Mcgraw-Hill - Briefcase Books - ...

Mcgraw-Hill - Briefcase Books - Presentation Skills For Managers (12), SAMOKSZTAŁCENIE, Mcgraw-Hill [Briefcase ...

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
What Makes a
Great Presentation?
title. Is it in the way you create the content? Is it in the way
you put the pieces together? Is it in the way you deliver the
presentation?
I know that you’d agree that there have been times when
you went to a presentation or a company meeting, only to walk
away feeling that it was a total waste of time. It was not a great
presentation. But why?
Actually, a great presentation is a combination of the three
elements: content, design, and delivery. Stay focused and use
what’s presented in this book and you will severely lessen the
chance that your participants will walk away after one of your
presentations with the feeling that it was a total waste of time.
This book was specifically written to help you create a great
presentation.
Content, Design, and Delivery
There are three elements to a great presentation: content, design,
and delivery.
Content
includes the research and organization of
1
M
any people ask themselves the question in this chapter’s
2
Presentation Skills for Managers
Presentation
A visual and aural event intended to com-
municate, for the purposes of providing information, helping
to understand, gaining agreement, and/or motivating to act.
That’s a rough, general definition. Some guides will divide presentations
according to the purpose—motivational, informational, persuasive, and
so forth. Although your purposes should determine many choices that
you’ll make, any presentation requires proper attention to the three
basics: content, design, and delivery.
materials.
Design
is the architecture of the slides and the graphi-
cal enhancements.
Delivery
is how you voice your message. To
make the presentation great, there must be synergy of these
three elements. Each of these elements carries equal weight and
importance. Your presentation will not be great unless you have
all three of these elements.
For example, let’s say you don’t do a good job researching
and organizing your content, but you spend hours designing the
presentation with all the bells and whistles and hours practicing
your delivery. What’s going to happen when you get in front of
your audience? You’re going to run through your presentation and
it won’t be interactive because you don’t know more than what’s
on your slides. Your audience is going to pay attention to the next
sound or wild animation.
When someone asks you
questions, you’re not going
to know the answers,
which will severely hurt
your credibility. The audi-
ence will take little or noth-
ing back from the content
of your presentation and
you will look unprofession-
al as a presenter. By prop-
erly combining content,
design, and delivery, you’ll
create a great presentation!
Know More than
You Show
You should always be ready
to answer any questions that are like-
ly to arise. However, don’t assume
that the members of your audience
will necessarily want or need to know
all that you know. As a friend once
remarked, “It’s not hard to know a lot
of stuff; what’s hard is to know what
stuff to share.” But if you know why
you’re doing the presentation and for
whom, that decision gets a lot easier.
What Makes a Great Presentation?
3
The Process
There is a process to creating that great presentation. First, you
must create your content. Then, you must design for that con-
tent. Finally, you must develop your delivery strategy and style.
Content
There are some key steps to keep in mind when creating your
content. First, you do your research. Then, group the informa-
tion into logical categories. Finally, you create your outline.
(We’ll get into that in Chapter 2.)
Too often presenters
don’t follow those key
steps. The night before a
meeting, they’re cramming
information onto slides try-
ing to create this great
presentation. They may
even be adding items to
their presentation at the
last minute.
To avoid the problems
of late preparation and
last-minute editing, think
of creating the content of
your presentation in terms
of these three steps:
Don’t Wrap It Up
Some people feel that
properly preparing for a
presentation means putting together
a package that cannot change. But
we’ve all attended presentations that
came across as canned.
Put your package together, but
keep alert to any changes in the con-
text of your presentation: new infor-
mation, a shift in mood, a sense of
greater interest or urgency. Don’t
hesitate to adjust your presentation
to make it more effective by being
fresh and current.
1. Do your research.
2. Group your information into logical categories.
3. Create your outline.
Design
Once you’ve outlined your presentation, you’re ready to create
your slides and add graphics, charts, and animation. Chapters
3, 4, 5, and 6 are dedicated to helping you take your presenta-
tion from outline form to a solid complete piece of work.
4
Presentation Skills for Managers
Choosing Software
There are numerous presentation programs on the market,
including free software.You may already have a program on
your computer or your organization may use a certain program, so you
don’t need to choose. If you’ve got a choice, you can read the reviews
in periodicals and on the Web. If you’re unsure, it’s probably wisest to
go with what Gregg Keizer of (
CNET Review
, Oct. 12, 2000) called “the
reigning prince of presentations . . . the presentation standard”—
PowerPoint.
Noting that it’s “slightly pricey,” he recommended for smaller budg-
ets StarOffice Impress, which is free.
I would add that I gave a rating of 5 out of 5 to Astound Presentation
(
Presentations
, November 2000), noting that it contains “pretty much
everything a PowerPoint junky could ever want.”
Although there are other presentation programs (such as
Corel Presentations, Astound Presentation, Sun Microsystem
Impress, and Lotus Freelance), in this book we discuss how to
create your presentation using Microsoft PowerPoint. We show
you how to create the proper slide, when to use images, and the
proper way to use charts. We also offer insights into creating
that great presentation.
Delivery
And finally, there’s the delivery. You need to know the logistics of
your meeting. (We cover that subject in Chapter 7.) You need to
understand how to make the participants retain your message.
(Just because you’re talking and participants appear to be lis-
tening does not mean there is knowledge being transferred from
you to them.) You need to set clear objectives in the presentation
as well as state your expectations for your audience. They need
to find value in your presentation. Your presentation needs to be
such that what you present and how you present it causes a
change in behavior of those who attend the presentation. Maybe
it’s a case of helping them to better understand the long-range
vision of the company; if you can get them to see it in a way that
helps them embrace change, improves morale, and increases
productivity, your presentation has done the job. Chapters 8 and
9 will help you deliver that great presentation that gets results.
What Makes a Great Presentation?
5
Beware the Tyranny of Your Tools
Don’t let your software dictate the content, design, and
delivery of your presentation. In his online article, “The
Tyranny of Presentation Software,” Rick Altman warns that presenta-
tion software “dummies” down good presenters:
“In too many cases, presentation software has detracted from
speeches, not enhanced them. . . .
“Resist. Don’t fall prey to the tyranny. Don’t let the presentation
software take over the presentation. If you’re an experienced speaker,
make sure that the software doesn’t turn you into a robot. If you’re not
experienced, don’t expect the software to save you. . . . Presentation
software is a tool, it is not the art itself. In the hands of an artist, the
tool can do wonderful things. In the wrong hands, it can turn a good
speaker into a bad one, and a bad one into a dreadful one.”
The Situation
Up to this point, we’ve been dealing with presentations in gener-
al. That may be the best way to begin a book on presentations,
but it’s the worst way to begin any presentation—and probably
the best way to fail.
When you decide or find out that you’re going to do a pres-
entation, get all of the details. This advice might seem obvious,
but some people immediately start thinking and/or worrying
about what they’ll do, getting at least one big step ahead of
themselves before they really know where they’re going.
The details that you should get will generally fall into four
categories, which you can remember as the four P’s:
• Purpose
• People
• Point
• Place
Purpose
Why are you doing this presentation? The full answer to that
question is your purpose. And that full answer has two parts.
The first part is your subject area, the
what
of your presen-
tation. What will you be addressing or covering? The proposed
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

zanotowane.pl

doc.pisz.pl

pdf.pisz.pl

sylwina.xlx.pl