What are presentation skills?
The ability to deliver information whilst keeping the listener engaged. These skills are useful in many different areas such as work, public speaking and of course presentations.
So how do you start? The Presentation should begin with planning and preparation, or you’ll run into the 5 P’s which stand for “Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance” and no one wants that to happen.
To fully understand the subject there are a few things you must do, so let’s dive into Research, Organisation, Delivery, and Analysis.
Presentation Skills
Research
Firstly, let's start with research as ideally you want to know what you’re speaking about, this will help you store key information and be able to relay it when necessary. You can either write it down or type it and highlight keywords to help them stand out when learning then condense it down to bullet points and expand on them.
•Online Research
•Mind-mapping
•Spider diagrams
•Or any other way which helps you retain information.
For this stage, you want to PRACTICE and PRACTICE and PRACTICE.
Organisation
After collecting all the research and information you should organise it in a way that works for you with a logical structure for example,if you did your presentation on bikes and bike-related gear you wouldn’t mention how laptops are getting more powerful... so keep on the theme and let the presentation flow. You want to include your key points and be able to explain them to get the point across, people are looking for clear, concise and simple to make the presentation easier to understand. Clear and Concise
•Simple
•Logical Structure
•On theme
•Grammar and Spelling
The general aesthetics of your presentation should look professional yet colourful so it’s not boring to look at along with how you’re delivering the speech which leads me onto the next skill – Delivery.
Delivery
One of your main concerns should be how you deliver what you’ve written as they go hand in hand, the delivery should be bright and bold whilst engaging your audience through eye contact, use of stage/floor, pitch, tones and clarity and hand gestures. How you present yourself goes a long way and can help boost confidence if you’ve taken the 5 p’s into consideration. When people know what they’re on about it’s hard to not look like you know what you’re doing so learn what you need to say and act on it through body language.
•Clarity
•Body Language
•Audience Engagement
•Bright and Bold
•Pitch and Tones
•Eye Contact
Analysis
After the presentation, you want to make sure you are aware of the areas you can improve on and take constructive criticism well, by improving your skills it makes the process a lot easier and easier as you’ve been through it many times before.
•Constructive Criticism
•Growth
•Mindset
So, how do you now put these into practice?
Despite what we’ve discussed above, there are additional things we can do to elevate the presentation skills. Practice, practice and urm oh yeah…practice, it’s the only way you can grow and get more confidence in presenting, it may be helpful to attend other presentations so make sure you bring a notepad and a pen to take notes, arriving early can have a significant impact as you have time to think about what it is you’re about to do which allows you to not make mistakes but even if a mistake happens don’t stop and dwell, move on and forget it happened. Probably the most forgotten one is smiling throughout your presentation keeps the people engaged as if you’re enjoying the topic you’re speaking about you should express this into the presentation. The power of the stance and breathing is not so much spoken about but the way you stand can depict how the presentation can go, try to not look timid but show your chest and stand tall whilst taking your time and breath, it makes the whole experience easier for both parties.
Now go and smash your presentation!
