Advanced Presentation Skills One Day Workshop Why Attend? Having attended the two-day Presentation Skills workshop, this day will take your skills to another level. It is an opportunity for you to refresh and consolidate your learning as well as experiencing more advanced techniques. You may have found that sometimes you are too reliant on a script of bullet points? Perhaps you want to really connect with a more human touch? Have you ever wished you could really think on your feet? This programme will enable you to start developing the flexibility that is the hallmark of top presenters. What Will You Learn? Objectives: By the end of the two days you will be able to: • Connect with every audience member right from the start of your presentation • Use a range of advanced presenting styles to achieve the required impact • Think even more quickly on your feet in the face of difficult people and objections • Adopt a much more flexible style in getting your message across Specifically you will learn: • How to identify ‘problem people’ in an audience and how to get them on board • How to get your presentation off to a winning start • How to get yourself into a confident state for presenting • How to use advanced techniques in voice and body language to create impact • How to accelerate the process of gaining rapport with an audience • How to have presence with an audience and put across the real ‘you’ • How to develop charisma in your presentation style • How to bring presentations to life – creating entertainment and fun • How to think quickly on your feet • How to deal with tricky questions or objections • How use a planning and presenting structure that keeps you in control How Will You Learn? By actually putting the skills into action and receiving immediate coaching and feedback. PRE-COURSE PREPARATION: Please bring 10 minutes worth of material to present. This could be extracts from an existing business presentation, in which case please include your first 3 minutes, a piece from the middle and also your final 3 minutes. Alternatively, bring a complete 10-minute presentation on a business topic. Bring your visuals in the form of overhead transparencies. A flipchart will also be available. What If? What will I be able to do once I have learned these skills? You will be putting these advanced skills straight onto practice on your next business presentation. You will feel even more confident when talking to large or small groups.
2 Contents 1. Some basic rules for presentations. (3) 2. Understanding your audience worksheet. (4) 3. Introduction, exposition and conclusion. (5) 4. Audio-visual aids. (8) 5. A note about notes. (9) 6. Body language. (10) 7. Coping with anxiety. (11) 8. Presentation-tips posters. (12) 9. Presentation observation sheet. (13)
3 1. Some basic rules for presentations. Communication is a skill that can be learned. You do not need talent: you need to practise and know some basic rules . The First Rule: You must understand your audience. Your audience will be academic or academically trained. They expect you to obey the same presentation rules that they follow. They expect you to acknowledge the work of others where appropriate. They are tolerant of young, inexperienced presenters (as most of the audience will also have teaching roles of some kind). If a mixed academic/professional audience, you must think carefully about the needs of the two types of audience in the room. The Second Rule: You must tailor the content of your talk to fit your audience’s needs and the time available. Your audience does not need to hear everything you know about your PhD topic. Do not swamp them in detail. Edit your talk to convey the essentials well and make sure they understand the key information, rather than rush a huge volume of facts past their ears and eyes. The Third Rule: You must know why you are presenting your work. “Why am I presenting my work to this audience? So that they will see the significance of (…fill in the blank…).” When you fill in the blank, you have worked out the aim of your talk. You can then design your talk to fulfil the aim. Aimless talks are very dull and fizzle out at the end. The Fourth Rule: You must have an introduction, exposition and conclusion. These are otherwise known as the beginning, middle and end, but each of them has their own rules (which we have set out on the pages following). Obey the rules, and the talk almost writes itself. Then you only have to worry about presenting it well. The Fifth Rule: You must plan and control your visual aids and speaking aids. Many people now automatically create a PowerPoint presentation and then bore their audience silly. You must work out whether you need visual aids, if so what type. Never put your “speech” onto the slides and then just read them out. Your audience reads much faster than you can speak and then will be bored, waiting for you to catch up. Slides should illustrate what you say, not replace what you say. The Sixth Rule: You must practise. Practise your talk as realistically as possible (same type of room, same type of clothes as for the real event) so that you can identify and correct any nervous mannerisms or distracting behaviours. You should also look at whether your body language conveys fear, boredom, uncertainty, hesitance. You should check whether you are audible and clear. With experience, practise may involve simple visualisation rather than a detailed rehearsal.
4 2. Understanding your audience worksheet. As a PhD student, there are several different audiences to whom you may have to present your work. These include: 1. Your research group e.g. PI, postdocs and PhDs 2. A departmental seminar, e.g. academic staff, PhDs and guests. 3. Your professional body, e.g. a scientific or research council meeting 4. Final year undergraduate students, e.g. as part of a open day for potential PhD students 5. To schools and other lay audiences, e.g. A-level students; Outreach 6. Job Interviewers 7. Your PhD examiner, e.g. as part of your viva Audiences will vary in: a. Professional experience b. Familiarity with the subject matter (i.e. prior knowledge) c. Understanding of technical language d. Experience of attending scientific meetings We could rank the audiences as low, high or mixed in these characteristics. Fill in the table below for each audience, ranking them in each characteristic as low, high or mixed in relative terms. characteristic professional familiarity with understanding experience of experience subject matter of technical scientific audience language meetings your research group departmental seminar professional body final year undergraduates A-Level students your PhD examiner How does this affect the way you construct your presentation? You also need to think about the motivation of your audience for being interested in your talk. Try considering theirs views, i.e. put yourself in their “shoes”.
5 3. Introduction, exposition and conclusion. Introductions and how to construct them. Scientific academic presentations have 3 elements to their introduction: 1. An introduction of the speaker, his/her affiliation and his/her authority . (e.g. “Good afternoon, I am Edgar Wilberts of Imperial College London and I am doing PhD research under the supervision of Professor Nice of the Department of Marine Engineering.”) Note: you get an advantage as the audience takes the immediate impression that you are of Imperial College standard which means you are good. 2. An introduction to the who, what, when, where, why and how of your topic. (e.g. “Although my PhD is on the effects of chloride attack on hulls of Royal Navy battleships, my presentation today concentrates on describing the results of a novel experiment that I carried out with Dr Smith of our research group and which yielded unexpected results. The experiment replicated tidal wetting and drying of the hulls at 25 times real time.”) 3. An introduction to the format / structure of the talk (i.e. who what when where why and how of the structure of the talk). (e.g. “To show you why this experiment surprised us so much, I am going to start by showing you some photographs of the ships we are studying, then a sequence of images showing our approach to the experiment with some highlights of the data obtained. The surprise element came when we ran our computer model using this data and, since that is too detailed to show you today, I have created some schematic diagrams that show the logic of how the model worked. I will then discuss the significance of how this has encouraged us to redesign the next phase of the project and will conclude with some ideas about how this work might be useful to others interested in durability issues generally.”) Note: putting more effort into letting the audience know the shape of the talk will make the audience more confident and more attentive. They know the scope of what they are about to hear, they already know that you have a clear structure and they know that you intend to tell them how this talk is relevant to them. Therefore, t hey are in a better position to start listening to your scientific content.
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