can include:
- soccer (USA) = football (UK)
- pants (USA) = trousers (UK)
- gasoline (USA = petrol (UK)
The key is to make sure you are speaking with your audience in mind . Know who your audience is and tailor your speech, if necessary, for them.
The best presenters are the best really because of one key reason. They practice and they learn to be great presenters.
That really is the secret! Having interviewed hundreds of presenters, the idea of practicing to improve and become a good presenter was always mentioned as the key tip to presenting well.
Certainly, a few people (the lucky ones) are born with a natural ability just to be brilliant presenters.
The majority though become proficient through practice.
Watching Great Presenters
It can also be worth watching some TED talks to get a feel for what great presenting looks like.
When watching these presentations, observe the pauses at key moments, the way they move or do not move around the stage, the change of intonation for emphasis, the way they use their hands or not, and their facial expressions. And what do they do wrong that you don’t like? Try these two videos:
- Tyler DeWitt : Hey science teachers. Make it fun!
- Nadia Lopez : Open a school to close a prison!
Show Enthusiasm!
If you are not actually that interested in the topic you are teaching or presenting, TRY TO FIND something about it interesting and show enthusiasm.
If you really can find nothing to be enthusiastic about in terms of what you are teaching, then looking for a new job might be the best option here. Otherwise, be cheerful and you will find that this alone can help you win over those sitting in front of you as you speak. Smiling and being happy can be infectious!
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Explanation is simple and clear. Very useful tips.
This analysis is outstanding ,thank you
Thank you, great post. I have learned a lot about presentation skills. Thank you.
The post is great… I have learnt alot as a teacher student in Kenya
Helped me a lot! Thank you.
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How to Structure your Presentation, with Examples
August 3, 2018 - Dom Barnard
For many people the thought of delivering a presentation is a daunting task and brings about a great deal of nerves . However, if you take some time to understand how effective presentations are structured and then apply this structure to your own presentation, you’ll appear much more confident and relaxed.
Here is our complete guide for structuring your presentation, with examples at the end of the article to demonstrate these points.
Why is structuring a presentation so important?
If you’ve ever sat through a great presentation, you’ll have left feeling either inspired or informed on a given topic. This isn’t because the speaker was the most knowledgeable or motivating person in the world. Instead, it’s because they know how to structure presentations – they have crafted their message in a logical and simple way that has allowed the audience can keep up with them and take away key messages.
Research has supported this, with studies showing that audiences retain structured information 40% more accurately than unstructured information.
In fact, not only is structuring a presentation important for the benefit of the audience’s understanding, it’s also important for you as the speaker. A good structure helps you remain calm, stay on topic, and avoid any awkward silences.
What will affect your presentation structure?
Generally speaking, there is a natural flow that any decent presentation will follow which we will go into shortly. However, you should be aware that all presentation structures will be different in their own unique way and this will be due to a number of factors, including:
- Whether you need to deliver any demonstrations
- How knowledgeable the audience already is on the given subject
- How much interaction you want from the audience
- Any time constraints there are for your talk
- What setting you are in
- Your ability to use any kinds of visual assistance
Before choosing the presentation’s structure answer these questions first:
- What is your presentation’s aim?
- Who are the audience?
- What are the main points your audience should remember afterwards?
When reading the points below, think critically about what things may cause your presentation structure to be slightly different. You can add in certain elements and add more focus to certain moments if that works better for your speech.
What is the typical presentation structure?
This is the usual flow of a presentation, which covers all the vital sections and is a good starting point for yours. It allows your audience to easily follow along and sets out a solid structure you can add your content to.
1. Greet the audience and introduce yourself
Before you start delivering your talk, introduce yourself to the audience and clarify who you are and your relevant expertise. This does not need to be long or incredibly detailed, but will help build an immediate relationship between you and the audience. It gives you the chance to briefly clarify your expertise and why you are worth listening to. This will help establish your ethos so the audience will trust you more and think you’re credible.
Read our tips on How to Start a Presentation Effectively
2. Introduction
In the introduction you need to explain the subject and purpose of your presentation whilst gaining the audience’s interest and confidence. It’s sometimes helpful to think of your introduction as funnel-shaped to help filter down your topic:
- Introduce your general topic
- Explain your topic area
- State the issues/challenges in this area you will be exploring
- State your presentation’s purpose – this is the basis of your presentation so ensure that you provide a statement explaining how the topic will be treated, for example, “I will argue that…” or maybe you will “compare”, “analyse”, “evaluate”, “describe” etc.
- Provide a statement of what you’re hoping the outcome of the presentation will be, for example, “I’m hoping this will be provide you with…”
- Show a preview of the organisation of your presentation
In this section also explain:
- The length of the talk.
- Signal whether you want audience interaction – some presenters prefer the audience to ask questions throughout whereas others allocate a specific section for this.
- If it applies, inform the audience whether to take notes or whether you will be providing handouts.
The way you structure your introduction can depend on the amount of time you have been given to present: a sales pitch may consist of a quick presentation so you may begin with your conclusion and then provide the evidence. Conversely, a speaker presenting their idea for change in the world would be better suited to start with the evidence and then conclude what this means for the audience.
Keep in mind that the main aim of the introduction is to grab the audience’s attention and connect with them.
3. The main body of your talk
The main body of your talk needs to meet the promises you made in the introduction. Depending on the nature of your presentation, clearly segment the different topics you will be discussing, and then work your way through them one at a time – it’s important for everything to be organised logically for the audience to fully understand. There are many different ways to organise your main points, such as, by priority, theme, chronologically etc.
- Main points should be addressed one by one with supporting evidence and examples.
- Before moving on to the next point you should provide a mini-summary.
- Links should be clearly stated between ideas and you must make it clear when you’re moving onto the next point.
- Allow time for people to take relevant notes and stick to the topics you have prepared beforehand rather than straying too far off topic.
When planning your presentation write a list of main points you want to make and ask yourself “What I am telling the audience? What should they understand from this?” refining your answers this way will help you produce clear messages.
4. Conclusion
In presentations the conclusion is frequently underdeveloped and lacks purpose which is a shame as it’s the best place to reinforce your messages. Typically, your presentation has a specific goal – that could be to convert a number of the audience members into customers, lead to a certain number of enquiries to make people knowledgeable on specific key points, or to motivate them towards a shared goal.
Regardless of what that goal is, be sure to summarise your main points and their implications. This clarifies the overall purpose of your talk and reinforces your reason for being there.
Follow these steps:
- Signal that it’s nearly the end of your presentation, for example, “As we wrap up/as we wind down the talk…”
- Restate the topic and purpose of your presentation – “In this speech I wanted to compare…”
- Summarise the main points, including their implications and conclusions
- Indicate what is next/a call to action/a thought-provoking takeaway
- Move on to the last section
5. Thank the audience and invite questions
Conclude your talk by thanking the audience for their time and invite them to ask any questions they may have. As mentioned earlier, personal circumstances will affect the structure of your presentation.
Many presenters prefer to make the Q&A session the key part of their talk and try to speed through the main body of the presentation. This is totally fine, but it is still best to focus on delivering some sort of initial presentation to set the tone and topics for discussion in the Q&A.
Other common presentation structures
The above was a description of a basic presentation, here are some more specific presentation layouts:
Demonstration
Use the demonstration structure when you have something useful to show. This is usually used when you want to show how a product works. Steve Jobs frequently used this technique in his presentations.
- Explain why the product is valuable.
- Describe why the product is necessary.
- Explain what problems it can solve for the audience.
- Demonstrate the product to support what you’ve been saying.
- Make suggestions of other things it can do to make the audience curious.
Problem-solution
This structure is particularly useful in persuading the audience.
- Briefly frame the issue.
- Go into the issue in detail showing why it ‘s such a problem. Use logos and pathos for this – the logical and emotional appeals.
- Provide the solution and explain why this would also help the audience.
- Call to action – something you want the audience to do which is straightforward and pertinent to the solution.
Storytelling
As well as incorporating stories in your presentation , you can organise your whole presentation as a story. There are lots of different type of story structures you can use – a popular choice is the monomyth – the hero’s journey. In a monomyth, a hero goes on a difficult journey or takes on a challenge – they move from the familiar into the unknown. After facing obstacles and ultimately succeeding the hero returns home, transformed and with newfound wisdom.
Storytelling for Business Success webinar , where well-know storyteller Javier Bernad shares strategies for crafting compelling narratives.
Another popular choice for using a story to structure your presentation is in media ras (in the middle of thing). In this type of story you launch right into the action by providing a snippet/teaser of what’s happening and then you start explaining the events that led to that event. This is engaging because you’re starting your story at the most exciting part which will make the audience curious – they’ll want to know how you got there.
- Great storytelling: Examples from Alibaba Founder, Jack Ma
Remaining method
The remaining method structure is good for situations where you’re presenting your perspective on a controversial topic which has split people’s opinions.
- Go into the issue in detail showing why it’s such a problem – use logos and pathos.
- Rebut your opponents’ solutions – explain why their solutions could be useful because the audience will see this as fair and will therefore think you’re trustworthy, and then explain why you think these solutions are not valid.
- After you’ve presented all the alternatives provide your solution, the remaining solution. This is very persuasive because it looks like the winning idea, especially with the audience believing that you’re fair and trustworthy.
Transitions
When delivering presentations it’s important for your words and ideas to flow so your audience can understand how everything links together and why it’s all relevant. This can be done using speech transitions which are words and phrases that allow you to smoothly move from one point to another so that your speech flows and your presentation is unified.
Transitions can be one word, a phrase or a full sentence – there are many different forms, here are some examples:
Moving from the introduction to the first point
Signify to the audience that you will now begin discussing the first main point:
- Now that you’re aware of the overview, let’s begin with…
- First, let’s begin with…
- I will first cover…
- My first point covers…
- To get started, let’s look at…
Shifting between similar points
Move from one point to a similar one:
- In the same way…
- Likewise…
- Equally…
- This is similar to…
- Similarly…
Internal summaries
Internal summarising consists of summarising before moving on to the next point. You must inform the audience:
- What part of the presentation you covered – “In the first part of this speech we’ve covered…”
- What the key points were – “Precisely how…”
- How this links in with the overall presentation – “So that’s the context…”
- What you’re moving on to – “Now I’d like to move on to the second part of presentation which looks at…”
Physical movement
You can move your body and your standing location when you transition to another point. The audience find it easier to follow your presentation and movement will increase their interest.
A common technique for incorporating movement into your presentation is to:
- Start your introduction by standing in the centre of the stage.
- For your first point you stand on the left side of the stage.
- You discuss your second point from the centre again.
- You stand on the right side of the stage for your third point.
- The conclusion occurs in the centre.
Key slides for your presentation
Slides are a useful tool for most presentations: they can greatly assist in the delivery of your message and help the audience follow along with what you are saying. Key slides include:
- An intro slide outlining your ideas
- A summary slide with core points to remember
- High quality image slides to supplement what you are saying
There are some presenters who choose not to use slides at all, though this is more of a rarity. Slides can be a powerful tool if used properly, but the problem is that many fail to do just that. Here are some golden rules to follow when using slides in a presentation:
- Don’t over fill them – your slides are there to assist your speech, rather than be the focal point. They should have as little information as possible, to avoid distracting people from your talk.
- A picture says a thousand words – instead of filling a slide with text, instead, focus on one or two images or diagrams to help support and explain the point you are discussing at that time.
- Make them readable – depending on the size of your audience, some may not be able to see small text or images, so make everything large enough to fill the space.
- Don’t rush through slides – give the audience enough time to digest each slide.
Guy Kawasaki, an entrepreneur and author, suggests that slideshows should follow a 10-20-30 rule :
- There should be a maximum of 10 slides – people rarely remember more than one concept afterwards so there’s no point overwhelming them with unnecessary information.
- The presentation should last no longer than 20 minutes as this will leave time for questions and discussion.
- The font size should be a minimum of 30pt because the audience reads faster than you talk so less information on the slides means that there is less chance of the audience being distracted.
Here are some additional resources for slide design:
- 7 design tips for effective, beautiful PowerPoint presentations
- 11 design tips for beautiful presentations
- 10 tips on how to make slides that communicate your idea
Group Presentations
Group presentations are structured in the same way as presentations with one speaker but usually require more rehearsal and practices. Clean transitioning between speakers is very important in producing a presentation that flows well. One way of doing this consists of:
- Briefly recap on what you covered in your section: “So that was a brief introduction on what health anxiety is and how it can affect somebody”
- Introduce the next speaker in the team and explain what they will discuss: “Now Elnaz will talk about the prevalence of health anxiety.”
- Then end by looking at the next speaker, gesturing towards them and saying their name: “Elnaz”.
- The next speaker should acknowledge this with a quick: “Thank you Joe.”
From this example you can see how the different sections of the presentations link which makes it easier for the audience to follow and remain engaged.
Example of great presentation structure and delivery
Having examples of great presentations will help inspire your own structures, here are a few such examples, each unique and inspiring in their own way.
How Google Works – by Eric Schmidt
This presentation by ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt demonstrates some of the most important lessons he and his team have learnt with regards to working with some of the most talented individuals they hired. The simplistic yet cohesive style of all of the slides is something to be appreciated. They are relatively straightforward, yet add power and clarity to the narrative of the presentation.
Start with why – by Simon Sinek
Since being released in 2009, this presentation has been viewed almost four million times all around the world. The message itself is very powerful, however, it’s not an idea that hasn’t been heard before. What makes this presentation so powerful is the simple message he is getting across, and the straightforward and understandable manner in which he delivers it. Also note that he doesn’t use any slides, just a whiteboard where he creates a simple diagram of his opinion.
The Wisdom of a Third Grade Dropout – by Rick Rigsby
Here’s an example of a presentation given by a relatively unknown individual looking to inspire the next generation of graduates. Rick’s presentation is unique in many ways compared to the two above. Notably, he uses no visual prompts and includes a great deal of humour.
However, what is similar is the structure he uses. He first introduces his message that the wisest man he knew was a third-grade dropout. He then proceeds to deliver his main body of argument, and in the end, concludes with his message. This powerful speech keeps the viewer engaged throughout, through a mixture of heart-warming sentiment, powerful life advice and engaging humour.
As you can see from the examples above, and as it has been expressed throughout, a great presentation structure means analysing the core message of your presentation. Decide on a key message you want to impart the audience with, and then craft an engaging way of delivering it.
By preparing a solid structure, and practising your talk beforehand, you can walk into the presentation with confidence and deliver a meaningful message to an interested audience.
It’s important for a presentation to be well-structured so it can have the most impact on your audience. An unstructured presentation can be difficult to follow and even frustrating to listen to. The heart of your speech are your main points supported by evidence and your transitions should assist the movement between points and clarify how everything is linked.
Research suggests that the audience remember the first and last things you say so your introduction and conclusion are vital for reinforcing your points. Essentially, ensure you spend the time structuring your presentation and addressing all of the sections.
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Workshop: Presentation Skills for a Virtual Audience
How information is presented can determine the effectiveness of the message and its outcome.
Credit: GETTY IMAGES
By HR NewsWire
Presentation skills are vital for serious business professionals—and have been ramped up in today's increased remote working environment.
How information is presented to groups and individuals can determine the effectiveness of the message and its outcome. Virtual presentation skills can affect the speaker's influence and credibility and make a remarkable difference when getting the message across to listeners.
A program titled Presentation Skills for a Virtual Audience gives learners the techniques and skills necessary for an effective virtual presentation and helps them engage their remote audience with confidence.
Register here for the two-part workshop, which will be offered virtually by Learning Solutions from 9 a.m. to noon on Monday, March 25, and Tuesday, March 26.
Posted in Happenings
Tagged hr newswire
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Presenting or making a speech at a conference or event. Objecting to a planning proposal at a council meeting. Making a speech at a wedding. Proposing a vote of thanks to someone at a club or society. On behalf of a team, saying goodbye and presenting a gift to a colleague who is leaving.
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1. Research The first stage of a presentation is gathering all the information that you will need to include. To begin, brainstorm what kind of information you will need and where you are most likely to find it. Once you have all the needed information, gather it in one place.
Making a speech at a conference, seminar, department meeting, or any other event. Sales, marketing, and investment pitches - to any number of external clients. Presentations can be persuasive, instructive, inspiring, or informative. Read from a script, memorized, or given impromptu.
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Follow these steps: Signal that it's nearly the end of your presentation, for example, "As we wrap up/as we wind down the talk…". Restate the topic and purpose of your presentation - "In this speech I wanted to compare…". Summarise the main points, including their implications and conclusions.
Presentation skills are vital for serious business professionals—and have been ramped up in today's increased remote working environment. How information is presented to groups and individuals can determine the effectiveness of the message and its outcome. Virtual presentation skills can affect the speaker's influence and credibility and make ...
Create a new presentation from scratch. Create a presentation based on a file. Add a new slide to a presentation. Redesign slides to use a new theme or style. Let's give that first bullet point a try with this prompt: "Create a presentation about Q1 sales for AdventureWorks. Make it modern with a blue theme.