How to effectively present in English in the 21st Century

One of the biggest complaints from presentation ‘experts’ and audiences is that most presentation slides contain far too much text. Full sentences and sometimes even full paragraphs.

Now think about your audience for a moment. Most audience members take notes during a presentation. They have their sheets of paper, iPads or laptop computers and they are desperately trying to capture all the important stuff you give during your presentation. If your presentation slides contain long sentences and paragraphs, then there is no chance your audience can capture the important elements of your presentation. Quite often, your audience just gives up and ultimately, they stop listening.

The same goes for the charts and graphs you may put into your presentation. The more complex your chart or graph, the more difficult it is for your audience to quicky sketch out the important parts of the information you are giving. If your audience is unable to get down into their notes the important information from your presentation, your presentation is going to fail. Your audience are unlikely to remember anything you said 20 minutes after you finish. That is not success. That is a huge fail.

Look at the following example:

Now this slide shows the key information, it show the beauty of the car and the text used could be easily copied down before the presenter moves on to the next slide. Additional information can be added after your presentation, the information will be fresh in your audience’s mind.

So perhaps you should apply a simple test to your presentation slides:

Are my slides simple enough for my audience to capture the key information into their notes within twenty seconds?

That should be your goal when designing your slides. Putting the convenience of your audience first.

This year I have done our presentation seminar with a large number of people from many different companies. Some were large international companies, others were smaller domestic companies. On each occasion the students attending were a mixture of people from various departments ranging from the sales department to the human resources department.

However, one thing that has surprised me is that none of the students attending were senior managers. Almost all of them were junior members of their departments who, when questioned, did little or no presenting in their companies.

I find myself having to ask the question: why?

Why is it that the very people who have to do important presentations in English are the very people who do not attend presentation training seminars, courses or workshops? Do they think they are too good to attend? or is it that they feel they are too busy?

In my mind this is a crazy situation. Everyone knows that that the state of presentations today is terrible. In some places it is getting better and in some cases there is an understanding that presentation communication needs to improve, but the perception of the humble presentation is still that they are largely boring, useless and pointless.

My guess, and this is only a guess, is that these managers are too proud to admit they need further training. And it is here where the problem arises.

Most presentations I see done by university students are fantastic. The design, the message and the stories are there. It most cases the final presentation is a little rough around the edges, but on the whole their presentations are good, creative and have a clear, simple message. On the other hand most presentations I see done by senior executives have difficult to read slides, are full of boring text and are a complete mess when it comes to a message. The end product looks like something created in the 1990s., with no clear point and at the end a very confused audience.

Business communication did not stop evolving in the 1990s. The evolution of Business communication exploded in the 2000s. Audiences now demand simple, clear messages that are delivered in twenty minutes and the details are handed to them in a clear, convenient handout. Audiences no longer have time to sit in a meeting room listening to an old style executive spew word and boring word in a dull, unimaginative way for hours upon end. Audiences want to the point messages with great illustrations and simple easily digested facts and figures.

Until these senior executives get it and begin to understand that it is they that need to be taught how to present in the twenty-first century, presentations are going to continue with the same boring image. All I ask is that if you are a senior executive, please lose the pride and get some help. It will not only help you develop, but it will help restore the image of the presentation into something it should be. A great way to communicate a message.

Recently, I have been working with a large industrial group that has many different departments working on different parts of their overall business strategy.

In an effort to present their company’s future strategies and goals, they have developed a 20 slide, sixty minute presentation that brings together all the different work that department does and how each department works together to achieve their future plans.

Unfortunately, the presentation does not work. Why?

Firstly, the writer of the presentation went round each department individually and asked them to prepare slides and a script for the part they each have in the overall strategy. This immediately caused a dysfunctional and disjointed set of slides that had no natural flow or logic. While the writer of the presentation did his or her best to bring each part together in a logical fashion, it failed because there was not a team of people working together to get the presentation right or logical, there was just one person who did not understand any of the work that each department did.

If you are preparing a presentation that focuses on the overall strategies or direction your company is going and there are a number of different departments involved, then the presentation needs to be built with a team of people, ideally one person from each department meeting together to put the presentation together. This way, each department representative can ensure that each point made in the presentation fits logically and seamlessly in the ‘big picture’, and where one person in the team does not understand something, it can be explained properly so that what goes in to the presentation is clear and easy to understand.

Another problem that has occurred, is that the script and the slides are not compatible. What is written on the slide, is not what is being spoken by the presenter. This causes great confusion with the audience.

Finally, the person responsible for the translation of the presentation into English was never involved in the original build of the presentation. This means that the English translation is even further away from the original presentation ‘script’. This essentially renders the whole presentation in English useless.

As a result of this lack of ‘togetherness’ the whole presentation fails. It is full of technical mumbo jumbo, that not even a senior professor at a top university understands and there is no point to the presentation.

To avoid this, it is essential that a team of people are given the responsibility to build the presentation. A representative from each department should be on the team, and if the presentation is to be translated into English, then the translator needs to be in the team. This way, any difficult technical language can be tested by different people to ensure understanding and a clear and consistent message.

Remember, a presentation is not something you build to impress your boss. A presentation is something you build to communicate a message. It is therefore important to make sure that your message is the most important goal, and not the number of slides or the how technical your slides are.

Beginning your presentation is often the most difficult part of presenting, because you are full of nerves and feelings of fear.

There are many ways to begin; you could begin with a simple “Good morning. Thank you for coming today” the Steve Jobs’ approach. Or, if you have been introduced, you could begin with something a little more elaborate “Thank you Mr Chairman. Thank you Ladies and Gentlemen”.

But whichever way you begin, starting strong and starting confidently is important.

A well rehearsed beginning is the key, and below is a list of ways you could begin your presentation. Whichever way you decide to use, the important thing to do is to feel comfortable and relaxed with the words:

Use can use these simple openings as often as you like. Choose one that you feel comfortable with and then give it a go.

When you learn English as a second language, you are usually taught the present tense as below:

With “will”, “be going to” and in the continuous form using “ing”

I will go shopping this weekend

I am going to the movies this weekend

They are arriving from Italy at 4pm

Most students of English as a second language do not have the opportunity to take this to another level. So here is a simplified version of advanced future tense:

I am planning to go to the movies this weekend

We expect to visit France on our vacation.

We are anticipating sales to increase 100% this year

In the future we will expand our business in to Australia

While some of the above expressions are a variation of the original future tense words, the keywords “anticipating” and “in the future” are good examples of how we can use other words instead of the usual words such as “will” and “going to” .

In presentations, these words are excellent because they are clear and gives you, the presenter, some variation in the choice of words you use. Variation in vocabulary is good because it prevents repetition, and repetition of words often leads to your presentation sounding boring and uninspiring.