Presentation skills
At some time or other every intranet manager has to do a presention. All those stakeholders and vested parties demand it. If like me, you’re one of life’s introverts, you dread these moments, even perhaps avoiding them. In fact I wouldn’t be suprised if the number one reason some intranets do not have a senior stakeholder is due to the fear, and hence avoidance of having to present to said stakeholder.
Worst still we sign up to seminars with intranet guru’s or watch Youtube or TED videos of great orators, and wonder why we can’t give great presentations just like them. There is a reason these people get paid to speak, they’re good at it. They’re professionals. Us mere wanna be amateurs can’t copy these guys, but we can learn from them.
Make the presentation for your audience, not for yourself
It’s easy to start off on the wrong foot and ask the question, ” What do I want to say?” but you need to ask the question, “What do my audience want from this?” Maybe they’re Finance people, interested in data and stats, maybe they’re creative types who want ideas and themes, not raw data. If you figure out what you audience want, then you can decide how to frame your topic for them.
Tell ‘em what you told ‘em
I always remember the ”tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them.” approach. This usually results in an effective presentation because you end up keeping things pretty simple.
Three is a magic number:
I was once told that using a triad in a presentation is useful:
- it adds structure
- sounds right
- gets remembered.
Tell a story:
Like my dad always used to say, a picture paints 1000 words and a story can help paint a picture. Most content of presentations is boring, heavy duty work stuff. Adding a story adds an emotional element slides of data can never give you. Oh, and the story should related to the topic at hand, not just be a story. All good stories have a beginning, a middle and an end.
Powerpoint is not the message
It’s easy to get excited when creating a presentation with lots of colors and crazy animated, but, if the video above shows us anything, it’s that these can really distract from the presentation itself. Powerpoint is not the message, people are here to listen to what you say, not judge your choice of fonts. Try jotting the story down on paper first, what do you want each slide to say. Only then should you move over to powerpoint and build the slides. Keep it simple and use a template.
And finally, don’t forget to proof your slides.
Useful reading:
