Friday, November 8, 2013

Polishing Your Delivery and Following Up


 
Once you have organized your presentation and prepared visuals, you are ready to practise delivering it. You will feel more confident and appear more professional if you know more about various delivery methods and techniques to use before, during, and after your presentation.


You don’t need to memorize an entire presentation to be effective.  However, memorizing significant parts—the introduction, the conclusion, and perhaps a meaningful quotation—can be dramatic and impressive. 

Reading to an audience from a manuscript suggests that you don't know your topic very well. Doing that prevents you from maintaining eye contact with the audience. You also can't see the audience’s reactions and consequently you can't benefit from their feedback. 

Neither memorizing nor reading creates very convincing business presentations. The best plan, by far, is to present extemporaneously, especially when you are displaying an electronic slideshow, such as PowerPoint. Extemporaneous delivery means speaking freely, generally without notes, after preparation and rehearsing. Reading notes or a manuscript in addition to PowerPoint slides will damage your credibility. 

Overcoming Stage Fright 

Nearly everyone experiences some degree of stage fright when speaking before a group. Being afraid is quite natural and results from actual physiological changes occurring in your body. You can learn to control and reduce stage fright, as well as to incorporate techniques for effective speaking, by using the following strategies and techniques: 

Speaking in front of a group will become less daunting if you allow for adequate preparation, sufficient practice, and rehearsals. Interacting with the audience and limiting surprises, such as malfunctioning equipment, will also add to your peace of mind. Review the following tips for a smooth start: 

o   Prepare thoroughly. One of the most effective strategies for reducing stage fright is knowing your subject thoroughly. Research your topic diligently and prepare a careful sentence outline. 
 
o   Rehearse repeatedly. When you rehearse, practise your entire presentation, not just the first half. You may also want to include transitional sentences to help you move to the next topic as you practise. Rehearse alone or before friends and family. Also try an audio or a video recording of your rehearsals so that you can evaluate your effectiveness.
 
o   Time yourself. Most audiences tend to get restless during longer talks. Thus, try to complete your presentation in no more than 20 minutes. Set a simple kitchen timer during your rehearsal to keep track of time.
 
o   Check the room. If you are using a computer, a projector, or sound equipment, be certain they are operational. Before you start, check electrical outlets and the position of the viewing screen. Ensure that the seating arrangement is appropriate to your needs. 
 
o   Greet members of the audience. Try to make contact with a few members of the audience when you enter the room, while you are waiting to be introduced, or when you walk to the podium. Your body language should convey friendliness, confidence, and enjoyment. 

o   Practise stress reduction. If you feel tension and fear while you are waiting your turn to speak, use stress-reduction techniques, such as deep breathing.
During Your Presentation
To stay in control during your talk, to build credibility, and to engage your audience, follow these guidelines for effective speaking:

o   Begin with a pause. When you first approach the audience, take a moment to make yourself comfortable. Establish your control of the situation. 

o   Present your first sentence from memory. By memorizing your opening, you can immediately establish rapport with the audience through eye contact. You will also sound confident and knowledgeable.  

o   Maintain eye contact. If the size of the audience overwhelms you, pick out two individuals on the right and two on the left. Talk directly to these people. Don't ignore listeners in the back of the room. 

o   Control your voice and vocabulary. This means speaking in moderated tones but loudly enough to be heard. Eliminate verbal static, such as ah, er, you know, and um. Silence is preferable to meaningless fillers when you are thinking of your next idea.  

o   Put the brakes on. Many novice speakers talk too rapidly, displaying their nervousness and making it very difficult for audience members to understand their ideas. Slow down and listen to what you are saying. 

o   Move naturally. If you have a lectern, don't remain glued to it. Move about casually and naturally. Avoid fidgeting with your clothing, hair, or items in your pockets. Do not roll up your sleeves or put your hands in your pockets. Learn to use your body to express a point.  

o   Use visual aids effectively. You should discuss and interpret each visual aid for the audience. Move aside as you describe it so that it can be seen fully. Use a pointer if necessary, but steady your hand if it is shaking.  

o   Avoid digressions. Stick to your outline and notes. Don't suddenly include clever little anecdotes or digressions that occur to you on the spot. If it is not part of your rehearsed material, leave it out so that you can finish on time.  

o   Summarize your main points and arrive at the high point of your talk. Conclude your presentation by reiterating your main points or by emphasizing what you want the audience to think or do. Once you have announced your conclusion, proceed to it directly.
As you are concluding your presentation, handle questions and answers competently and provide handouts if appropriate. Try the following techniques: 

o   Distribute handouts. If you prepared handouts with data the audience will need, pass them out when you finish.  

o   Encourage questions. If the situation permits a question-and-answer period, announce it at the beginning of your presentation. Then, when you finish, ask for questions. Set a time limit for questions and answers.  

o   Repeat questions. Although the speaker may hear the question, audience members often do not. Begin each answer with a repetition of the question. This also gives you thinking time. Then direct your answer to the entire audience.  

o   Reinforce your main points. You can use your answers to restate your primary ideas (I'm glad you brought that up because it gives me a chance to elaborate on …). In answering questions, avoid becoming defensive or debating the questioner.  

o   Keep control. Don't allow one individual to take over. Keep the entire audience involved. 

o   Avoid “Yes, but” answers. The word but immediately cancels any preceding message. Try replacing it with and. For example, Yes, X has been tried. And Y works even better because….  

o   End with a summary and appreciation. To signal the end of the session before you take the last question, say something like, We have time for just one more question. As you answer the last question, try to work it into a summary of your main points. Then express appreciation to the audience for the opportunity to talk with them.

Watch Overcoming Nerves When Giving a Presentation
 


Organizing Team-Based Written and Oral Presentations 

Whether your team's project produces written reports, slide decks, or oral presentations, you generally have considerable control over how the project is organized and completed. Team projects will be harmonious and productive when members establish ground rules and follow guidelines related to preparing, planning, collecting information for, organizing, rehearsing, and evaluating team projects.


Before any group begins to talk about a specific project, members should get together and establish basic ground rules.  

One of the first tasks is naming a meeting leader to conduct meetings, a recorder to keep a record of group decisions, and an evaluator to determine whether the group is on target and meeting its goals.  

The group should decide whether it will be governed by consensus (everyone must agree), by majority rule, or by some other method. 

When teams first organize, they should consider the value of conflict. By bringing conflict into the open and encouraging confrontation, teams can prevent personal resentment and group dysfunction.  

An important topic to discuss during team formation is how to deal with team members who are not doing their share of the work. Teams should decide whether they will “fire” members who are not contributing or take some other action in dealing with slackers.


Once teams have established ground rules, members are ready to discuss the target document or presentation. They should establish the specific purpose for the document or presentation and identify the main issues involved. If the report or presentation involves persuasion, they must decide what appeals would achieve the team's purpose.  

For a collaborative business report, they should determine what parts it will include, such as an executive summary, figures, and an appendix. They should consider how the report or presentation will be delivered—in person, online, or by e-mail.

For a team oral presentation, they should decide on its parts, length, and graphics. They should profile the audience and focus on the questions audience members would want answered. Teams must schedule time for content and creative development, as well as for a series of rehearsals. 

Next the team should develop a work plan, assign jobs, and set deadlines.  

For oral presentations all team members should have written assignments. These assignments should detail each member's specific responsibilities for researching content, producing visuals, developing handout materials, building transitions between segments, and showing up for rehearsals. 

For written reports members must decide how the final document will be composed: individuals working separately on assigned portions, one person writing the first draft, the entire group writing the complete document together, or some other method.

Collecting Information 

One of the most challenging jobs for team projects is generating and collecting information. Unless facts are accurate, the most beautiful report or the most high-powered presentation will fail.  

Assign topics and decide who will be responsible for gathering what information. Establishing deadlines for collecting information is important if a team is to remain on schedule.  

Team members should also discuss ways to ensure the accuracy of the information collected. 

Organizing, Writing, and Revising 

Team members may review the proposed organization of the final document or presentation and adjust it if necessary. In composing the first draft of a written report or presentation, team members will probably write separate segments. As they work on these segments, they should use the same version of word processing or presentation graphics program to facilitate combining files. 

As individuals work on separate parts of a written report, the team should decide on one person to coordinate all the parts. The writer strives for a consistent style, format, and tone in the final product.

For a written report, one person should assume the task of merging the various files, running a spell checker, and examining the entire document for consistency of design, format, and vocabulary. Then the entire group meets to evaluate the final document to see if it fulfills its purpose and meet the needs of the audience. 

For oral presentations one person should also merge all the files and be certain that they are consistent in design, format, and vocabulary. Teams making presentations should practise together several times. Consider video recording one of the rehearsals so that each presenter can critique his or her own performance. Schedule a dress rehearsal with an audience at least two days before the actual presentation.  

Successful group documents emerge from thoughtful preparation, clear definition of contributors' roles, commitment to a group-approved plan, and a willingness to take responsibility for the final product.

Designing an Impressive Multimedia Presentation using PowerPoint

PowerPoint has become the most widely used software program for business presentations. When used properly PowerPoint can add a distinctive visual impact to your presentations. However, overuse or misuse it will cause your audience disengaged, bored and even lost.

Check this site or read Doug Lowe's Microsoft Office PowerPoint for Dummies book to learn how to use PowerPoint software effectively.

 
Applying the 3-×-3 Writing Process to Creating a Visually Appealing PowerPoint Presentation

 

When designing PowerPoint presentation, remember that great looking slides never compensate for thin content. Therefore, avoid the temptation to spend too much time making your slides look good and not enough time preparing your content. You can apply the 3 x 3 Writing Process to create a visually appealing presentation.


Analyzing the Situation

Making the best content and design choices for your slides depends greatly on your analysis of the presentation situation. Will your slides be used during a live presentation? Will they be part of a self-running presentation? Will they be saved on a server so that those with Internet access can watch the presentation at their convenience? Will they be sent as a PowerPoint show or a PDF document to a client instead of a hard-copy report? Are you converting PowerPoint slideshows for viewing on video iPods or BlackBerry devices?

If you are e-mailing the presentation or posting it online, the slides will typically feature more text than if they were delivered orally. If, however, you are creating slides for a live presentation, your analysis will prompt you to choose powerful, telling images over boring text-laden slides.
 

Anticipating Your Audience

Think about how you can design your presentation to get the most positive response from your audience. Primary ideas are generally best conveyed with bold colours, such as blue, green, and purple. Because the messages that colours convey can vary from culture to culture, colours must be chosen carefully.

Just as you anticipate audience members' reactions to colour, you can usually anticipate their reaction to special effects. Using animation and sound effects—flying objects, swirling text, clashing cymbals, and the like—only because they are available is not a good idea. Special effects distract your audience, drawing attention away from your main points. You should add animation features only if doing so helps convey your message or adds interest to the content.
 

Adapting Text and Colour Selections

Adapt the amount of text on your slide to how your audience will use the slides. As a general guideline, most graphic designers encourage the 6-×-6 rule: “six bullets per screen, max; six words per bullet, max.” For most purposes, strive to break free from bulleted lists whenever possible and minimize the use of text.

Adapt the colours based on where the presentation will be given. Use light text on a dark background for presentations in darkened rooms. Use dark text on a light background for presentations in lighted rooms. Dark on dark or light on light results in low contrast, making the slides difficult to read.
 

Organizing Your Slides

When you prepare your slides, translate the major headings in your presentation outline into titles for slides. Then build bullet points by using short phrases.

The slides you create to accompany your spoken ideas can be organized with visual elements that will help your audience understand and remember what you want to communicate.
 

Working with Templates

When you craft your template, be cautious about selecting the slide templates that came with the program. They have been seen by millions and amount to what one expert has labelled “visual clichés.”

Overused templates and even clip art that ship with PowerPoint can weary viewers who have seen them repeatedly in presentations. Search for PowerPoint template in Google to find new ones instead of using a standard template,
 

Composing Your Slideshow

Many users fall into the trap of excessive formatting and programming when composing slideshow. To avoid this trap, set a limit for how much time you will spend making your slides visually appealing. Make sure to spend enough time on what you are going to say and how you will say it.

Remember that not every point or every thought requires a visual. In fact, it's smart to switch off the slides occasionally to direct the focus to yourself. Darkening the screen while you discuss a point, tell a story, give an example, or involve the audience will add variety to your presentation.

Create a slide only if the slide accomplishes at least one of the following purposes:

·         Generates interest in what you are saying and helps the audience follow your ideas

·         Highlights points you want your audience to remember

·         Introduces or reviews your key points

·         Provides a transition from one major point to the next

·         Illustrates and simplifies complex ideas
 

Designing for Optimal Effect

To keep your audiences interested and help them retain the information you are presenting, try to avoid long, boring bulleted lists in a presentation. You can alter layouts by repositioning, resizing, or changing the fonts for the placeholders in which your title, bulleted list, organization chart, video clip, photograph, or other elements appear.

You may use stock photos that you can download from the Web for personal or school use without penalty or consider taking your own pictures if you own a digital camera.
 

Revising, Proofreading, and Evaluating Your Slideshow

This is the time when you will focus on making your presentation as clear and concise as possible. If you are listing items, be sure that all items use parallel grammatical form. Use PowerPoint's Slide Sorter View to rearrange, insert, and delete slides during the revision process.

As you are revising, check carefully to find spelling, grammar, punctuation, and other errors. Nothing is as embarrassing as projecting errors on a huge screen in front of an audience. Also check for consistency in how you capitalize and punctuate points throughout the presentation.

Consider whether you have done all you can to use the tools PowerPoint provides to communicate your message in a visually appealing way. In addition, test your slides on the equipment and in the room you will be using during your presentation. Do the colours you selected work in this new setting? Are the font styles and sizes readable from the back of the room?
 


Many promising presentations have been sabotaged by technology glitches or by the presenter's unfamiliarity with the equipment. Fabulous slides are of value only if you can manage the technology expertly


Practising and Preparing

Allow plenty of time before your presentation to set up and test your equipment (see the PowerPoint Preshow Checklist).

Confirm that the places you plan to stand are not in the line of the projected image. Audience members do not appreciate having part of the slide displayed on your body.

Make sure that all links to videos or the Web are working and that you know how to operate all features the first time you try.

No matter how much time you put into preshow setup and testing, you still have no guarantee that all will go smoothly. Therefore, you should always bring backups of your presentation. Overhead transparencies or handouts of your presentation provide good substitutes. Transferring your presentation to a CD or a USB flash drive that could run from any available notebook might prove useful as well.
 

Keeping Your Audience Engaged

In addition to using technology to enhance and enrich your message, here are additional tips for performing like a professional and keeping the audience engaged.

·         Know your material. This will free you to look at your audience and gaze at the screen, not your practice notes.

·         Maintain genuine eye contact to connect with individuals in the room.

·         As you show new elements on a slide, allow the audience time to absorb the information. Then paraphrase and elaborate on what the listeners have seen. Do not insult your audience's intelligence by reading verbatim from a slide.  

·         Leave the lights as bright as you can. Make sure the audience can see your face and eyes.

·         Use a radio remote control (not infrared) so you can move freely rather than remain tethered to your computer. Radio remotes will allow you to be up to 15 metres away from your laptop.  

·         Maintain a connection with the audience by using a laser pointer to highlight slide items to discuss. Be aware, however, that a dancing laser point in a shaky hand may make you appear nervous. Steady your hand.  

·         Don't leave a slide on the screen when you have finished discussing it. In Slide Show, View Show mode, strike B on the keyboard to turn on or off the screen image by blackening it. Pushing W will turn the screen white. 

·         Some presenters allow their PowerPoint slides to “steal their thunder.” In developing a presentation, don't expect your slides to carry the show. Remember that slides should be used only to help your audience understand the message and to add interest. Your audience came to see and hear you.
 

Eight Steps to Making a Powerful Multimedia Presentation

We have now discussed many suggestions for making effective PowerPoint presentations, but you may still be wondering how to put it all together. Here is a step-by-step process for creating a powerful multimedia presentation: 

1. Start with the text. The text is the foundation of your presentation. Express your ideas by using words that are clear, concise, and understandable.  

2. Select background and fonts. Select a template that will provide consistent font styles, font sizes, and a background for your slides. As a general rule, use no more than two font styles in your presentation. The point size should be between 24 and 36. Title fonts should be larger than the text font.  

3. Choose images that help communicate your message. Images, such as clip art, photographs, and maps, should complement the text. Never use an image that is not immediately relevant. Bear in mind that some people consider clip art amateurish, so photographs are usually preferable. In addition, clip art is available to any user, so it tends to become stale fast. 

4. Create graphics. PowerPoint includes a variety of tools to help you simplify complex information or transform a boring bulleted list into a visually appealing graphic. You can use PowerPoint's Illustrations tools in the Insert tab to create a timeline or a flowchart. The SmartArt graphic will help you create an organization chart or a cycle, radial, pyramid, Venn, or target diagram. With the Chart function, you can select from more than a dozen chart types including line, pie, and bar charts. Remember that graphics should be easy to understand without overloading your audience with unnecessary details or too much text.  

5. Add special effects. To keep your audience focused on what you are discussing, use PowerPoint's Animations tab to control when objects or text appear on the screen. Keep in mind that the first thing your audience sees on every slide should describe the slide's content. Choose them with care so that the visual delivery of your presentation doesn't distract from the content of your message. 

6. Create hyperlinks to approximate the Web-browsing experience. Make your presentation more interactive and intriguing by connecting your PowerPoint presentation, via hyperlinks, to other sources that provide content that will enhance your presentation. You can hyperlink to (a) other slides within the presentation or in other PowerPoint files; (b) other programs that will open a second window that displays items, such as spreadsheets, documents, or videos; and (c) if you have an Internet connection, Web sites. 

7. Engage your audience by asking for interaction. When audience response and feedback are needed, interactive tools are useful. To interact with your audience, present polling questions. Audience members submit their individual or team responses by using handheld devices read by a PowerPoint add-in program. The audience immediately sees a bar chart that displays the response results.  

8. Move your presentation to the Internet. You have a range of alternatives, from simple to complex, for moving your multimedia presentation to the Internet or your company's intranet. The simplest option is posting your slides online for others to access. Even if you are giving a face-to-face presentation, attendees appreciate these electronic handouts because they don't have to lug them home.


Watch How to Avoid Death by PowerPoint