I have come to realize that one of the reasons a lot of people are afraid of public speaking is that they lack the requisite knowledge of how to prepare and deliver an excellent presentation.
As you quite know, ignorance breeds fear. And when fear overwhelms you, a certain part of your brain automatically switches to a fight, freeze, or flight mode.
Thus, when people are afraid of anything (as a result of ignorance), they automatically run away from such a thing or simply engage in procrastination to avoid that thing.
Relating this to public speaking, when people lack the understanding of how to prepare, plan, and deliver a good presentation, they simply run away from it. They do so by giving one flimsy excuse or the other.
However, in my previous posts, I established that as a business owner or an entrepreneur, communication is one of the responsibilities you will continue to carry out from day to day. It will either be written or verbal. And you can’t delegate it outrightly if you want to remain relevant as a leader.
Instead of avoiding or shying away from that responsibility, you need to develop the capacity that will enable you to discharge that role excellently. More so, Brian Tracy said, all skills are learnable.
So, in this post, I will be showing you the simple step-by-step process of developing and delivering an excellent presentation. The essence is to help you develop confidence as regards business or public presentation.
From the Harvard online Management Course, I learnt that to deliver an excellent presentation, it is expedient that you go through the process of clarifying the core message you want to pass across. Then proceed to plan the message, create the presentation plan, plan the slides and other media, edit the presentation, practice the presentation, and thereafter go ahead to deliver your presentation.
For brevity purposes, let me highlight a few things from the above paragraph.
There is a seven-step process for planning and creating a presentation. Here they are:
• Generate ideas and take notes.
• Group content.
• Create the presentation plan.
• Plan slides and other media.
• Prepare slides and other media.
• Edit the presentation.
• Practice the presentation
As regards planning and preparing slides, let me also buttress some points there.
I have heard people ask questions like, how many slides should a presentation have? To answer that question, I need you to imagine that you aren’t going to use any slides for a presentation. Then ask yourself these questions:
• What are the points I will have the hardest time getting across to the audience using only spoken words? Create slides for these points.
• What emotions that align with my purpose could I draw out better using slides instead of spoken words alone? Build emotion into the slides you’ve already created or create new ones.
• What additional slides do I need to assist the audience? Examples are the roadmap and summary slides.
Also, to design effective slides, the following qualities must be put into consideration. Relevance, simplicity and clarity, forcefulness, and readability.
And to enhance readability, ensure you don’t fit a large amount of text on a slide, the size of the type has to be small (not less than 18), and there must be a clear contrast between the font and the background.
I hope you learnt a few things from this. See you in my next post.
Nkem Adenuga
EASTER