Effective presentation skills are vital for most business roles. Many people never master presentation skills. Therefore, you can really set yourself apart from your colleagues by developing strong presentation skills.
Steps to enhance your presentation skills are outlined for inexperienced and semi-experienced presenters below.
What are presentation skills?
Presentation skills refer to the skills you require in delivering effective and engaging presentations to any audience. The skills cover many areas including how to structure a presentation, the ability to design impactful slides, how masterful you are at using and maximizing the effectiveness of your voice, how competent you are at using your body language.
4 steps to enhance presentation skills
Below are 4 proven steps that will take inexperienced presenters from a zero base in presentation skills to a quite high level, provided they put in the work required. Each step is vital and should not be skipped.
Step 1: Prepare what you will say
If you have never had any experience in presenting your work to an audience, the first few times will most likely be really uncomfortable and scary. What could help you greatly is to prepare and structure the key points you want to communicate.
This resembles writing a script. Later, as you will acquire experience in presenting your work, you will no longer need scripts. You can just put together a few bullet points and make sure you cover each point. But as you are building your presentation skills it will be helpful to structure your presentation and add details for each section of your presentation.
However, do not memorize. Instead, internalize.
How to structure your presentation?
This depends on what you are presenting. But some general guidelines are:
- Start your presentation by making an emotional connection with an audience. For example, when I was presenting an opportunity to an international insurance company to start an insurance company in Russia that only targets women I started from talking about the usual role women historically play in Russia. Meaning, that many women are carrying their families forward and are the core of the family unit. Whereas in Western countries women play such roles usually only in single-parent households.
- In the body of your presentation try to focus on communicating 3 most important points. Make sure you acknowledge opposing arguments or competitors. And then conclude why your argument or your company is stronger or in a more advantageous position. And, if that is not the case yet, how you plan to make sure your company has a sustainable competitve advantage.
- At the end of your presentation, you can focus on the call for action. Or if you are pitching a business idea or an opportunity you can consider ending with a positive forecast.
If you are using a powerpoint, make sure your power point slide deck is effective in supporting your presentation. The powerpoint is just a tool. You are the power and you will make the point. We teach FC Insiders how to have an effective powerpoint presentations/slides. The key thing to keep in mind is to make sure you are communicating the main points in the headlines and telling a story through headlines.
Step 2: You cannot enhance your presentation skills without practice
The next thing you need to do is to practice, practice, and practice. Start from practicing alone. Divide the presentation into manageable and logical parts and practice each part separately. Then practice all parts together in the correct sequence.
Make sure you are using your own words each time you are communicating your key points. Follow the structure you created but do not memorize. If you start using the same words (memorizing) you will likely not be able to connect with the audience and you will not be learning presentation skills you need to be successful.
Step 3: Video record yourself and you will notice accelerated improvement in your presentation skills
When you feel you can get through the presentation more or less adequately, start video recording yourself. You can use your computer camera or your cell phone to record yourself. Make sure you video record and not just audio. You need to see yourself so you can identify what you need to correct and how you come across while presenting.
When you will see yourself presenting your work, you may likely notice things that you had no idea you were doing. An example can be noisily clapping your hands together when you are trying to make a point. To avoid embarrassment it is, of course, much better to find out about this problem while you are alone. Since you know that you do particular things with your hands while presenting, you can do something to make the repeated action you are doing impossible. For example, if you are clapping your hands, you can keep one of your hands on your leg and break the habit.
Step 4: Arrange dry run to get your presentation skills another few levels up
After you have videotaped your presentation a few times and noticed a significant improvement in the quality of your presentation, you are ready to set up dry runs. Dry runs are practice presentations to a friendly audience. You can start with your family and, when you are ready, you can ask some of your colleagues to come in for a dry run and afterward give you feedback and make suggestions on how to improve your presentation. After about 5 dry runs you should be ready to give a good presentation.
Body language
We can’t speak about presentation skills without giving some guidelines on body language. When you are presenting a positive, strong body language is crucial to help you connect with the audience, get their attention and build credibility.
Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Make eye contact with one person in the audience at a time. But do not stare.
- Appear confident:
- Maintain good posture. Don’t be tense. Stand tall. Keep your shoulders back, head up as if a string pulls you up from the top of your head. You can also improve your posture by placing a book at the top of your head for a few minutes a few times a day, and walking around, seating without the book falling.
- Make every moment of your presentation purposeful.
- Do not do parallel gestures with both hands. It generally does not look good.
- Do not cross your arms. It is a defensive position and sends the wrong signal to your audience. Instead, keep your arms open and only slightly closed.
- Do not look at your watch or feet. Also, do not look too much at the screen.
- Use your voice effectively to improve your presentation skills.
- Breathe into your stomach (diaphragmatic breathing). How? Here is how to learn to do it. You can do this exercise seating down, standing, or laying down.
- Place one hand on your chest and another on your upper belly, below your rib cage.
- Breathe in slowly through your nose letting the air in towards your lower belly. The hand on your belly should rise and the hand on your chest should stay still.
- As you exhale feel your stomach coming in while your chest remaining still.
- Speak only when your stomach is coming in.
- Ensure there is enough melody in your voice. That your voice is not monotone.
- Make sure you have enough volume in your voice.
- Breathe into your stomach (diaphragmatic breathing). How? Here is how to learn to do it. You can do this exercise seating down, standing, or laying down.
Final thoughts on improving your presentation skills
If you have some experience in presenting your work to an audience, then the preparation steps described above can be shortened in frequency and depth to reflect what you feel is necessary to adequately prepare. However, if you do not feel confident about your presentation skills then it is better to go through all these steps to ensure you are really well prepared.
Presenting your work to an audience can become one of your favorite activities as you gain more experience. It is exciting. It allows you an opportunity to show your competence, intelligence, and reliability. Presenting your work is an opportunity to shine, it is not punishment. You need to embrace it and make the most of it. The proven ideas above are, if followed, will greatly help you in significantly improving your presentation skills, as well as your confidence and effectiveness when engaging an audience.
Articles you may find helpful:
Personal Brand in the Workplace: 6 Ways to Build Yours
The Key to a Sustainable Competitive Advantage in Your Career
Strategic Planning Workshop: 10 Warning Signs
Business Acumen – Step-by-Step Guide to Improve It
Some external resources that you may find helpful in improving your presentation skills:
- Find a local public speaking club through toastmasters International: http://www.toastmasters.org/
- Talking on the Edge: Giving Presentations (psychologytoday.com)
If you want to see samples of our advanced training materials go to FIRMSconsulting.com/promo and sign up for free to receive sample materials.
Recommended books:
Succeeding as a Management Consultant
When people think about the business strategy we often think about the field of strategy consulting/management consulting and firms like McKinsey, BCG, et al. If you are interested in learning how to conduct a management consulting engagement, you will likely enjoy this book. Succeeding as a Management Consultant is a book set in the Brazilian interior. This book follows an engagement team as they assist Goldy, a large Brazilian gold miner, in diagnosing and fixing deep and persistent organizational issues. This book follows an engagement team over an 8-week assignment and explains how they successfully navigate a challenging client environment, develop hypotheses, build the analyses, and provide the final recommendations. It is written so the reader may understand, follow, and replicate the process. It is the only book laying out a consulting assignment step-by-step. A great book if you want to enhance your presentation skills.
Marketing Saves the World, Bill Matassoni’s Memoir
Bill Matassoni’s (Ex-McKinsey and Ex-BCG Senior Partner) Marketing Saves The World is a truly unique book. Never before has a McKinsey partner published his memoir publicly. This book is a rare opportunity – a true exclusive – to see what shapes the thought process of a partner and learn about marketing and strategy. The memoir essentially lays out McKinsey’s competitive advantage and explains how it can be neutralized. A great book if you want to enhance your presentation skills and communication skills.
Turquoise Eyes: A Novel about Problem Solving & Critical Thinking
Turquoise Eyes started off the groundbreaking new genre developed by FIRMSconsulting that combines compelling narrative while teaching problem solving and critical thinking skills. Set after a bank begins implementing a new retail banking strategy, we follow Teresa García Ramírez de Arroyo, a director-general in the Mexican government, who has received some disturbing news. A whistleblower has emailed Teresa with troubling news about a mistake in the loan default calculations and reserve ratios. The numbers do not add up. The book loosely uses the logic and financial analyses in A Typical McKinsey Engagement, >270 videos.
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Cheers, Kris
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