ART OF PRESENTATION – Part I of III (YOU)

One thing that the new graduates entering the American work force MUST understand is (among others): You can do all kinds of good work; you can put in hours of our time perfecting the deliverable to your boss. BUT, if you can’t present it well – It may just go to waste as far as you are concerned. Not only will you not get any credit for doing all the good and hard work, your work will not be taken seriously at all or worse – will be presented by someone who has not done the work.

Whether right or wrong, whether fair or unfair – people judge you from what you say/write rather than what you actually do.

Hence, presenting your work to your peers and supervisor and to a broader group of people is not just a ‘good to have’ but a necessity for you to excel in your organization. For some, this art comes naturally.. And for some (like yours truly) you have to put in a lot of effort to perfect this art.

So, I’ll write this blog assuming you are seeking help and you are all the way at the bottom of this art.

There are several functions involved in your successful presentation –

a) There is you (sweating and presenting to a group of individual)

b) There are your slides/briefing

c) There is your audience

I’ll try to tackle this in three different blogs and they would cover these three functional areas involved in the art of presentation.

Here are just a few ideas before you put your presentation together –

· Always keep a laser pointer handy. If you don’t have one, buy one immediately.

· Always dress formally, no matter how bad the people you are presenting to; may wear ... You are selling something here, yourself and your ideas. Dress to kill. Have you ever seen a salesman dressed haggardly? There is a reason for it.

· Always carry PDF version of your briefing. You have no idea how many times I have seen perfectly good briefing looking the worst because of PowerPoint idiosyncrasy or Mac/PC conversion fiasco.

· Keep a backup of your briefing on a CD and on your memory stick. Again, the timing of the laptop dying the briefing room is impeccable. You should be able to kick start this as soon as the new laptop arrives.

· Go to the briefing room before your briefing and get comfortable with the layout. Know where would you stand and where would it make more sense for you to point to the slides.

· Don’t look at the slides when you talk to people. It is just annoying and people can’t hear you anyway. If you have a microphone attached to your shirt, when you look at the slides, your voice fades and becomes clear as you look at the audience. This drives the audience and the guy who is managing the electronics crazy as well.

· If your briefing is long, keep a copy of the presentation in your hand so you can look at it to remind yourself all the goodies you have put on the slides.

· Time yourself. Don’t ramble more than you have to ...

· Make sure you don’t block whats written on your slides. You don’t want people to look around suspiciously when you are selling your ideas.

· If you are really selling a lot and high up folks are coming to listen to you, make sure you have something for them to nibble on. Bagals, donuts, muffins, cookies and coffee works out the best. I made sure I had a lot of those in my dissertation presentation (and look where it got me) - not a single tough question from my Ph.D. committee.

· Keep extra copies of your presentation for the high ups attending your chat. Color copies, if the stakes are high.

· DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE TOUGH QUESTIONS – You always have one arm up your arsenal – you need to say – “It’s a good question – Let me get back to you with a detailed answer”. Or “It’s a great question – Lets talk about it after my talk”. People hardly stop by. I have also seen one more tactics – “My subsequent slides will address these issues – If it does not let me know”. This usually unarms anyone who wants to give you trouble.

· Speak clearly and slowly. If you are not gifted in public speaking and your voice starts muffling and you start sweating like phoomba (in the Lion King) when speaking in public – You must heed to the advice that my Thesis advisor taught me. You can keep a voice recorder at the end of one room – take the editorial section of the NY Times or Wall Street Journal and read it loudly for half an hour every day. Listen to your talk recorded on the voice recorder and identify areas that need improvement. Improve upon it the next time around. You do this exercise for a month or two – your vocal cords will open up.

· Never EVER read the slides. Go prepared in terms of what point you would want covered in each slide. Don’t look at the slides and read it verbatim. It drives people crazy. If you are not gifted in terms of memory – keep notes for each slide on cards in your hand and refer to them as you go along. Microsoft PowerPoint provides various ways of keepinng your notes on slides.

We’ll touch this subject again in part II of this blog.