10 Presentation Do’s and Don’ts
As it’s the Christmas season, and many of you have some time to take a well earned rest. I thought it would be useful to give some do’s and don’ts of presenting. Many of these do’s and don’ts are obvious, but I do believe that these are always a useful reminder when we set about presenting.
1. Do always prepare in your own language first – on paper
I have written about this before, but it really is important to put down on paper your thoughts, ideas and topics in your own language before you open any kind of presenting software. The reason for this is that you obviously think better in your own language, your ideas are formed in your own language and the ‘story’ of your presentation is formed first in your own language.
2. Don’t apologise for “poor English”
When you stand up to do a presentation in English, apologising for your poor English skills will put your audience into a deep sleep before you begin. If you have prepared well, practiced and remembered to speak slowly, then there is no need to apologise.
However, if your English really is not very good, then to be perfectly honest, you should not be presenting in English in the first place. Remember, the reason to give a presentation in English is to communicate your message, whatever it is, to an international audience and to communicate you need to be understood.
3. Do smile
OK, a little obvious, but it is amazing how many times when we stand up in front of an audience, the nerves and the heat of the moment often leads us to forget the obvious things. When you first stand up, welcome and thank your audience – smile. It will put your audience at ease with you and it will put you at ease with your audience.
4. Don’t speak for longer than 40 minutes
There is a good reason for this. Audiences hate presentations. It is hard to accept, but they don’t. It is your job to get your audience to enjoy the presentation, to have a little fun and to learn something they did not know before they heard you speak. If you have to speak for longer than an hour, then your audience will be bored and quite possibly asleep.
5. Do move about
Standing still, not moving and and even worse standing behind a lecture is a huge turn off to an audience. It makes you sound ‘stiff’ and it makes the presentation sound stale. Use gestures, move around and relax.
6. Don’t read your presentation
Reading a presentation is the single biggest turn off for any audience. If you need to read your presentation then you have not prepared enough. NEVER read a presentation. There is no excuse for this.
7. Use good quality images
A sign of a badly prepared presentation is images that have clearly been taken directly from a website, and then enlarged in the presentation software. It looks bad, and it will make your presentation fall flat.
8. Don’t put too much text on a slide
Similar to number 6. Because you should not read your presentation, this should not be an excuse to put your words on your slide. Audiences cannot listen and read at the same time. Always think that if your words are on the slide then you do not need to be there.
9. Do make eye contact
Eye contact allows you to connect to your audience. Connecting with your audience makes your presentation memorable, and helps to make you feel more relaxed. Your audience never wants you to fail and they will help you if you get in to difficulties. But you do need to connect with them first.
10. Don’t ever be afraid
Speaking in public is a scary thing to do for most people. But speaking for the majority of us is a natural thing. Things will go wrong sometimes, we all know that and your audience do not want to see you fail. Most of your audience understands that speaking in public is hard, they are willing for you to succeed. Just relax, remember to speak slowly and try to enjoy yourself. Interact with your audience, move about on stage and smile.