EFFECTIVE PRESENTATION SKILLS

THE AUDIENCE
&
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
The actual time that you spend presenting your material should only be a tiny fraction of
your total input for your presentation. The more prepared you are before the presentation
itself, the better the presentation will be. The best way to start, before you even think
about the contents of your talk, is to consider the audience. These are the people who will
ultimately decide if you were good or bad or if your talk was effective or ineffective.

HOW MUCH DO I KNOW ABOUT MY AUDIENCE?

How many will be there?
The number of people that you will be talking to is crucial in deciding, how you will
prepare your talk
a)
b)

The visual aids you will use for a small group will be inappropriate for a
large one and vice versa
It will also determine how you will pitch your voice

How well do they know me?

a)
b)

Some people who know you well will be an asset. A group of close friends
or colleagues are going to be very sympathetic towards you ( assuming
you have not bored them to tears at some stage in the past)
Strangers, on the other hand , need to be convinced at a very early stage
that you are going to be interesting to listen to

What does my audience think of me as a speaker?

a)
b)

People who have not heard you speak before are likely to be giving you
the benefit of doubt, which will probably last about 02 minutes. So your
first words must be ear grabbing,
If you had messed up last time it is important that you demonstrate right
away that you can do it well. The more confident you look and sooner you
get down to some nice visual or say something interesting, you make your
audience relax.

c)

If you audience do know you and has heard you before and it went OK,
then they are going to be more receptive this time

What is their working relationship with me?

a)

b)

c)
d)

Boss. If you blast your bosses with technical jargons, you may impress
them or you may just make them feel small. On the other hand do not try
to talk down to them if what you have to say is very technical and out of
their field Your problem here is very complex one
Peers. Your peers in your organization will have a different set of attitudes,
depending upon the prevailing atmosphere. You must judge this situation
carefully. If you make colleagues look small they will be looking for ways
to respond in kind
Subordinates: They also need to feel that they are important and that you
are not wasting their time
A mix. A mix audience with bosses, peers and subordinates is difficult.
Unless you have very good staff relations, every one may feel constrained
by the presence of bosses and it will be up to you to try and reduce the
tension in the atmosphere with stepping on any ones shoes

How well do they know my subject area?

a)
b)

c)

The answer to this question will determine just how much you can put in
to your speech and how much technical jargons you can use
If you find out that your audience know more about the general area than
you do, research your topic carefully and prepare yourself for their
questions by thinking in advance or getting some one who understands
your field and then prepare the answers to anticipated questions.
Also be prepared to say dont know answer. It sounds much better than
trying to bluff your way out

What languages do they speak and how well?

a)
b)

Code Switching. It is changing to a different dialect for certain

expressions. You should only do this if you can be sure that you are talking
to people who will recognize the switch and appreciate the humor of it.
Being able to say a few words in the native language of your audience ,
will guarantee a warm response

What were they doing before I start speaking?

a)

Eating. The worst thing your audience can do before you speak is to eat a
heavy meal. Try to organize things to avoid such happenings. A sleepy
audience will not give you any trouble but as they gradually nod off,
youll feel terrible. If there is no way avoiding it then try to arrange your

b)

presentation and make sure that seating arrangements do not allow your
people to hide at the back and snore peacefully,
Listening to a fascinating speaker. A fascinating speaker is difficult to
follow except with something equally but differently dynamic. Or suggest
to organizers to change the running order so the brilliant speaker performs
last

What subjects should I avoid?

The topic of male superiority, for example, to a group of feminists certainly needs to be
avoided. If you have carefully found out about your audience, you will be able to think
this one through and avoid any blunders.
If your talk is to the people within your organization, you can find out about them easily.
The secretaries of people from outside the organization will be able to help you.
Professional speakers send out questionnaires to their expected audience. Chatting with
your audience before you present is also very good way of finding out who is who and
what their attitudes are. Arrive early to find more about them.

RESEARCHING YOUR ENVIRONMENT

It is important to be aware of the effect on your audience of where they are when you
address them. A good working environment is just as important for a presentation as for
listening. In most of the cases you probably wont be able to choose from where you
make your speech but once you know where it is , you must go and look at it before you
begin your plan. Many of the environments features will influence your plan:
Size.
Is it big enough or too small. Is there any way of making it smaller if need be, perhaps
with screens or by arranging furniture
Noise.
Try to have a look at the room during the day and in the week when you will be making
your presentation. A quiet room on Sunday is not necessarily the same 24 hours later.
Facilities
Make a note of where the power points are and what equipment will be available to you.
Also find out where the light switches are, particularly if you need to dim the lights for
your talk

Furnishing
The audience has anything to write notes on? Will there be tables or just chairs? Are the
chairs moveable and can you arrange these in your preferred layout. Lot of rows facing
the speaker allow those at the back to nod off. One or two semi circles with your
equipment in the center is a useful plan
If your audience is sitting at tables, a conference style lay out will place you at the head.
This type of layout helps in involving your audience more as compared to other layouts.
If you have to stand behind a lectern , two third of you will be hidden and your audience
will have a crick in their neck. Try to avoid all formal arrangements wherever possible.
Your best arrangement is a table that you can hide behind if your knees start to give way.
Grip it if your hands are shaking and lean against as you relax. You can also keep your
notes on it.
Temperature
I a hot climate a stuffy room will put people to sleep and a cold one will set them
shivering. Each case is enough for them to have an excuse to leave. If you can not control
the temperature ( stuffy or cold) , at least let your audience know that you are ware of it.

PUTTING IT TOGETER
Collecting your thoughts:
The first question you must ask to yourself is why you are giving this talk. Whatever the
reason may be, if you discover that you really have nothing to say then the presentation
should not be given.
While collecting your thoughts for putting it together, give your talk a working title.
This can be changed as you become more focused on your ideas but for now , it should
form a focal point for you to get all your ideas down.
The following 10 steps will help to collect all your ideas prior to shaping them into your
final, expert and fluent talk:
First Stage-10 steps:
Decide on the subject of your talk: This will give you a very broad starting point
Choose the theme of your talk
Choose the purpose of your talk: It might either be providing information or persuading
your audience on your theme. In the first case you will be presenting a set of facts and in
the second case your arguments need to be persuasive
Try to fix on the point of your talk: This is the reason why you have agreed to give a
talk- because there is something you wish your audience to know about or believe in ,
after they have heard you.
Having focused your ideas on the point, ( where you know why you are going to give a
talk, what you want to convince your listener about) the next step is to become as
unfocused as you possibly can.
Write down every thing that you think might be relevant to your topic. Do not write
your ideas neatly in the list. The problem with list is that it they tends to impose its own
order on your work. Just think it long will it take you to collect all your groceries in a
super market if you are following the order of your shopping list.
A better way is to take a blank sheet of paper and write your point in the middle of it.
As ideas come to you, write them down around your point, joining each new point to the
original (Spider Diagram)
Tree Diagram: As each idea suggests new one, you can link them together in an ever
expanding tree diagram

Write down every thing you can think of, no matter how trivial or silly: You can
always edit them later but it is much more difficult to remember them later if you do not
write them down now
Begin you research: When your ideas stop flowing , put your piece of paper aside and
begin your research. Your brain storming will have made you realize just what you know
about the subject and will probably have made you think of areas where you need to
consult colleagues or some books. Give yourself time to read around the subject, jotting
down ideas or useful facts/figures as you read.
Give your self a break from note taking: You will find yourself thinking about your talk
without intending to and you may be able to get your ideas together better if you are
relaxed. Good ideas may suggest themselves when you are washing up or traveling to
work. Keep a note book handy to record your brain waves when ever they suggest
themselves. Reading a newspaper or a novel often suggests something which you can
use.
Collection. Collect all your pieces of paper and read these through., trying to find links
between your points. Do not start putting them in order yet. Instead write down any new
thoughts that come to you.
Second Stage-03 Steps:
It is now time to move on to the second stage of getting your ideas together. Your original
ideas, notes and brain waves must be put together in a coherent whole. To do this you
must:
Pick out about 05 points: You may find out that you have more main points than 05 but
you must remember that your audience will only be willing or able to grasp a few points
at a time. Fewer than 05 points will be better because it will allow you to concentrate on
each one fully. The best way of doing this is by going through every thing that you have
accumulated and then grade the material into:
Essential facts which your audience must have,
Information which they should have,
Material which it would be nice for them to know but which is not essential
Write each main point on a new sheet of paper and collect around it all the other points
you have made which are relevant or supporting
Each of these points must be put into an order of importance: They should support,
illustrate or explain the main point.
You may at this stage find out that some points do not fit in anywhere in that case they
might need to be left out. What you are left with are 02 to 05 groups of points which are
going to form the main body of your presentation.

THE BODY OF YOUR TALK

It is this part of your talk, the body, which you must develop first. There are several
structures that you may find useful. Which one you choose will depend upon what your
talk is about and what effect you want to have on your audience.
The 4Ps:
This structure useful for short talks where you have asked to look at a particular problem
and come up with a solution.
Position: In this section you explain the position of your company as regards to the topic
of your talk. If for example, you have been asked to research and suggest a new word
processing system, this section of your talk will explain the current position in your firm
i.e. how documents are being written at the moment
Problem: In this section you would outline what is wrong with the current system and
what you have been asked to do about it. Add some more details about budget, the
difficulties of staff training and any limitations caused by particular machines etc.etc.
Possibilities: Here you will give a brief outline of the available systems and their
advantages and disadvantages. This section will put forward all the possible solutions to
the problem
Proposal/s: Having outlined the possibilities, you would go on to suggest the possible
solutions, enlarging upon the benefits to be gained from your proposal.
ATIME LINE: This is probably the simplest structure for a presentation. It will be useful
for talks that give a summary of a project, the history of some aspects of your work or a
schedule of some kind. You start at the earliest event and move forward in time till you
get to the present.
PROS & CONS: This falls naturally in two halves- ideas or points that support your
proposal and those that work against it. Alternatively , you can match a pro with a con
and discuss them together
MOST IMPORTANT-LEAST IMPORTANT: You start off with the most important
and relevant and work your way down to the least relevant. This structure, of course-can
be used the opposite way- giving the bad news first and good news last, so you leave your
audience with good points ringing in their ears rather than bad ones.
In addition to the basic structure of your talk, you must also think about including the
following:

Signposts: Putting signposts in your talk, particularly, if it is a long one helps audience to
know where you are taking them. A signpost may be a sentence inserted at regular
intervals throughout your talk whose only purpose is to sum up and point the way
forward. They can not signs on the express way which only point forward. They must
explain why that what you are saying is related to what you have said and what you are
going to say.
Analogies: An analogy is a situation which is parallel to the one you are taking about that
in some way helps to make what you are saying clearer. An example of analogy might be
to compare a nation with human body. Each part of a body depends for its health on the
other parts of the body functioning properly. In the same way the smooth running of a
country depends on each organ of the community doing its part.
Wordplay: When you made an initial plan of your points you isolated certain number of
points (say 04) that you thought were the key ideas in your talk. If you want your
audience to remember them, a clever way of doing so is to turn them into an acronym.
For example TIPS.
Examples & Illustrations: Like analogies, examples particularly if hey are well known
to your audience are very useful way of getting your points across.
Humor: If you have not broken the ice in the first couple of minutes you are dead. How
often you have heard that said? It probably isnt that desperate but a certain amount of
humor certainly helps the time slip by and keeps your audience happy. People are more
likely to leave in a good mood and remember what you said if you made them relaxed a
little.
Anecdote: The dictionary defines anecdote unpublished details of history & narrative
of detached incidents. A very good way of relating to your audience is to give them a
little bit of your own life to think about. Assuming, of course, that is related to your topic.
INTRODUCTION & CONCLUSIONS:
Tell them what you are going to tell them
Tell them
Tell them what you have told them
Introduction is important because this part of your talk will convince your audience that
you are worth listening to. You should always write your introduction after you have
written the main body of your talk. Finalizing the main body will provide you with clear
idea of what to include in the introduction.
Useful TIPS when you are writing your introduction:

T
I
P
S

Thank you, to organizers, audience and the speaker before you, if any
Identification , a little background detail of yourself
Purpose ,What you intend to tell or persuade them to believe in
Structure, outline exactly how do you intend to do your persuading or
present facts including a break down of each section and indication of its
length of time and at what stage you will answer their questions

Conclusion

is slightly more complex matter. They should always be a little more than
the sum of the parts. A new point, change in style or visual aid could be a
good way to mark your conclusion.

EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY

Badly produced slides/transparencies or charts will reflect badly on you. You may have
made them beautifully but if you do not use them effectively, the effect on your
presentation will still be adverse. It is therefore, imperative that you know how to prepare
and use your visual aids.
Make it simple:

Written slides should contain no more than 05 or 06 lines

Visual aids should never be long descriptions & contain every thing that you want
to say
Simple illustrations and sentences will drive home you point far more effectively

Make it Graphic:

A picture tells a thousand words, so turn your material into pictures. The graphic
picture conveys the message much more effectively than just words,
An over crowded pie chart or bar chart is just as incomprehensible as too much
text,

USING YOUR VISUAL AIDS:

Use it to reinforce: It should be a back up to what you are saying. It is not a series of lists
of things that you want to say. Visual aids should never be a distraction or a substitute for
you
Use it to Orientate: It is for orientation of your audience to tell them what you have done
and going to do. One useful slide is of the outline of your talk shown in the beginning of
your talk. It can be re-used during the talk as you go on to each new point so audience
can see where they have been and where they are going.
Use it to startle: Keep in mind the attention span of your audience. A good way to try
and counteract the low attention point is a startling visual just as they are nodding off.
Make it Visible: A wrongly placed visual can ruin your talk. You must try to find a
sensible balance between you, the audience and the visual aid.

SOME DONTS:
Do not use it as a sanctuary: Many nervous speakers use visuals for taking attention
away from themselves. Consequently their voice is lost and points are not made
effectively.
Do not leave it on when not in use: If you have a long spell of talking to do, switch it off
or leave the blank slide on. This way you can have your audiences full attention
Do not fiddle with the equipment: Your audience will stop listening to you and watch
what you are doing instead
Similarly with flip charts, it is useful to have a blank page at appropriate stage of your
presentation to turn to for those moments when you want your audience to focus on you.
With a white board, erase information after it has been used.
BODY TALKS:
You now know about your audience, you have kept your backside on a chair for along
time and you have made your notes but you are forgetting one creature that will be with
you in the room where you will be making your presentation. This creature will also be
communicating with your audience. You must learn to tame and control this creature to
make your presentation effective.
It is, of course, your body. It can communicate the most awful things with you knowing
it. A single piece of body language has very little significance but it tells a lot about how
speaker is feeling when it comes in clusters.
Scratching your head: It may mean you have an itchy head or you are nervous if you
scratch your head repeatedly
Adjusting your tie/cloths: Again, used once it may mean you cloths are making you feel
uncomfortable and need adjusting. Used repeatedly is a sign of nervousness
Fiddling with your hands: It is harmless in itself but in a cluster of other nervous
gestures, it will make your audience uneasy
Keeping your hands in pockets: It can have an odd effect on your audience too. Done
too casually, it make you seem over relaxed, Jammed down in your pockets, makes you
look tense as if you have something to hide. If your pockets are awkwardly placed, like in
front of your jeans, you will draw attention to a part of your body which may have
nothing to do with your topic

Perspiration: It may tell your audience that you are feeling hot and uncomfortable.
Added to the other signs of nervousness, the over all picture to your audience can be very
funny
Arms across you chest: It is very secretive and defensive gesture as if you do not trust
your audience and would like to put up a barrier between them and yourself
Pointing fingers: Your hand gestures tell the audience a lot about you. Many people have
learned the lesson the hard way that a pointing finger is very aggressive gesture, no
matter how mild the statement accompanies it. Hand on the hips is another aggressive
gesture, particularly in our part of the world.
EEFECTIVE BODY LANGUAGE:
Open Palms: This has done wonders for many people. An open palm means that you
have nothing to hide. It communicates to the listeners look- I am telling you the truth
Other gestures: Outstretched arms show how big the dimension that you are describing.
Eye contact:

Eye contact is important because it tells your audience a lot about you. Looking at
the floor will distance you from your audience and makes them feel that you are
shifty, may be a liar.

Picking on a one poor soul to look at will make him/her nervous and other people
feel left out

Making an eye contact that is too brief will also frustrate your audience and make
them feel isolated

A Good Set Of Rules To remember is to look carefully around at all your audience
and make eye contact with as many people as possible. This should definitely be
done as you begin your presentation.

Spend 1-3 seconds on eye contact with each person

Make sure that people at the edges of the room particularly those on your left and
furthest away get as much eye contact as rest of the audience. The circular seating
arrangements is particularly useful for it.

Never let your contact be focused on the screen . It is the audience that you need
to make contact with.

ON THE DAY- DEALING WITH YOUR NERVES

Your hands are sweating, knees feel like jelly, throat feels like it being strangled, you
keep on fiddling with your tie and your fly is undone. What do you do?
1. Do not get into such state in the first place: There is no need to feel
this way. You are well prepared and knowing that you are in control,
helps.
2. Using a table: A table to stand behind is a wonderful tool for nervous
speakers. It covers a very small portion of your body so there is a
small barrier between you and your audience. It can also be used to
rest your notes and leaves your hands free for positive gestures. It also
helps to hide your shoe shuffle until you calm down .Audience will not
be able to see your knees knocking.
3. A little exercise: A useful exercise just before you enter the room for
your presentation is to tense every muscle of yours as hard as you can,
starting from your feet and working slowly upwards till you get it up
to your head. Hold the tension till it hurts and then let it go
4. An opening joke: An opening joke helps but please do not announce
how nervous you are. It does not help.
5. Introductory remarks. : If you feel nervous, learn your introductory
remarks by heart ( Memorize few Sentences). This will give you time
to relax
6. Avoid sitting: Try to avoid sitting before your turn.
7. A drink: If all else fails, a large drink helps- but only one. A cold glass
of water is a better substitute.

SMILE: You will notice that with good eye contact your audience will tend to copy
your gesture. If you smile they will be forced to smile back.