Employability Fortnight : Presentation Skills

What I learnt from this session:
- How to present myself in public
- Exploring what we say how we say it and deliver it 
- What part confidence plays in this
- Awareness of our personal communication style and it's effectiveness
- Planning a presentation 

- I identified on a scale of confident to not with public speaking I am closer to not confident.

- Under pressure people tend to act in four different ways passive, passive aggressive, assertive or aggressive. I identified myself falling between assertive and passive aggressive depending on the circumstances. 

Passive Aggressive : 
Behaviour that reflects hostility or resentment through indirect non-violent means such as procrastination, inefficiency, forgetfulness and stubbornness, Gossiping. 

Assertive:
Behaviour which enables a person to stand up for herself or himself, to express honest feeling comfortably, without denying the rights of others.


Creating a Presentation

Content 

- Talk about head stuff (who you are, what you do, how you do it, what skills you have etc)
- Also talk about heart stuff (what I do and nobody else does, what's important about it what difference will it make etc)
- Talk about content we believe in.

Structure

- The bones of a presentation - how many parts are there
- Think of telling a good story 
- Let's audiences know what to expect 

Power of 3 

- Overall structure - think how traditional stories are structured e.g. Three little pigs 
- Within sentences e.g. 'The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.' 

Bookending 

- Introduce something at the start of your presentation and return to it at the end. 
- A quote, picture, object or rhetorical question 
- Makes your presentation stand out


Planning a Presentation

- Consider using the Disney strategy, Dreamer, Planner, Critic

Dreaming (anything goes)

- What is your presentation going to be about? 
- Why is this important to you?
- What difference do you hope you will make by delivering the presentation 
- How will it be structured 

Planning 

- What will you need to carry out this successfully 
- Who is going to do what and when/roles and responsibilities 
- How many different parts will the presentation have

Criticising 

- What might go wrong with this plan?
- What have you not considered?
- How will you know you are on schedule?
- Are you aware of the benefits of doing this?


Delivering a Presentation

Speed - Increasing our awareness of how fast we speak helps us speak at an appropriate speed and so ensure our audience is given enough space to be able to properly process what we are saying. 

Volume - We may have prepared an outstanding presentation but if we can't hear anything it's all for nothing! You can project your voice it just takes practice. 

Emphasis - Without emphasis you can come across monotone

Using pauses instead of 'crutch' words - Many of us fill sentences with crutch words such as um, er, so, right etc. using a pause instead makes it easier for the audience to process the information.

Non-verbal behaviour (body language) 

Awareness of unconscious tic's - Many of us have unconscious habits or micro-movements e.g. touching our hair or face or shifting weight from one foot to the other. 

Gesture - hands and arms - do they complement what's coming out of our mouth? e.g. moving hands aimlessly when explaining a  point  

Eye contact - This is an important way to connect with the audience. In a way it creates rapport. It can be useful to make eye contact slightly longer than normal. 

Positioning/spacial awareness - What is an appropriate distance dependent on room/event. It might be useful to create a triangle between ourselves the slide and the audience.