Presentation Skills in 7 simple steps. James Schofield

So, a couple of weeks ago your boss asked you to give a presentation but now, as the deadline gets closer, you’re having doubts. What made you say yes? The first thing to realise is that you’re not alone, and this book is about the difference between those for whom presentations will always be a form of medieval torture and those who learn to enjoy them. Because learning how to present is a really good idea.

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There are many ways to get yourself noticed at work. Some, like singing My Way on a karaoke machine at the office party, won’t help your career. Others, like being good at your job, probably will. But combining being good at your job with the ability to stand in front of a bunch of strangers or your colleagues and tell them about it will get you to the top.

Transferable life skills

Presentation skills have a wide application. You’ll be able to talk with confidence and assurance to complete strangers. You’ll be able to get people to listen to you and you’ll be able to use your voice and body language to influence people. These skills are useful at work and outside it as well. Think about the possibilities.

Knowledge sharing

This is the information age. But it can be difficult to sort out the relevant information from what is irrelevant. When you give a presentation, you’ll find that you attract people to you who can add information to what you know already and make it better. It’s a simple calculation: talk to one colleague about what you’re doing and you’ll get one person’s input, which may or may not be useful. Talk to fifty and the chances are much higher that you’ll learn something new that you can use.

Networking

Presenting will give you great opportunities to network with a lot of like-minded people at the same time. Who knows, one of them might be the person who gives you your dream job at some time in the future.

Before you start work on your presentation, it’s smart to do some research. The more you find out about what’s required in advance, the better the end result.

Presentation types

The first thing you need to find out is what kind of presentation is required. There are several types, each with its own distinct purpose and challenges.

1 Information sharing

This is the most frequent type of presentation. It’s used for bringing a group of people up to speed about a topic of mutual relevance, for example sharing information about the status of a project or changes in the organisation. Sometimes you might be asked to present regularly at a monthly meeting. It’s important for information-sharing presentations to sound neutral because people need to be allowed to draw their own conclusions about what you tell them. If you don’t sound neutral, then you run the risk that your audience will reject what you say because they believe you to be biased. So the challenge lies in sounding neutral without being dull. You can do this by making clear to people how something affects them directly: As soon as the system is ready, we need to be able to use it efficiently.

2 Training

Although a lot of companies now use fewer classroom training sessions, there are still many situations where they are the best way to share knowledge quickly. If you are the expert for a particular system, process or tool, you may be asked to train other users even if you don’t have a background in training.

The difficulty is to judge how quickly your audience will get the key points. What might seem dead easy to you could be baffling to them. On the other hand, if you make things too easy, you run the risk of your audience feeling patronised. A good approach is to collect feedback as you go. This could take the form of asking ‘test’ questions after each central point: So, those are the advantages I see with the new software. How do you feel about them? This helps you to gauge if you’re getting the content level right

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Presentation Skills in 7 simple steps. James Schofield