Presentation skills

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Those seeking to manage a change need to be able to present their ideas to others. Change managers need to be able to make formal and informal presentations to a wide range of stakeholders.  This paper on presentation skills aims to help you recognise the ingredients of an effective presentation and to understand what you can do to develop your presentation skills. 

You can practice your presentation skills when making individual and group presentations as part of your course on change management.

Change managers need to be able to relate effectively with a wide range of stakeholders.  They need to master a range of skills, such as listening and the ability to read non-verbal behaviour, questioning and information getting, presenting information to others, helping and facilitating, asserting, influencing, negotiating and working with groups.  John Hayes' book Interpersonal Skills at Work (published by Routledge, 2002) provides a well-organised and comprehensive overview of these and other interpersonal skills essential for effective change management.  This paper offers a brief synopsis and adaptation of the chapter on presentation skills that appears in Interpersonal Skills at Work. You are recommended to read the original unabridged version for a more detailed account of the wide range of skills that can improve your ability to present information to others.

Introduction

There are many occasions when change managers have to present information to others.  This paper aims to help you recognise the ingredients of an effective presentation and to understand what you can do to develop your presentation skills.

After reading this paper you will:

·         Be aware of the importance of preparation. 

·         Understand the steps a presenter can take to gain the attention of the audience at the start of a presentation. 

·         Be aware of how levels of attention can change over the course of a presentation and understand what the presenter can do to maintain audience interest.

·         Recognise five presentation skills that can be used to get the message across.

·         Recognise the factors that influence the effectiveness of visual aids.

 

·         Be aware of the importance of drawing the formal presentation to an appropriate conclusion.

·         Be aware of the opportunities and threats associated with question and answer sessions.

The importance of presentation skills

Everybody involved in managing change will be required, at some point, to present information or offer explanations to others.  From time to time the presentation will be before a large audience, in a formal setting.  More frequently it will be to a small, sometimes informal, group of colleagues, subordinates, senior managers or other stakeholders.

This paper will consider the ingredients of a good presentation and what you need to do to ensure that the presentation is successful.  Attention will be focused on:

·         preparation, what you need to do beforehand;

·         getting and keeping interest, i.e. what you need to do to involve the audience from the start and to keep them involved until the end;

·         getting the message across;

·         making effective use of visual aids

·         closure, the best way to end the formal presentation;

·         managing the question and answer session.

There is an old saying that those who to fail to prepare, prepare to fail.  Good presenters invest time and effort in preparation.  You need to define the objective of your presentation, research your audience, identify what information needs to be presented, plan how the presentation is to be structured and, finally, consider how the physical setting (room size, seating arrangements, availability of projection equipment) might affect your presentation.

Clarifying the objective.  A change manager might want to brief others on the nature of a problem, explain the consequences of maintaining the status quo and propose a plan of remedial action.  When your aim is to explain your prime objective is normally be to help others understand a cause and effect relationship.  For example, you might want to explain why profits have been affected by the time it takes to get new products to market.  There will be occasions, however, when you want to do more than than offer an explanation.  You might want to sell an idea or persuade others to support a particular course of action.

It is a useful discipline to reflect on the purpose of the presentation, to write it down and to refer to it from time to time.  For example, if members of a management team are planning a presentation on a new performance management scheme they might ask themselves whether their objective is to:

·         inform those who will be affected that a new scheme is to be introduced,

·         explain to them how the new scheme will work, or

·         persuade them to accept the new scheme in preference to existing arrangements. 

Researching the audience.  Presentations need to be planned with a specific audience in mind.  Some stakeholders may welcome a particular change whereas others may perceive it as a threat that has to be resisted.  If you anticipate resistance you might want to present your message in a way that addresses the issues that are likely to be of greatest concern, for example you might decide to emphasise the benefits of the change or spell out the consequences of maintaining the status quo.

The background and experience of the audience will also influence how much they already know about a subject and their level of understanding of technical vocabulary.

Defining the content.  A key first step is to decide what information the listener will need if the objective of your presentation is to be achieved.  This involves identifying the main factors or categories of information and how they relate.  For example, if your objective is to persuade a sales team that a new performance management scheme will be to their advantage you might decide that the presentation should include information that will facilitate a comparative review of how the existing and proposed schemes operate.

Talking to colleagues, brainstorming ideas onto a sheet of paper, and consulting reports, might suggest a series of headings for your presentation.  These might include:

·         the target of the scheme (individual or group),

·         the aspects of performance that will be measured (total value of sales, number of new customers),

·         the methods used to calculate bonuses etc. 

Structuring the presentation.  Some presenters organise their material in ways that help the audience understand and assimilate their message.  Others manage to confuse both themselves and others.  The logical organisation of information can aid understanding.  It has often been argued that an effective structure for all types of presentation is to cue the audience about what to expect (tell them what you are going to tell them), tell them and, finally, end by summarising what you have told them.

Pemberton (in her book A Guide to Effective Speaking, 1982) suggests that where the purpose of the presentation is to persuade people to your point of view an effective structure is to:

1.      State the proposition.

2.      Anticipate objections and concede possible flaws in the argument. (Even if you decide not to disclose such flaws it is useful to have identified what they might be).

3.      Prove the case.  Do this by focusing on the strongest arguments.  She argues that quality is better than quantity and cautions against overloading the presentation with too many arguments.

4.      Provide practical evidence.

5.      End by repeating the proposition.

Reviewing arrangements.  On many occasions you have little choice about venue and the arrangement of seating and other environmental factors.  Even so it can be worth the effort to review the arrangements, test the equipment and note the best place to stand so as to ensure that the audience has a clear view of whiteboards, flip charts and screens. 

 

Keeping the audience's attention

An audience may be enthusiastic, neutral or even hostile to the idea of change. 

Motivating the audience to listen.  When you are making a presentation you have to motivate each person to listen.  If people are to be persuaded to attend they must be helped to anticipate that the presentation will be useful, interesting or entertaining.  It has been suggested that people will not be interested in salvation until they have experienced the fear of damnation, which is possibly the reason why some preachers start their sermons by proclaiming the inevitability of judgement day and familiarising their congregation with the torments of hell.  In the business context a change manager might begin a presentation on the need for greater effort by forecasting the possibility of cutbacks and redundancies. 

Fortunately inducing a state of fear or unrest is not the only way of capturing attention.  The rhetorical question can be used to intrigue or interest the audience, for example:

'What do you think is the major reason why people buy our product?…  This afternoon I want to share with you the results of our latest market survey and recommend how they should influence our marketing strategy for next year.

Introductions which use rhetorical questions, pose intriguing problems, include controversial statements or simply offer a concise statement of the purpose of the problem in terms that will appeal to the audience, increase the likelihood that the audience will be motivated to attend to the our message

Keeping their interest.  Even if you are successful in gaining the audience's attention at the beginning of the presentation there is no guarantee that people will continue to attend.  The shorter the presentation the more likely they are to attend throughout. 

A number of studies have produced evidence to show that after as little as ten minutes (and in some circumstances this may be an optimistic estimate) attention begins to wane, but as the audience begins to sense that the presentation is reaching a conclusion, attention begins to rise again.  This has important implications.  You should avoid presenting key points in the middle of a long presentation unless you deliberately taken steps to ensure that the audience will be motivated to listen to what you have to say.

Attention can be heightened if you break up the body of the presentation into logical elements and signal the end of one element and the start of another:  'The third point I want to discuss is …'

Another way of keeping their interest is to anticipate the questions that members of the audience might have in their mind at various points in the presentation:

'You might be wondering where this is leading.  Well …'

'You could be asking yourself whether the market survey was worth the effort …'

Directing questions at your audience can also be a useful tactic if you suspect that the audience is losing interest.  General questions, targeted at nobody in particular, might fail to evoke a response whereas targeted questions that offer members of the audience an opportunity to contribute can encourage involvement.

'Mr. Smith.  You have been involved in similar projects in the past.  Do you think I have missed any major points in my assessment of how the market is likely to react?"

"Mr. Brown.  You are the person in the room with the most practical experience.  Will the proposal work?"

However, take care not to embarrass those whose attention may have drifted and, therefore, could find themselves unable to offer a sensible answer.

Visual aids can also be used is to gain the audience's attention.  You can often anticipate those points where attention is likely to flag and introduce a chart, slide or practical demonstration to maintain attention.  Examples or amusing stories that illustrate a point can also help to maintain interest, so long as the audience can relate to them.  Visual aids, demonstrations and stories that are perceived as irrelevant can distract the audience, as can certain gestures and body movements.  The speaker who jingles coins in a pocket can be very annoying and the actions of the unconscious nose-picker can either disgust the audience or divert their attention away from the presentation to a consideration of what the presenter might do next.

Delivery is also important.  When most of us read a script we keep our head down and avoid eye contact, and our voice lacks variety in terms of volume, pitch, timbre, rate, rhythm and inflection.  We come across as dull and uninteresting.  It is often noticeable that when a presentation is followed by a question and answer session, the presenter's voice changes.  It becomes more alive.  Two factors account for this.  The answers are fresh and unscripted and the presenter uses spoken rather than written English.  However, it can be dangerous to attempt to deliver completely unscripted presentation because you may miss out key points or get lost and "dry up" part way through. 

The important points to remember are that presenters who drone on in a voice that lacks any variety, who evidence little movement, who avoid eye contact, who provide the audience with few signposts regarding the structure of the message and who make little use of visual aids are unlikely to keep the audience involved.

Getting the message across

There are five skills that help to get the message across.

Clarity.  There is a wealth of evidence that demonstrates that clarity is associated with understanding and recall.  Your audience will rate your presentation high on clarity when you use appropriate language and define new terms, when you are explicit, fluent and when you avoid vague expressions.

Examples.  There is evidence that suggests that the amount of 'concreteness' in an explanation improves understanding.  One way of avoiding excessive abstraction is to use examples.  Examples can offer evidence in support of a statement and can be used to relate new and unfamiliar concepts to a situation the audience has already experienced.  The selection of examples is important.  They need to be ones that the audience can relate to and can use in the way the presenter intended.  The use of in-group examples that are not fully explained, for example:

'You will remember what happened last year when we tried to persuade Bill to change his mind'

can leave some members of the audience totally confused.

Emphasis.  Some presenters confuse their audiences because they fail to differentiate the wood from the trees.  At certain points in a presentation it may be necessary for you to call attention to important information while keeping less essential information in the background.  You can do this by:

·         Varying your behaviour to focus the audience's attention on specific aspects of the presentation.  You might use verbal markers to highlight the main stages of a presentation; mnemonics to help the audience remember key points and non verbal markers, such as pausing, pointing or changing one's voice.

 

·         Repeating points and using summaries to emphasise a basic direction or purpose.  Few people will not have heard Martin Luther King's famous speech in which he kept repeating the phrase 'I have a dream' to emphasise his main theme'.

Feedback. You need to be alert to feedback.  The non-verbal behaviour of members of the audience can signal whether they are interested, involved and whether they have understood or been convinced by what you have said.  Useful signs of interest are eye contact, facial expression and posture (are they 'on the edge of their seats or slumped in a corner and nearly asleep?).  Statements, questions and requests for clarification from the audience can also be a useful source of feedback on whether the presentation is being understood and perceived as relevant.  You might decide to initiate the questioning to obtain feedback. 

Answering questions.  One way of introducing variety into the presentation is to encourage questions before the end, possibly after each main point has been presented.  A danger with this approach is that you may spend too much time answering questions, and as a consequence, may have to severely edit or completely miss out important parts of your message.  The audience may also confuse you by asking questions about points that you intend to cover later in the presentation. 

You can discourage the asking of mid-point questions by signalling, during the introduction, that questions would be preferred at the end.

Visual aids and demonstrations

Visual aids serve three main purposes.  They introduce variety thereby capturing the audience's attention, they can aid understanding and they can assist recall.

It has been said that a simple picture can be worth a thousand words.  However, visual aids do have a number of disadvantages.  They can take a lot of time to prepare, they can divert attention from main thrust of the presentation if used inappropriately, and they can go wrong.  The bulb may fail in the projector, the computer may malfunction, the plug may fuse, the film may tear or a slide may be lost or projected upside down or at the wrong time.  To get the best out of visual aids we need to plan their use and to have a contingency plan in mind if things do go wrong.

Some general points to bear in mind when using visual aids with the degree of congruence between the spoken and visual message, visibility, complexity and variety.

·         Congruence with spoken message.  Your audience may fail to concentrate on what you are saying if your spoken words do not fit with the message provided by the visual aid.  If you continue to speak when projecting a slide, pause from time to time to give the audience time to read what is on the screen.

·         Visibility.  Care needs to be taken with sight lines.  Ensure that everybody can see the visual aid.

·         Complexity.  Slides and charts need to be kept simple. 

·         Variety.  Visual aids and demonstrations can introduce variety but too much variety can disrupt the smooth flow of a presentation. 

Closure

Presentations have a beginning, a middle and an end.  Closure is the management of the end of the presentation.  It involves indicating to the audience that you have covered all the material that is appropriate.  This can be achieved through the use of verbal markers such as: 

'My final point is …'

and by non-verbal markers such as collecting papers together and switching off  the overhead projector.

It also involves focusing the audience's attention on the essential features of the material covered and encouraging members to relate this material to the purpose of the presentation.  This aspect of closure can be achieved by offering a selective summary of the main points.  After starting the presentation by telling the audience what they will be told, then telling them, we can conclude by telling them what they have been told.

Managing a question and answer session. 

Where questions are reserved until after the end of the formal presentation there is no guarantee that someone will be ready with a question as soon as you stop talking.  It may take a little time for members of the audience to adjust to the possibility of asking a question and it may also take a little time for them to reflect on what they have heard and to formulate a question they want to ask.  There is also the possibility that nobody will be comfortable asking the first question and an embarrassing silence may ensue.  One way of avoiding this is to have a chairperson or a friendly plant in the audience who is prepared to ask the first question just to get the 'ball rolling'.  Another technique is to propose that the audience divide into small groups to discuss the presentation and identify points that deserve to be challenged, or require clarification or elaboration.

People at the back of a large audience may not hear questions asked by those who are sitting near to the front.  This problem can be eliminated if you repeat the question so that everybody can relate to the answer.

Sometimes members of the audience may ask questions in an attempt to destroy your case or make you look foolish or incompetent.  If you suspect that this may happen you may deliberately limit the time available for questions by making the presentation longer than scheduled and then offering to deal with questions privately or over coffee.

If you are faced with no alternative other than to take the hostile questions there are way s of limiting the damage or even gaining an advantage. One way of limiting damage is to be aware of traps that questioners might try to set. Ask yourself 'Why are they asking this kind of question?'   Hostile questioners might ask the kind of question that they know you will find difficult to answer and then try to destroy the your case by demonstrating how inadequate the answer is.  This kind of trap can be avoided by not attempting to provide an answer.  The safest response, if you do not know the answer, is to say so.  The rest of the audience might appreciate this honesty.  It might also be possible to move the attention away from the hostile questioner by asking the rest of the audience if anybody else can provide an answer (without re-engaging the questioner in eye contact) and then seeking a 'next question' from somebody else.

Sometimes members of the audience may attempt to put an alternative case or demonstrate their own competence by making lengthy statements rather than asking questions.  Acknowledging the statement and then seeking a question from somebody else can be an effective way of moving the session on:

'Yes, I think we need to bear some of these points in mind.  May we have the next question please?'

Summary

Most people are required to make presentations or to offer explanations to others.  People with poor presentation skills can create a bad impression, can miss opportunities and can foster misunderstandings.  This paper has examined ways in which you can develop more effective presentation skills.  Preparation has been identified as the essential first step.  It has been argued that presenters need to clarify their objectives, research their audience thoroughly, define and structure the content of their presentation carefully and review the venue and other environmental factors.

Consideration has also been given to the ways in which you can attract and maintain the audience's attention.  A variety of techniques for capturing people's attention have been considered including creating a sense of uncertainty in the minds of listeners, thus motivating them to listen to allay their anxiety, the use of rhetorical question, the posing of intriguing problems, and the use of controversial statements.  It has been noted that attention often begins to flag in the middle of a presentation and therefore the presenter needs to behave in ways that will maintain audience interest.  The use of interesting examples, visual aids and demonstrations are a few of the techniques considered.

Five presentation skills that help to get the message across have been identified.  These are clarity of expression, the use of examples, emphasis, sensitivity to feedback and the ability to pose and answer questions effectively. 

It has been noted that visual aids and demonstrations can be used to introduce variety and interest into the presentation, to facilitate explanation, promote a better understanding and provide an aide mémoire. 

The importance of drawing the presentation to an appropriate conclusion has also been discussed.  The conclusion should review the key points of the presentation in a way that contributes to the achievement of the purpose of the presentation, be it to inform, explain or persuade.  Attention has also been given to the management of the final question and answer session.

References

Hayes, J (2002) Interpersonal Skills at Work, Routledge, ISBN0-415-22776-3

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