Effective presentation skills: How to develop

Presentation skills are important for university assessments, group-work, interviews and later in your job. Learn how to plan and prepare for your presentation, how to deliver your presentation, and identify what makes good/bad presentations.

Why Improve Your Presentation Skills

Effective presentation skills are required in college as well as in the corporate world.

Without effective presentation skills, it is difficult to progress in leadership roles.

As a leader, it is vital that you can manage a team and attend meetings where you’re expected to present ideas. If you want the opportunity to work with professional employers you will need to develop better presentation skills.

Delivering Your Presentation

Before you start any presentation, you must think about:

• what you want to achieve
• your audience
• length of the presentation
• time available for preparation

The various stages of delivering a presentation include:

1. Planning
2. Structure
3. Delivery
4. Reflection

Planning

Preparation is the key because presenting tests more than just public speaking skills.

You need to be organised, be clear on your objectives, and you must know your subject area.

To prepare, you must:

• Brainstorm
• Research your topic
• Organise your material
• Rehearse your presentation
• Prepare your visual aids
• Summarise your draft

Structure

Next you must work on the Structure and Organising the content.

The Introduction:

• Capture your listeners’ attention
• State your purpose
• Present an outline of your talk (introductory slide about the aims of your presentation etc.)

The Body

• Main points one by one in logical order
• Pause at the end of each point
• Make it absolutely clear when you move to another point (signpost)

The Conclusion

• Clear summary of everything you have covered
• Summarise the main points
• Restate the purpose of your talk, and say that you have achieved your aim
• Thank the audience, and invite questions

Delivering your presentation

• Prepare: Not just your presentation check if you have the required equipment, props, handouts
• Talk to your audience
• Use notes, cue cards or overheads as prompts
• Be confident, show your knowledge

Use your voice to communicate clearly:

• Speak clearly
• Don’t rush
• Use pauses
• Key words are important

Use your body as well to communicate:

• Stand straight and comfortably
• Hold your head up
• Look around and make eye-contact with people in the audience
• Use your hands
• Don’t turn your back on the audience

Reflection

Reflecting after a presentation is important for learning and to improve your presentation skills.

You must reflect over:

• What went well and why?
• What could have been better?
• What will you change for next time and how?

How to Improve Your Presentation

An excellent presentation will be professional and make use of a range of audio-visual materials to support the main points being made.

The presentation should be coherent, clear, and concise. Slides should be simple and uncluttered and there should be an appropriate structure to the presentation as a whole.

The presentation should include the slides themselves and the notes a speaker would use to explain and amplify the contents of each slide. The notes should support the contents of the slide effectively and allow any presenter to add to and amplify the points on the slide.

Related: PowerPoint Tutorials to help you create impressive presentations.

The content should be an effective summary of your thoughts/findings and should focus on the analysis and evaluation with relatively brief descriptive coverage of the topic.

Non-verbal communication

Non-verbal communication also plays an important part in effective presentation. Audiences are generally impressed with speakers’:

• Enthusiasm
• Energy
• Establishing eye contact
• Standing tall and gesturing appropriately
• Being and looking confident

Reflection of a Student

I first became aware of my weak presentation skills in college. Within my business administration course we had to do a presentation about customer service skills. My teacher gave me feedback stating that the presentation I had produced was distinction standard, however, my presentation skills needed improvement regarding clear speaking , less information on the slides and more hand gestures to engage the audience in and to portray myself in a confident manner. This was an eye-opener from this moment I knew that needed to improve my presentation skills. The potential was there with well structured and high quality information; however, I did not have the confidence to support my excellent power point that I had produced.

I then progressed onto my second course in which I carried out two more presentations. I feel that I was less nervous than I was in the previous year although I still felt there was large room for development. I felt that in order for me to perform professionally within a presentation then I really needed to get to the bottom of my confidence and public speaking issue when delivering presentations in the aim of moving forward and develop these skills.

I took it upon myself to participate in carrying out a self – audit material called; Presentation skills audit. This involved me reading certain statements and rating them from one to seven; one meaning not comfortable and seven meaning very comfortable. It was clear after reflecting on this audit material that I am not comfortable in general with giving presentations in front of a group, for obvious reasons this is linked to my confidence. It is clear in terms of delivery and the theory part of the presentation I am very comfortable, This is because I am good at theory, I am creative and I am good at adding relevant information to slides. The only down side that is visible with my presentation skills is that when it comes to delivering presentations or regarding how much impact the presentation has on the audience that marks are lower.

This shows that I need to really work on these aspects of my presentations as presenting and being able to have an impact on the audience is a major part of the aim of any presentation. If you can have a positive impact on the audience then it will be positive and effective presentations. I clearly need to work on my presentation weakness to become more employable.

My main issue with presentations is my weakness in communication in front of a large group or when I am under pressure. If I develop my presentation skills it will help with my confidence and improve it.

Presentation skills will be needed in the corporate world, when in business meetings or just presenting in front of your department. I need to improve my presentation weakness as within business it is a major way of communicating to a lot of people and getting them interested in what you on behalf of the company have to say.

Smart Targets to Improve Presentation skills

• I am going to carry out various presentations at University. I am going to carry out two Presentations every month.
• I am going to practise doing presentations in front of my friends and family. I will do this once every two weeks.
• I am going to watch Presentation Skills Training with Executive Speech Coach Patricia on YouTube. I am going to do this for an hour every Monday evening.
• I am going to carry out Internet research about how I can improve my Presentation skills. I will do this for half hour; Wednesday, Thursdays and Fridays.
• I am going to join a presentation skills work shop in the student centre twice every 2 weeks.

I will review my progress every two months and my overall concluding review will take place on (mention date).