Basics of Presentation Skills

Written by Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD, Authenticity Consulting, LLC. Copyright 1997-2008.
Adapted from the Field Guide to Leadership and Supervision.

Leaders make presentations to a wide variety of audiences, for example, Board members, employees, community
leaders and groups of customers. Usually there is a lot that can be quickly gained or quickly lost from a
presentation. A little bit of guidance goes a long way toward making a highly effective presentation.

Note that meeting management skills are often helpful in designing an effective presentation. Also note that the
following guidelines are intended for general presentations, not for training sessions where your presentation is to
help learners to gain specific knowledge, skills or attitudes in order to improve their performance on a task or job.

Basic Guidelines For Designing Your Presentation

1. List and prioritize the top three goals that you want to accomplish with your audience. It's not enough just to
talk at them. You may think you know what you want to accomplish in your presentation, but if you're not clear
with yourself and others, it is very easy - too easy - for your audience to completely miss the point of your
presentation. For example, your goals may be for them to appreciate the accomplishments of your organization,
learn how to use your services, etc. Again, the goals should be in terms of what you want to accomplish with your
audience.
2. Be really clear about who your audience is and about why is it important for them to be in the meeting.
Members of your audience will want to know right away why they were the ones chosen to be in your
presentation. Be sure that your presentation makes this clear to them right away. This will help you clarify your
invitation list and design your invitation to them.
3. List the major points of information that you want to convey to your audience. When you're done making that
list, then ask yourself, "If everyone in the audience understands all of those points, then will I have achieved the
goal that I set for this meeting?"
4. Be clear about the tone that you want to set for your presentation, for example, hopefulness, celebration,
warning, teamwork, etc. Consciously identifying the tone to yourself can help you cultivate that mood to your
audience.
5. Design a brief opening (about 5-10% of your total time presentation time) that:
a. Presents your goals for the presentation.
b. Clarifies the benefits of the presentation to the audience.
c. Explains the overall layout of your presentation.
6. Prepare the body of your presentation (about 70-80% of your presentation time).
7. Design a brief closing (about 5-10% of your presentation time) that summarizes the key points from your
presentation.
8. Design time for questions and answers (about 10% of the time of your presentation).

Basic Guidelines About Presentation Materials

You might be handing out supplemental materials, for example, articles, reports, etc. along with making your
presentation. You might also be handing out copies of your presentation, for example, handing out copies of your
slides that you will be referencing during your presentation. You might be using transparency slides or showing
slides from a personal computer onto a project screen.
1. If you plan to project your slides from a computer onto a projection screen, then be sure to check out the
computer system before people come into the meeting room, if at all possible.
2. Use a consistent layout, or organization of colors and images, on your materials.
3. If you use transparencies on an overhead projector, then allocate one slide for every 3-5 minutes of your
presentation. Include 5-8 lines of bulleted phrases on each slide.
4. If you provide the supplemental information during your presentation, then your audience will very likely read
that information during your presentation, rather than listening to you. Therefore, hand out this information after
you have completed your presentation. Or, hand it out at the beginning of your presentation and ask them not to
read it until you have completed your presentation.
5. If you hand out copies of your slides, be sure that the text on the slides is large enough that your audience can
read the text on the table in front of them without having to hold the handouts up to their faces. Be sure to leave
space on the handouts for the audience to make notes on them.

Basic Guidelines About Your Delivery

1. If you're speaking to a small group (for example, 2-15 people), then try to accomplish eye contact with each
person for a few seconds throughout your delivery.
2. Look up from your materials, or notes, every 5-10 seconds, to look into the audience.
3. Speak a little bit louder and a little bit slower than you normally would do with a friend. A good way to
practice these guidelines is to speak along with a news anchor when you're watching television.
4. Vary the volume and rate of your speech. A monotone voice is absolutely toxic to keeping the attention of an
audience.
5. Stand with your feet at shoulder-length apart.
6. Keep your hands relatively still.
 Starting a Presentation
In modern English, Presentations tend to be much less formal than they were even twenty years ago. Most
audience these days prefer a relatively informal approach. However, there is a certain structure to the opening of a
Presentation that you should observe.

1. Get people's attention

2. Welcome them
3. Introduce yourself
4. State the purpose of your presentation
5. State how you want to deal with questions

Get people's attention

• If I could have everybody's attention.

• If we can start.
• Perhaps we should begin?
• Let's get started.

Welcome them

• Welcome to Microsoft.
• Thank you for coming today.
• Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
• On behalf of Intel, I'd like to welcome you.

Introduce yourself

• My name's Jane Shaw. I'm responsible for travel arrangements.

• For those of you who don't know me, my name's Tom Stotter.
• As you know, I'm in charge of public relations.
• I'm the new Marketing Manager.

State the purpose of your presentation

• This morning I'd like to present our new processor.

• Today I'd like to discuss our failures in the Japanese market and suggest a new approach.
• This afternoon, I'd like to report on my study into the German market.
• What I want to do this morning is to talk to you about our new mobile telephone system.
• What I want to do is to tell you about our successes and failures in introducing new working patterns.
• What I want to do is to show you how we've made our first successful steps in the potentially huge
Chinese market.

State how you want to deal with questions.

 • If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them as we go along.
• Feel free to ask any questions.
• Perhaps we can leave any questions you have until the end?
• There will be plenty of time for questions at the end.

Of course, these are only suggestions and other language is possible. Even within this limited group of phrases,
just choose a few you feel comfortable with and learn and use those.

Signposting
When we are giving a presentation, there are certain key words we use to ’signpost’ different stages in our
presentation. These words are not difficult to learn but it is absolutely essential that you memorize them and can
use them when you are under pressure giving a presentation.

When you want to make your next point, you ‘move on’.

• Moving on to the next point.

• I’d like to move on to the next point if there are no further questions

When you want to change to a completely different topic, you ‘turn to’.

• I’d like to turn to something completely different.

• Let’s turn now to our plans for next year.

When you want to give more details about a topic you ‘expand’ or ‘elaborate’.

• I’d like to expand more on this problem we have had in Chicago.

• Would you like me to expand a little more on that or have you understood enough?
• I don’t want to elaborate any more on that as I’m short of time.

When you want to talk about something which is off the topic of your presentation, you ‘digress’.

• I’d like to digress here for a moment and just say a word of thanks to Bob for organizing this meeting.
• Digressing for a moment, I’d like to say a few words about our problems in Chicago.

When you want to refer back to an earlier point, you ‘go back’.

• Going back to something I said earlier, the situation in Chicago is serious.

• I’d like to go back to something Jenny said in her presentation.

To just give the outline of a point, you ’summarize’.

• If I could just summarize a few points from John’s report.

• I don’t have a lot of time left so I’m going to summarize the next few points.
To repeat the main points of what you have said, you ‘recap’.

• I’d like to quickly recap the main points of my presentation.

• Recapping quickly on what was said before lunch,……

For your final remarks, you ‘conclude’.

• I’d like to conclude by leaving you with this thought ……

• If I may conclude by quoting Karl Marx …….

Survival Language
In modern English, Presentations tend to be much less formal than they were even twenty years ago. Most
audience these days prefer a relatively informal approach. However, there is a certain structure to the opening of a
Presentation that you should observe.

I got the language for today's lesson from an excellent book by Mark Powell called "Presenting in English ".

If you get your facts wrong.

• I am terribly sorry. What I meant to say was this.

• Sorry. What I meant is this.

If you have been going too fast and your audience is having trouble keeping up with you.

• Let me just recap on that.

• I want to recap briefly on what I have been saying.

If you have forgotten to make a point.

• Sorry, I should just mention one other thing.

• If I can just go back to the previous point, there is something else that I forgot to mention.

If you have been too complicated and want to simplify what you said.

• So, basically, what I am saying is this.

• So, basically, the point I am trying to get across is this.

If you realize that what you are saying makes no sense.

• Sorry, perhaps I did not make that quite clear.

• Let me rephrase that to make it quite clear.

If you cannot remember the term in English.

 • Sorry, what is the word I am looking for?
• Sorry, my mind has gone blank. How do you say 'escargot' in English?

If you are short of time.

• So just to give you the main points.

• As we are short of time, this is just a quick summary of the main points.

A Friendly Face
When you stand up in front of that audience, you’re going to be really nervous.

Poor speakers pay little or no attention to their audience as people. Big mistake.

If you can see your audience as a group of individuals, you’ll be much more likely to connect with those
individuals.

Start looking around your audience. See that big guy with his arms folded and an ‘impress me’ look on his face?
Best not to look at him too much. How about that lady with the big smile, looking encouragingly towards you?
OK, that’s your mother, she doesn’t count. But that other lady with a similar smile is someone you don’t know.
But from now on she’s your ‘friend’. Every time that you need any encouragement, look in her direction. Make
good eye contact. Establish a form of communication between you.

And now you’ve found one ‘friend’, you’ll begin to see others in the audience. Pick out ‘friends’ all round the
room. If you see an ‘impress me’ person and get discouraged, switch your view back to one of your ‘friends’.

Once you are aware that there are people in your audience who want you to succeed, you’ll be much more likely
to succeed.