How to present in English

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.