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Presentation Skills Training Course - Theatre of Learning Drama based training

Presentation Skills

ted Learning Theatre of Learning drama based training
I travel around various organisations supporting people who want to get better at presenting. Some are presenting for the first time; others are experienced presenters but want to be more engaging or have more impact when they communicate to others.

This blog is designed to help anyone who is going to present any type of information or message to someone else.

Here are our top tips for delivering an engaging, fun and impactful presentation.

There is nothing worse than the absolute fear that overwhelms some people when they have to stand up and present – sweaty palms, pulse racing, can’t focus, worried they will forget key points. It’s also no fun being on the receiving end of this – quickly realising this will be an uncomfortable presentation and hoping it’s not a long one.

90% of people believe that a strong narrative in a presentation is critical for engagement.

Follow these simple steps and we believe you will be on the road to deliver a presentation that engages your audience.

Firstly, think about your BRAND. What do we mean by this? Well everyone has a brand or style they want to be known for. Do you want your brand to be formal, informative, to the point? Do you want your brand to be funny, pacey, quirky, innovative? There is no right or wrong brand – just the style that suits YOU and your personality.

Brand YOU

Some presenters are confident walking around the stage with no notes, no slides and deliver and excellent presentations but that style wouldn’t work for everyone and this is why it’s so important to first think of your brand – where do you comfortably sit? Don’t try to be someone else’s’ brand – be the brand that works for you and it will work.

Consider these points:

  • How do you want to come across to the audience that you are presenting to?
  • And… what are the personality / character traits that you want the audience to see?

 

Once you have decided on your brand, you need to create an impactful presentation that lives up to AND delivers it. There is no such thing as a boring subject; just boring delivery.

I once sat through a 10 minute presentation from the sock buyer of a large department store chain and it was one of the best presentations I ever saw. I also sat in on a product launch for a product I was REALLY excited about, and it was flat, generating no excitement with the presenter monotone throughout. You may be able to identify with both of those scenarios. So you see the subject isn’t the key – its HOW you sell it to the audience.

This begins with designing the presentation. More often than not, people open PowerPoint and start creating slides – no prior thought process, just slide one followed by a new slide, then another new slide. And this is repeated until they feel they have covered all the relevant points. People then tend to learn the PowerPoint slides and this becomes the entire presentation.

We suggest using the spidergram approach – list the key objective in the centre and from that the points you want to deliver to the group and then start to split off from each one with how you will deliver it and what level of detail you will go into.

So what will the audience remember?

The audience will walk away remembering 3 to 4 parts of your presentation so the structure is key and ensuring the points remembered are the same points you wanted.

We recommend the TELL THEM TELL THEM TELL THEM approach

Things to consider when you are designing: –

  • Do you want the audience to know specific information or learn a particular skill?
  • Do you want them to take specific action as a result of the presentation?
  • Do you want them to agree with your position on a particular matter?
  • Do you want them to buy from you?
  • Why are you giving the presentation?
  • What do you want or need the presentation to achieve?
  • What do you want the audience to be doing differently as a result of your presentation?
  • A helpful approach is to think “I want to tell them about “THIS” so they feel like/do “THIS”

Once you have all your key points, think about a logical order for them to create the structure of the presentation.

TELL THEM

I mentioned earlier the TELL THEM model.

Our first TELL THEM is to signpost what the presentation is about or how it’s structured. The second TELL THEM relates to the content – you are now telling them what they need to know. The final TELL THEM is the closer – the summary and your chance to reinforce any key messages so that the 3-4 points are remembered.

So we have focused on structure in this part of our blog.

Aids to support your presentation

Let’s look at any aids we might use to deliver it. PowerPoint, Keynote or Prezzi are the most common.

Our top tips are to keep the slides simple. Light background with dark coloured text. Avoid red text as this isn’t good for certain forms of dyslexia.

Avoid using sounds and don’t overuse custom animation – I remember sitting through a presentation once that had the sounds of a firing gun for each bullet point and each bullet point came from a different direction – just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Visual aids are there to tease and support – they shouldn’t BE the presentation – if you can read everything off the screen and have a full understanding, why is there a presenter presenting. Make your slides cryptic, you want the audience to NEED you to interpret what is on the screen.

Don’t write in complete sentences – use single words or numbers if possible – this prompts you on the point you want to make and gives the audience something to focus on but doesn’t give them the whole picture.

If you are doing a financial presentation, avoid having lots of data or graphs on the screen – its too much info and can never be seen from the back of the room – handouts are better.

Remember – slides are there to indicate what you are speaking about, to prompt you as the speaker and to give the audience something visually stimulating whilst they listen to you.

So we have covered the content and the visual aids. Next its about HOW you deliver it

How to deliver your presentation

The circle of communication is a great tool to help you consider the impact.

7% of how we communicate is the words we say – so they need to be focused and important words – no filling with mm and er or basically. Keep the words focused.

38% is through our tone – this is where we need to consider the speed, pitch, volume and variation in how we deliver to ensure we keep the audience interested. We all know that monotone is a major turn off for the audience but there are lots of other aspects of voice that can have a significant impact on how well we are heard.

Finally 55% when delivering face to face is through our bodylanguage – this is where APPEARING confident is so important – we might not feel it, but we can understand what confident looks like and ensure we do our best to fake it…. Great eye contact with the entire audience, smiling, and owning our space will fill the audience with confidence in our ability and knowledge around our subject matter.

Remember, no one comes to a presentation or briefing HOPING it’s going to be terrible – people want the person to be confident and come across well. Knowing this means we can focus on delivering this to our audience. Keep thinking of your BRAND and making sure you stay true to its values. If you want to be confident, considered and knowledgable you can do this standing in one spot – you don’t need to move around the stage. Some great presenters never move and some bad presenters walk around – some even dance onto the stage!

Our Presentation Skills Course is designed for those wanting to deliver more engaging, more effective presentations. We use actor based techniques to deliver engaging and interesting (confident!) presentations.
Katherine Mount ted Learning Actor and Trainer - Theatre of Learning Drama based training
Katherine Mount

Katherine has been part of the ted Learning team since the very beginning. She started as one of our lead actors and moved into training 3 years ago, becoming an expert in Equality & Diversity and Inclusion training. She also leads on our Presentation Skills training and works with several of our clients delivering this product.

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