How To Improve Presentation Skills

Today I am going to talk about how we can improve our skills and deliver good presentations. Over the years, I have observed, experienced and reflected on how presentations are done in professional settings, and I learned that the thoughts and feelings of the presenter and the audience are crucial factors when it comes to delivering good presentations. Studying deep in these factors, I planned some guidelines that would make presentations intelligible and interesting.

Let’s begin.

Plan

When planning the content, we should ensure the presentation is informative, has useful learning outcomes, and meets the needs and interests of the audience.

Prepare

Write the points methodically. Introductions, conclusions, sentences, and paragraphs should link and sink into a logical and sensible sequence.

Use Simple Language and Be Specific

Curtail the cluttered and complex words, your language should be simple, clean, and comprehensible. Come to your points clearly and never drag presentations with unimportant talks.

It is good to use less than fifteen slides and the presentation should be completed within thirty minutes. Long presentations exhaust us and bores the audience. Most of us might not remain attentive for long hours unless the topic is super interesting.

Speaking Power

Practice speaking mentally or read your presentations loud before presenting. When presenting, speak from your “mind (intellect) and heart (intuition).”

Our intellect expresses words that we have prepared and intuition expresses spontaneous words that we innately feel, would benefit audience.

Though presentation slides offer a guiding structure, never limit your speaking abilities by fully relying on the words from the slides.

Some organizations lay strong expectations and demands, causing the presenter to move around rigid parameters. It is fine to speak within standard parameters, but being overly compliant to expectations might cause us to lose our fluidity of communication. Our words flow more easily than if we are comfortable and relaxed when presenting.

What Happens If We Negate Fluidity and Remain Rigid When Speaking?

If we are working too hard “to stay inside the box,” when talking, we will end up presenting like systematic robots that lack human connections.

We might scramble in speech, if things are not running in order as expected, or if we cannot comply with the rigidity.

I have come across compliant speakers facing challenges in speaking spontaneously, and fluid speakers facing challenges in expressing the right words when “being trapped inside the compliance box.”

How To Overcome Challenges of Rigidity and Sustain Fluidity Of Communication?

1. The best thing to do is to “flow like water” during presentations. Move along with your audience, speak like how you talk to a trusted peer, and connect with them comfortably. Be yourself.

2. Discard the thought of, “what others are thinking of me now when I am presenting.” This is a silent killer in presentations. It eats you from inside through fear, nervousness, and anxiety.

3. Share your own experiences and stories. It makes your communication more fluid. You could incorporate games or introduce intellectual activities for a deeper engagement.

4. Humor calms you and your audience. Add in some humor using the right word at the right time. Never humor when educating the audience on emotionally painful topics.

5. Take pauses, relax and continue to talk. But don’t pause to fifteen minutes as your audience may leave the room, assuming your presentation has ended.

6. Stay present. Keep your mind in the here and now. Do not let your mind wander during presentations. Do some meditations before presenting, it helps you in keeping calm. Another way is to mentally recite, “I am in the present moment,” this helps you to think clearly.

7. Be clear in speech. Speak clearly and your words must be audible. I have seen some presenters “talking to themselves,” instead of the audience during presentations. There are also presenters who drop their voice tones when talking about topics they feel shy or feel uncomfortable about. Practice the skills of changing voice modulations when covering different emotions in a presentation.

8. Be Conscious. Never use demoralizing or negative words. However, if you believe information sounds bitter but might be helpful for the audience, then share.

9. Even if you have demands and expectations to meet, “practice thinking and speaking in and out of the box,” to create a balanced and fulfilling speech.

10. Express a vibrant sense of positivity in your body language. Your audience will feel your optimism.

Some Additional Thoughts…….

1.) Using “ers……erms”……. is fine. Replace with pause if you are using too much of “ers and erms.”

2.) Once in a while, stuttering is fine as it’s a human’s nature. Do take a pause, relax and then continue.

3.) Take your time, slow down and increase pace where necessary. Trust your intuition.

4.) Remember nervousness cannot be easily noticed and the audience does have mercy.

5.) Give breaks to help yourself and the audience to recharge.

6.) Reward yourself after presentations with delicious and healthy meals or snacks.

Questions and Answers Time

1.) Take conscious efforts to answer the audience’s questions with enthusiasm and genuineness. Avoid giving shallow answers.

2.) If you couldn’t answer the questions, assure the audience you will revert to them and later provide them with sensible answers.

3.) Seek help from your peers. Seeking help from peers gives our own brains some time to recharge.

Receiving Feedbacks

When receiving feedback from peers, take note there are constructive feedbacks from compassionate peers and feedbacks from “forever fault-finding experts.”

Do remember no one can craft a perfect speech, argument, or presentation unless the person is superhuman.

When receiving feedback, it is good to look out for feedbacks that are sensible and morally reasonable to your heart and mind. You “do not have to accept all crushed papers thrown at you and work extra hard to build paper airplanes out of it.” Study your strengths and limitations from sensible feedbacks, work on what is necessary and improve your next presentations.

Final Thoughts

These methods are just guiding tools. It is good to self-assess, evaluate our own skills and methods. When it comes to methods, it is good to keep useful ones, discard the unnecessary and use creativity to apply what works best for us. These ways help us connect with the audience and deliver our messages well. Just like writing styles, we have our own speaking styles and it’s about progression, not perfection.