Designing a Presentation

Think of a presentation in terms of a journey; designed to take an audience to a pre-planned destination. Use this analogy to identify the key points of your message, prioritize them and allocate each one an appropriate time slot.
There is a simple structure into which nearly all presentations should fit. This comprises three clearly identifiable parts - an introduction, followed by a main body and finally a conclusion.
This is often expressed as:
1. Tell them what you're going to tell them,
2. Tell them,
3. Tell them what you've told them.
A good guide for the breakdown of a presentation is the 10/80/10 rule - whereby the introduction and conclusion are each allotted 10% of the presentation time, with the main body comprising 80%. For example, a 30 minute presentation would have a 3 minute introduction and conclusion and main body lasting 24 minutes. This formula can be applied to any length of presentation - as it reflects a good breakdown from the audience’ perspective. In researching and collating the material that you need and devising your key points you will have been concentrating on the main content of your presentation. This is fine, as the most effective and efficient way to prepare your presentation is to construct it in the following order; Main Body, Introduction, then the Conclusion. It is usually best to plan your presentation to have a question and answer session at the end. This will enable you to deliver your message and then end strongly with a clear and concise conclusion, before entering the relatively unpredictable area of tackling questions from the floor.
Identifying Key Points
In structuring your presentation you may find it useful to divide your journey into a series of stages. You are then faced with the challenge of deciding how many stages there should be and what should constitute a stage. It was also recommended that you should look at your aim statement and try to develop between three and five key points that you would like to drive home. This represents as much information as most people are able to take away from a presentation.
These key point messages can be considered as the intended destination for each stage of your journey. In other words key points are synonymous with stages in the same way that the aim statement is synonymous with the destination. If you are working in a familiar subject domain the key points may well be apparent; but what if the subject isn’t familiar and the key points are not self-evident? So follow my blog for more.

6-Tips for Communication

Communication is a skill and like any skill it requires practice. It is improvement through practice that differentiates a skill from other forms of knowledge. Understanding the theory of communication and effective presentation will not in itself make you a brilliant communicator or presenter but should make you aware of how to maximize the impact of your presentations. The most important thing to remember is that the message that you intend to communicate is likely to be misunderstood. Therefore, in addition to carefully preparing and presenting your message, stay alert for any signs that your audience are mis-interpreting it. It is up to you, the presenter, to continually check that your message has been received, understood,correctly interpreted and filed in the receivers mind.

We will now examine each of the six steps of the communication model in slightly more detail with a view to introducing some guidelines that should help to promote more effective two way communication.

• Step1 - Ensure that your audience are tuned in and paying full attention to what you are about to say. Once you have the attention of the audience the communication of the message can begin.

• Step2 - Each recipient listens to the message.

• Step3 - Each recipient will have some feeling about the message and will interpret its meaning.

This is often done in the light of individual attitudes and prejudices or alternatively with reference to previous experience or associations. Your problem is that the audience may not feel and interpret in the way that you intended. The result may range from a simple failure for the message to hit home, through to a serious misunderstanding.

• Step4 - Each recipient may respond to the original message.

• Step5 - You have now become the receiver, and should listen carefully to the message.

• Step6 - You will feel and interpret.

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