Oral Presentation Skills

Meaning & Purpose of Oral Presentation

Meaning: It is a brief discussion of a defined topic delivered to a public audience in order to impart knowledge or to stimulate discussion. Almost every oral presentation contains an introduction, main body and conclusion. If you are an effective speaker, you can take this opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge, enhance your prestige, influence decisions, and occupy more important positions in your organizations. So, the acquisition of oral presentation skills is essential for success in any profession. You may also require some specific techniques for oral presentation to ensure that your audience understands and remembers the points of your speech. When you deliver your speech, try to keep your presentation brief and to the point as much as possible – no unnecessary details.

Purpose: The purpose of a presentation includes defining both the topic and response desired from the audience. Generally you need to sharpen your topic and focus it to fit the time limits of your presentation. Typically you will be unable to present every detail concerning your subject. You should specify the purpose of your presentation not only in terms of topic, but also in terms of the response you desire from your audience.

A person can use certain things in presentation like; Stories, Questions, Pictures, Cartoons and video-clips, sound-clips, audience participation exercises etc.

Structuring the Presentation

 Structuring or organizing the material clearly is vital for an effective presentation. A well-organized presentation can make your messages more comprehensible, keep your audience happy, and boost your image as a speaker. Sometimes even experienced speakers may get into trouble if their material is not organized appropriately and they end up presenting their ideas disjointedly.

The key to all these problems is to organize your ideas into a well-known pattern. In other words, your presentation should have the following forms:

   1.  Introduction: Should grab attention, introduce topic, contain a strategy for establishing credibility, preview your speech, establish rules for questions, and have a smooth transition to the main text.

   2.  Main body: Contains all topics/the entire matter organized into a logical sequence.

   3.  Conclusion: Contain signal, highlights/summary; closing statements/re-emphasis, a vote of thanks and invites questions.

    Though you need to give an introduction first, it is appropriate to organize the main text of the speech. Even though it does not come first in your presentation, the main body requires organizing. Identify the key points that support your thesis and then decide which organizations plan best develops these points.

Preparation before Presentation

  After establishing the purpose of the presentation, you will need to do some initial presentation. You may coordinate this planning by asking certain samples but very important questions: whom, where, when, what, and how. These questions start the flow of information necessary for developing an effecting presentation.

   1.  To whom: Every audience is different. If possible, make the presentation informative and interesting to the more sophisticated members of audience, but do not talk over the heads of those who are less knowledgeable.

   2.  Where and when: what is the nature of the event and the place where the presentation will be given? The setting affects factors such as seating arrangements, lighting conditions, the possibility of using various audiovisual aids.

      What time or the day is the presentation? Will the audience be enthusiastic or ready to go home when the presentations come up? How much time is available? These factors should guide the presenter’s tone as well as the content.

   3.  What and how: There are many kinds of information - quantitative, qualitative, historical, verbal, pictorial and/ or predictive. In addition to the choice of what to present we must choose between different ways of organizing the presentation, whether to use visual aids and if so what kids are further important questions. All of the choices help to determine an audience’s response.

    Taken together, the above questions-who, where, when, what, and how provide the starting impetus in preparing the presentation. They set the agenda for the key elements of preparation which we will now address, beginning with analysis of the audience.

Key Elements of Presentation

    1) Audience analysis

     Adapting the presentation to the interests, knowledge and motives of the audience is not really a separate part of preparing or giving a presentation. It is the starting point, but it should pervade the entire presentation and presentation process. We should consider why this audience will want or need the information we are to present, whether they will like it or dislike it, and how it will affect their relationships with others.

    There are three major questions to address about the audience. These are discussed below:

Who are the members in the audience?

     1.     What age range does the audience represent?

    2.    Are the males, females of both in audience?

    3.    How educated are they?

    4.    What are their occupations?

    5.    What are their religious and political affiliations?

    6.    To what professionals, community or social groups do they belong?

What do they need to know?

We should try to discover how informed or knowledgeable our audience is about the topic. An audience will quickly tune out a speaker who is telling them things they already know. Of course, presenting highly complex information to people who do not know the basics is just as fatal.

What do they expect?

When you are giving a message that is likely to be very different from what the audience expects to hear, it may help to say early in our talk that this is a different from what the audience expects to hear, it may help to say early in our talk that this a different point of view or new information-something that they haven’t heard before.

    2)   Researching the topic

     As a presenter one must be knowledgeable about the topic. Some principal sources of information are as follows:

   1.  Personal experience: Evidence from first hand experienced usually speaks audience’s attentions and enhances our credibility. Such information should be stated as objectively as possible, and we should clearly label judgments and evaluations as our own.

   2.  Information available in the organization: Our presentation may include material specifies such as coasts, products or services delivered, and data from personal records. Since much of this type of information may be located in computerized databases, it helps to work with someone who knows the organization’s information technology when seeking such data.

   3.  Other external sources: Numerous public and private agencies are sources of information. These include federal and state agencies such as departments of agriculture, commerce, and labor as well as many other governments.

   4.  Interview: personal interviews with experts or others who have firsthand experience with the topic can greatly enhance your credibility.

   5.  Questionnaires: The research hypothesis must be stated accurately, the questionnaire designed properly, the sample representative of the total population, and the statistical tests applied must be appropriate to the data acquired. Clearly, if we are a novice in these areas, we should seek help from someone with experience.

Introduction to a Presentation

   Introduction to a presentation is as important as the foundation of house. To understand the introduction you need to understand its function in the presentation, and the various components that constitute an effective introduction.

  An effective introduction serves the main purpose of preparing the audience for what is coming up, and of establishing the purpose of the talk. In other words, our introduction should arouse the audience’s interest in our topic and lead towards what we are going to talk about.

The main components of an effective introduction are as follows:

     Ø  Attention getters

  No matter how effective a presenter you are or how important your topic is, you can quickly lose an audience if you do not use your attention and arouse interest. It is, therefore essential for you to begin your presentation by grabbing their attention. You have to sound interesting and establish the right tone. You have to ensure that the opening remarks are related to the topic.

  Most importantly, an attention-getter should create curiously in the minds of the listeners, and convince them that the speech follows will be interesting and useful.

Following are the list array of attention-getting devices from which you can choose the one that suits your topics:

   1)   Story or personal experience: Most people enjoy a good story. So, beginning a presentation with a story or personal experience may prove to be effective. Imagine that the company has decided to move its office to some new location, you are in charge of this move, and you are standing in front of a gathering of the divisional managers of your company to present the topic, office move. You have come up with all the details regarding the location, size and cost along with a comparative study with the existing office for this presentation.

   2)   Questions: Rhetorical questions are designed to arouse curiosity without requiring without requiring an answer. Many speakers use this device to begin their presentations. Let us take the same example of an office move. If you want to begin your presentation with a question, you may start like this: How many of you moved house in recent years? How many you know when our company moved last?

   3)   Humor: Humor is an effective attention-getter, and it can be used to motivate people and influence an organizations culture. It also helps people to relax, which facilitates learning. Humor helps lighten the atmosphere, and allows you to make your next point after becoming more comfortable with your audience.

   4)   Reference to audience: Opening the presentation by mentioning your audience needs, concerns, or interests clarifies the relevance of your topic immediately and shows that you understand them. A senior executive, who address the employees with a purpose of dispelling the rumors floating about the company, may start the speech as:

I know that all of you disturbed by the rumors about lying off employees.

I called you today specifically to explain just what it means to our company, and why you should ignore such baseless talk.

     Ø  Thesis statement and preview

  The next element of your introduction, revealing and previewing your topic, should be blended with your attention-grabbing remarks. The thesis statement and preview are crucial to communicate your topic and purpose to the audience. Be sure to clearly state the topic of your presentation to capture the attention of the audience, without keeping them in suspense for long.

     Ø  Audience adaption

  It is natural that, as a speaker, you would like to achieve your desired outcome, but not at the cost of ignoring your audience. While you may have drawn your message from the facts, when you make a speech, begin with that message and then support it with the relevant facts, not vice versa. The best way to grab and hold the attention of the audience is to convince them that your message is important or interesting to them. Relate the message to them and how they will benefit from it.

     Ø  Credibility statement

  Credibility is mostly a matter of being qualified to speak on the specified topic. The credibility statement establishes your qualification as a speaker. Credibility statements refers to your expensive research on a topic, your life-long interest in an issue, your personal experience or your desire to better the lives of your listeners by sifting through the topic and providing crucial information.  

     Ø  Preview

  Previewing your material is of the utmost importance because that will prepare your audience for whatever you are going to say during the rest of your speech. In other words, in the preview during the introduction, you are telling the audience what they should listen for in your presentation ahead. 

Pattern of Presentation

     The body of a presentation can be organized in six basic patterns. We need to choose the best pattern that suits and develops our topic. The six patterns are as follows:

   1)   Chronological pattern: A chronological pattern is one which the points are arranged in the way in which they occurred or are observed. You can use this pattern for an informative presentation. You may present a business process or procedure such as developing a new product or giving a set of instructions to your subordinates. It can also be used to present the history and growth of your company over the years to a group of visitors.

   2)   Spatial pattern: A spatial pattern organizes material according to how it is put together or where it is located physically. Some topics which may be organized using this pattern include the safety requirement on the shop floor including placement of equipment, and technical details on the support required description of the company building with the locations of its various divisions.

   3)   Topical/categorical pattern: The most commonly followed pattern is the topical pattern. Here you divide the topic into some logical themes or categories. For example, when you want to present a proposal on a new timely inventory system, you can divide the major benefits of this system into three or four categories and present them one by one.

   4)   Cause and effect pattern: You may like to discuss the causes of conflict escalation in the organizational terms and the resulting effects in your presentation. The first part of our speech may explain how and why conflicts are on the rise. The second parts discuss the effect of conflicts on the progress and the environment of the organization.

   5)   Problem and solution pattern: It divides information into two main sections, one that describes a problem and another that describes a solution. This pattern is typically used unpersuasive speaking where our general purpose is to convince the listener to support a certain course of action. The pattern is designed to compel the listener to make some kind of a change in opinion or behavior by establishing that problem exists, then providing solution. In the problem section, you present different aspects of the problems and offer evident of these problem. In the solution section, you discuss a potential solution and support it effectiveness over others.

   6)   Climatic pattern: In a climatic pattern or order of importance, items are arranged from least importance to most important. For example, while presenting the details of an accomplished project, you may start form the basic and slowly take the audience through the various stages of project. This is a flexible and may guide the organization of all or part of an example, comparison of contrast, cause and effect, or description. 

Main Body of the Presentation

  The message that you impart has to be yours. Yet, the way you convey it, the way you structure a speech can be analyzed and perfected. Organization is the key to clarity. The following should be remembered while going a presentation.

      Message-based approach – A message-based approach makes facts secondary. Listeners should be presented with only those facts which support the message and are necessary to understand the message. In other words, the facts that we present should prove that our message is sound. A message-based approach orients itself to delivering the facts related to the point in questions. Consider the situations, where you deliver a product presentation. Here, you may divide your message into sub-topics such as the product description, comparative study and advantage. When you deliver the first part, which is product description you may have a lot of facts regarding the difficulties you had faced in designing, and the struggles you had to overcome in improving the appearance.

      Creativity in presentation and speeches – The essence of creativity is to be able to look at familiar object and situations, enriched by experience, but not constrained by it. The four steps in creative process are as follows:

1.  Preparation – Know precisely what you want to achieve. Obtain detail knowledge about your subject. Convincing content skills into process skills may help you to prepare well. For instance, when you want to talk about how to prepare for organization change with your subordinates; instead of only talking about these details of the change and its expected outcome, you can be creative by talking about people who resist change can then add on the other message.

2.   Incubation – At this stage, you allow your sub-conscious mind to take over. Think over the topic. Make a note of all your thoughts. The relevance of some of them may not be apparent for hours, days, or week. Ideas come into being when thoughts collide, it is necessary to give some time for this to happen.

3.  Illumination – Creative ideas break-through ideas. Nevertheless, remember to ensure that such an idea is well connected to your message.

4.  Verification – Here, you need to allow your conscious brain to take over and evaluate the suggestion it has been given by its sub-conscious counterpart. In other words, you are testing your assumption to check their validity.

      Mind mapping the presentation – A mind map is made of one central idea or concept, and 5-10 related concepts. You can define the type of relationships between the centre and the branches. Mind maps are recognized as the most effective and versatile thinking-tool available. Mind mapping allows rapid expansion and exploration of an idea resulting in a clear and concise picture or map of all the relevant interlinked points for inclusion. The use of shapes, colors, and dimensional as visual stimulants further adds to this simple and powerful too.

Concluding a Presentation

  The conclusion of a presentation is as important as its introduction, but is much shorter in length. A well structured presentation has to reach the peak before it begins to climb down for an end. This is where we will siege the opportunity to make conclusion memorable. It is part where we clinch the purpose of our speech. The audience should be able to see clearly how the introduction, the middle, and the conclusion are beautifully tied up to form a chain. To progressively move towards this achievement is not easy. It is an intense task and it has to be done well.

    Signaling the end – In order to indicate the audience that you are going to end your speech, you need to use verbal or non-verbal cues.

     -     Verbal cue: In the end, I would like to say……

Now I would like to summarize by emphasizing…

Let me share with you one last thought…

Let me conclude by saying…

Finally, I would like to wind up by saying…

     -     Non-verbal cue: A change in the tone of your voice.

     Reviewing – The review should contain a re-statement of our thesis and a summary of our main points. We can draw the attention of our audience to the reference made our introduction.

For example, to recapitulate what I have been sharing with you so far this evening. Our merchandising approach needs changing to become more profitable.

     Emphatic closing – an emphatic closing statement will help the listener to remember the talk favorably. A weak ending can nullify many of the previous gains. Besides creating a favorable impression, a strong closing statement will give the speaker’s remarks a sense of completion.

Basic guidelines for designing the Presentation

   1.  List and prioritize the top three goals that we want to accomplish with our audience. It’s not enough just to talk to them. We may think that we know what we want to accomplish in our presentation, but if we’re not clear with ourself and others, it is very easy for our audience to completely miss the point of our presentation.

   2.  Be really clear about who our audiences are and why it is important to be in the meeting. Members of our audience will want to know right away why they were the ones chosen to be our presentation. We should be sure that our presentation makes this clear to them right away. This will help us clarify our invitation list and design our invitation to them.

   3.  List the major points of information that we want to convey to our audience. When we’re done making that list, we ask ourselves “If everyone in the audience understand all of those points, then will I have achieved the goal that I set for this meeting?”

   4.  Be clear about the tone that we want to set for our presentation, for example, hopefulness, celebration, warning and teamwork. Consciously identifying the tone to ourself can help us cultivate that mood to our audience.

   5.  Design a brief opening:

·         Present our goals for the presentation

·         Clarifies the benefits of the presentation to the audience

·         Explains the overall layout of our presentation

   6.  Prepare the body of presentation

   7.  Design a brief closing that summarize the key points from our presentation

   8.  Design time for question and answer

      We might be handing out supplemental materials, for example, articles and reports along with making our presentation. We might also be handing out copies of our presentation, for example, handing out copies of our slides that we will be referencing during our presentation. We might be using transparency slides or showing slides from a personal computer onto a project screen.

a)    If we plan to project our slides from a computer on projection screen, then we should be sure to check out the computer system before people come into the meeting room, if at all possible.

b)   We should use a consistent layout or organization of colors and images, on our materials.

c)    If we use transparencies on an overhead projector, then allocate one slide for every 3-5 minutes of our presentation.

d)   If we provide the supplemental information during our presentation, then our audience will very likely read that information during our presentation, rather than listening to us.

e)    If we hand out copies of our slides, we should be sure that the text on the slides is large hold the handouts up to their faces. We should be sure to leave space on the handouts for the audience to make notes on them.