How to Give a Pretty Good Presentation

A Speaking Survival Guide for the Rest of Us

T. J. Walker

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780470597149
• eBook ISBN: 9780470875391
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Meetings & Presentations
• Index: Business

Reduce the time and stress associated with your presentations

Bookshelves are crowded with books on how to be an exceptional presenter and promise to produce a brilliant, standing-ovation speaker. But what about a presentation resource for the rest of us? There are so many of us regular folk who who want to spend just a little time and effort to get over the big hurdle of giving a presentation, but don't know where to turn for advice.

How to Give a Pretty Good Presentation is the easy answer to this common need. Straightforward, entertaining, and well-organized, this user-friendly resource will walk you step-by-step through the process from how to write, rehearse, and deliver a pretty good presentation that will make you appear confident, memorable, and competent. Although it does not promise the moon (or a standing ovation), this public speaking survival guide will help you:

• Appear confident (even while still feeling nervous!)
• Take the spotlight off of you and put it on your content
• Save time
• Not put people to sleep with your PowerPoint Presentation
• Produce better results
• Make better impressions
• Reduce the feelings of dread, sleeplessness, and procrastination associated with your presentations
• Prepare even if you've waited until the day before or an hour before your presentation is to be given

Whatever your job, if you need to give a presentation and are feeling overwhelmed by it, How to Give a Pretty Good Presentation is there for you. If you want to reduce the time and stress associated with your presentations now and pass all future presentation opportunities with flying colors, then pick up this fun and accessible guide; you'll no doubt like the resulting improvement in both your personal and professional bottom line.

Part One

FIRST THING FIRST

1

YOUR INTRODUCTION

Should I Be Introduced Before Giving a
Presentation or Not Introduced at All?

By all means, be introduced—especially if you are talking to more than a couple of people. However, keep the purpose of the introduction in mind: to give people a sense of why they should care about you and what you have to say. The intro should make the audience practically salivate in anticipation of hearing you speak.

Big tip: Don’t let anyone else write or create your introduction; do it yourself.

So how do you write the ideal introduction for yourself? I think the best approach is to create a Venn diagram. In one large circle, write down every single fact about yourself—everything from your resume to your high school honors and so on. Next, write down everything in a circle that could possibly motivate someone in the audience who doesn’t know you to want to listen to you speak on this topic. Finally, list everything in a circle that makes you uniquely qualified to speak on this subject.

Now, look at your Venn diagram and see how many bullet points overlap. Chances are, there’s only about 30 seconds’ worth of material that is genuinely important to both you and your audience, and makes the case for why you are uniquely qualified to talk about it. Thirty seconds is plenty—maybe a minute if you’ve won the Nobel Prize.

Don’t have someone introduce you by listing every award, accomplishment, and degree you’ve ever earned. No one cares, except for your parents, and they already know because they had to foot the bill for everything.

Don’t leave the intro up to chance. Type it out in very large font (18 point or bigger) and hand it to the person introducing you (keep the sentences really short or use bullet points).

If no one is there to introduce you, then do it yourself. Just don’t act embarrassed, and don’t go on too long. Again, stick to the most relevant 30 seconds’ worth of facts following the above criteria; and then get to the meat of the speech.

Long introductions are hard for you to write, hard for the person introducing you to deliver, and hard for the audience to listen to. This really is one of the times where it pays to be concise; now you’ll have more time to talk about what really interests your audience. Chances are that’s your topic—not you.

2

THE TONE

HOW DO I SET THE TONE FOR A PRESENTATION?

Tone, schmone; there is no such thing as a formal or informal presentation! There is no such thing as a technical presentation or a PowerPoint presentation. There are only two kinds of presentations in the entire world: interesting or boring. So which one is yours going to be?

SHOULD IT BE FORMAL OR INFORMAL?

The easiest way to create a boring presentation is to try to be “formal.” This typically means you have removed any and all humor, feeling, examples, stories, and interesting vignettes from your presentation. Why on earth would you want to do that?

You do want your presentation to be “informal” in the sense that you are as interesting and fun and as unpompous as you are when speaking to a friend at a comfortable restaurant. While the topic you’re covering may be serious—say, financing of your company’s new factory—the way you talk can be as informal and friendly as if you were talking about baseball or “Dancing with the Stars” with a friend over dinner.

Formal often means reading a speech. When is the last time you enjoyed listening to someone reading a presentation in front of you? Chances are you had to be carried out of the room on a stretcher because people thought you had died of boredom after about five minutes.

Do not forget to use contractions when you are giving a presentation—or rather, don’t forget to use contractions when giving a presentation. Using contractions will make you seem informal and likeable. Not using contractions will make you seem like a silly, pompous TV sitcom butler who is the butt of jokes and ridicule. Trying to be formal is going to make you uncomfortable; and that’s the last thing you need. I want to make your life easy, and it’s a lot easier to talk in the same informal manner you do with friends and family on a daily basis.

Presenting in an informal manner does not mean being lazy or turning into a slob. It’s not a license to put your feet on the table or wear the old warm-up suit your mother gave you for your birthday nine years ago. You should dress formally if the occasion merits it; but when it comes to speaking, be informal. That means using simple, short words, short sentences, and not being afraid to repeat yourself.

When in doubt about whether to be formal, just remember: you are unlikely to ever, ever hear the following 11 words: “I sure am glad that speaker gave us such a formal presentation.”

3

TAILORING YOUR SPEECH

SHOULD I TAILOR THE SPEECH FOR THE TYPE OF AUDIENCE?

If you simply want to give a pretty good presentation, don’t waste time trying to figure out how to tailor your speech to your audience in terms of stories versus facts. Audiences around the world are all the same: they want stories that involve relevant ideas and facts that affect them. If all you do is present the facts, ma’am, there is an excellent chance your speech will come up short—and be incredibly boring and instantly forgotten.

TELLING PERSONAL STORIES VERSUS JUST THE FACTS

It is true that different audiences will tell you they like different styles as far as facts versus concepts versus stories. Ignore them. You do, however, want to tailor your messages to your audience; so by all means, do some research and find out what messages your audience is interested in, what questions they need answers to, and what problems they have that you might be able to solve. Then give them a presentation that is focused on a handful of messages that are important to them and to you, a story for each, and the most essential relevant facts. I know you’ve heard that one size doesn’t fit all, but in this case, it really does. Messages may differ from audience to audience, but the best way to tailor your speech to an audience really does not change.

Don’t be fooled when people tell you their audience is different because everyone has advanced degrees or are “industry insiders.” Yes, their audience is different because every audience is different; but audiences never differ in the way people think they do. It’s just that certain messages will bore them or interest them in various ways. But audiences are more alike than they are different; and the number one way in which most audiences are alike is that they are easily bored to death by a presenter who tries to “just stick to the facts” and leaves out all of the examples, stories, and vignettes.

4

KICKING THINGS OFF

How Do I Kick Off a Speech? A Joke?
A Personal Story? Help!

The beginning of a presentation is a touchy time. On the one hand, you are feeling nervous and might not be quite sure of yourself yet. On the other hand, the audience is nervous for a different reason: they are worried that you might be about to bore them to death and perhaps they should have brought more reading material, called in sick, or located some cyanide tablets. Everyone—including you—is on edge!

So that’s why people like to start off a presentation with a joke. The only problem is that it’s hard to be funny. My advice? Don’t bother. After all, you aren’t trying to get booked at the local Comedy Cellar on Saturday night; so don’t give yourself all the pressure of trying to be funny on demand. You aren’t a trained seal!

To be a pretty good presenter, you only have to make one decision about the following two options when it comes to starting your speech: (1) Are you going to talk about yourself? Or (2) are you going to talk about something that is remotely interesting to your audience?

If you’re George Clooney, you can talk about yourself and people will find that interesting. However, if you are not a famous movie star, my recommendation is to discuss something of interest to your audience within the first five seconds of opening your mouth.

Most awful presenters spend the first five minutes saying the following boring stuff: “I’m happy to be here; thank you for that wonderful introduction. Here’s what I studied in college, here’s the boring history of my company, here are all the cities my company is in that you don’t care about because you are in this city, here are the 14 points I’m going to cover in my presentation today (and since I will cover them later you don’t have to pay attention now), and the bathrooms are down the hall and on the right. Have you fallen asleep yet?

To be a pretty good presenter, all you have to do is focus your attention on your audience instead of yourself at the beginning of a presentation. Imagine if you started a presentation with, “I was just in the hallway talking to Jim and he said ‘TJ, I’ve just lost my best customer because he says my prices are too high. What can I do?”’ That might not be a brilliant opening to a speech, but it’s pretty good, and here’s why:

1. Jim is listening because I’ve mentioned him by name.

2. Everyone else can relate to a problem that one of their colleagues has; and so now they are listening.

3. Everyone is surprised that this is the first thing out of my mouth because they expected me to stare down at notes and go through the usual clichés of being happy to be there and so on.

4. I appear to be supremely confident because I seem to be speaking off-script and ad-libbing (even though the opening was planned).

Let’s say you don’t get to the room in time to ask anyone a question in advance. That’s okay. When you start your presentation, begin by asking everyone a question and see what responses you generate. Again, you won’t seem like you are starting with boring, canned clichés, so you’ll seem pretty good in comparison to most speakers. Just make sure that the questions you ask your audience are real questions and not just cheap gimmicks to get people to raise their hands. I can’t stand it if a speaker starts off a presentation by asking, “How many of you would like to make more money and work fewer hours each week?” Well, who wouldn’t? Duh! Questions like this are insulting because they come across as manipulative and don’t seem designed to generate thoughtful answers.

As long as you can think of one interesting question for your audience or have one interesting fact or message for them, you will always have a pretty good beginning to your presentation.

5

THE GAME PLAN

Should I Outline the Key Points of My
Presentation to My Audience?

No—why make it harder on yourself if you forget a point? If you never tell your audience all the points you are going to cover in advance, then they will never know if you left one out. Plus, you will never feel pressure to remember your point number 12 from some complex outline. Sure, there are some world-class speakers like Apple’s Steve Jobs who believe that you should always outline for your audience. However, if your audience isn’t writing down everything you say word for word—and that rarely happens—then outlining your presentation doesn’t help them or you.

My recommendation is for you to just focus on making one point at a time; this is easy for you and your audience. When you finish with one point—by giving examples, telling stories, and the like—then move to the next point. After you have finished covering the handful of most important points you wanted to cover, sit down. You will have given a pretty good presentation.

6

REVENGE OF THE NERVES

WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO HANDLE ...

Table of contents

• Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One - FIRST THING FIRST
• Part Two - THE PRESENTATION
• Part Three - TIPS, TRICKS, AND OTHER SAGE ADVICE
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• PRESENTATION NOTES