Boost your ideas: using presentations as a tool for success

Welcome to an edition of this newsletter that is really close to my heart. We will be talking about mastering your presentation skills, irrelevant of your field of expertise.

While Raz is learning marketing and growth in the online world, today I am making a call to you, the readers!

If you enjoy the content this newsletter brings to you, forward it to someone in your life. After 10 editions, I am still in the part of growth where the spoken word is the best method for the size of my ripples and impact to grow.

Thank you for every second you spend close to my content!

Razmatazz without the matazz

Introduction

When we present something, we have about 60 seconds to capture our audience’s attention, establish credibility, orient them to our topic, and motivate them to listen, says Darlene Price, president of Well Said, Inc., and author of “Well Said! Presentations and Conversations That Get Results.”

If you waste those precious opening seconds with a joke, an agenda, an apology, housekeeping details, a string of thank-yous, or a rambling, pointless paragraph littered with “ums” and “uhs,” your audience’s minds are likely to drift, and you may not get them back. “You need to put the art in the start, the most important part of the work”, says Price.

In the age of knowledge, ideas are the foundation of success in almost every field. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can’t persuade anyone else to follow your vision, your influence and impact will be greatly diminished. And that’s why communication is no longer considered a “soft skill” among the world’s top business leaders. Leaders who reach the top do not simply ignore the importance of effective communication. Instead, they study the art in all its forms — writing, speaking, presenting — and constantly strive to improve on these skills.

Objectives

Subject

When we think of presentations, our minds go directly to having a slides deck and going through the information from it. One needs to be able to distinguish between the deck itself and the presentation as a whole. Too often we spend a lot of time on perfecting our deck, and forget about the other critical elements. 

Presentations are a hybrid form of communication, a combination of speech, text, and images.

They’ve become one of the standard ways professionals share information with groups. While it may look as a simpler task to master than writing long reports, it may be more challenging than how it looks from a superficial point of view. Having to simplify your points and rely on going in depth in front of an audience is requiring multiple skills to be used.

Communication styles vary from individual to individual. You can look at people that inspire you and want to copy their way of presenting. However, they are just that: inspirations. Communicating without being genuine will feel robotic. Especially when you present to an audience that already knows you. To bring your self-presentation into closer alignment, ask yourself:

1. In what situations do you feel most comfortable communicating? How can you apply the methods from that setting more broadly?

2. What authentic parts of yourself are you struggling to express to groups of people? For example, you may feel passionate about a topic, but when presenting it may not come across that way. How can you display your interest clearly?

If you’re a new leader, you may not feel that you’ve found your authentic voice just yet. But as you work on understanding what matters to you as a leader and how you want to present yourself in the presence of others, you’ll start to develop your own voice to communicate and influence others.

Framework

Captivating words without a real depth of field will not be enough. Your starting hook will be ineffective if the rest of your presentation does not deliver in its content and organisation, too. You are responsible for the before, during, and after outcomes of your work. While it may look intimidating at the start, you can systemise your presentation preparation and delivery following the below framework:

PLAN AND PREPARE

I always preempt the building of every presentation by answering the following questions:

1. What are your audience’s interests? What about their pain points on your topic?

2. How much time do you have to present? How much time can you spend on each topic?

3. What are your key points? Try to identify them and focus on getting them across, rather than focusing on the details.

4. What do you want them to get at the end of the presentation?

GRAB THEIR ATTENTION

Use a strategy for hooking your audience from the start to offer their attention to your work. Once hooked, offer them context. Explain the reasoning behind the presentation and why they should listen to you.

SHOW A STRUCTURE

One of the easiest ways of helping your audience to stay on track with your presentation is to explain its structure in advance.

At this point it can be also helpful to go over your expectations from the audience throughout the presentation, and what you hope their takeaways will be at the end of it.

KEEP IT SIMPLE

Do not fill your slides with text and graphics from which you’ll only read. Busy slides lead to the loss of attention. Use short and clear bullet points, or visual aids, from which you can elaborate points.

PRACTICE

All the best speakers practise in advance. Excellent presentation skills are not innate, they require training like any other skill. Your focus during the trials can be to make your final form look as natural as possible. You can rehearse on your own or with a trusted audience.

FINISH STRONG

People usually remember the first and last thing you say in your presentation. At the end, hook your audience once again. Remind them of your key points through an impactful summary, and leave them with some pondering questions for them to take further.

Final thoughts

Presentations are a performance with a live audience. You will have to think on your feed and adapt the material you prepared to your listeners. Do not remain stuck on the delivery and remain flexible to the ways that your audience can reach your set outcomes for the presentation.

In every project, workplace, or initiative that I signed up to, I have moved to some form of a leadership position, one way or another. Individuals resonated with my love and drive towards the topic, and wanted to learn more. Every paragraph above and below stems from my passion for the topic, and from understanding that I would not be who I am today should I have not said yes to opportunities where I realised that my brain tickles when I talk about leading. Even the most researched and scientific sections have found a place in my writing because they left me having an “oh” or “aha” moment.

Do not underestimate the power of your story, of your lows and of your highs. Use them as fuel in your communication. Rooting your knowledge into who you are as an individual deepens the ripples that you can make around you.

If you believe in my thoughts and idea, I get closer to others alike who would appreciate my content through your reposts, shares, likes, and comments! Connect with my socials below!

Quality content

Today’s Quality Content comes from one of my closest friends displaying a great example of understanding the power of being able to present in front of a very professional audience.

Madalina Raicu has recently been a keynote speaker at ETH Prague talking about the Psychology of UX in Decentralized Exchanges. She is an expert on the topic and has followed this domain in both her studies and professional career. Her extensive knowledge has put her in front of a new set of skills that she had to develop for the aforementioned opportunity: presenting your field of expertise while keeping everyone engaged to follow your ideas from start to finish.

Madalina’s performance is a living example of the framework I came forward with to you today. Her presentation exemplifies a wonderful topic I fully recommend you to listen to, alongside a canvas on how to lead a presentation. Find her talk below!

That’s it for today! See you next week!