C H AP T ER 1 4 Designing and Delivering Oral and Online Presentations 473

In contrast, reciting your speech from memory is usually a bad idea. Even if you can
memorize the entire presentation, you will sound stiff and overly formal because you are
“delivering lines,” rather than talking to your audience. However, memorizing a quota-
tion, an opening statement, or a few concluding remarks can bolster your confidence and
strengthen your delivery.
Reading a speech is necessary in rare instances, such as when delivering legal infor-
mation, policy statements, or other messages that must be conveyed in an exact manner.
However, for all other business presentations, reading is a poor choice because it limits your
interaction with the audience and lacks the fresh, dynamic feel of natural talking.
Another important decision at this point is preparing the venue where you will speak.
In many instances, you won’t have much of a choice, and in some situations, you won’t
even be able to visit the venue ahead of time. However, if you do have some control over the
environment, think carefully about the seating for the audience, your position in the room,
and the lighting. For instance, dimming the lights is common practice for many presenters,
but dimming the lights too far can hamper the nonverbal communication between you and
your audience and therefore limit opportunities for interaction.22

PRACTICING YOUR DELIVERY

Practicing your presentation is essential. Practice helps ensure that you appear polished The more you practice, the more
and confident, reduces anxiety, gives you the chance to smooth out any rough spots, and confidence you’ll have in yourself
lets you verify the operation of slides and equipment. A test audience can tell you if your and your material.
slides are understandable and whether your delivery is effective. A day or two before you’re
ready to step on stage for an important talk, make sure you and your presentation are ready:
● Can you present your material naturally, without reading your slides? You’ll know you’ve practiced
● Could you still make a compelling and complete presentation if you experience an enough when you can present the
equipment failure and have to proceed without using your slides at all? material at a comfortable pace, in
● Is the equipment working, and do you know how to work it? a natural and conversational tone,
● Is your timing on track? and without relying on your slides
for every message point.
● Can you easily pronounce all the words you plan to use?
● Have you anticipated likely questions and objections?
If you’re addressing an audience that doesn’t speak your language, consider using an
interpreter. Send your interpreter a copy of your speech and visuals as far in advance of your
presentation as possible. If your audience is likely to include persons with hearing impair-
ments, be sure to team up with a sign-language interpreter as well.

Delivering a Presentation
It’s showtime. This section offers practical advice for four important aspects of delivery: 5 LEARNING OBJECTIVE
overcoming anxiety, handling questions responsively, embracing the backchannel, and
Describe four important aspects
giving presentations online.
of delivering a presentation in
today’s social media environment.
OVERCOMING ANXIETY
Even seasoned pros get a little nervous before a big presentation—and that is a good thing.
Nervousness is an indication that you care about your audience, your topic, and the occa-
sion. These techniques will help you convert anxiety into positive energy:23
● Stop worrying about being perfect. Successful speakers focus on making an au-
thentic connection with their listeners, rather than on trying to deliver a note-perfect
presentation.
● Know your subject. The more familiar you are with your material, the less panic you’ll feel. Practice is the best antidote for
● Practice, practice, practice. The more you rehearse, the more confident you will feel. anxiety; it gives you confidence
● Visualize success. Visualize mental images of yourself in front of the audience, feeling that you know your material and
confident, prepared, and able to handle any situation that might arise.24 Bear in mind that you can recover from any
that your audience wants you to succeed, too. glitches you might encounter.
474 PART 4 Preparing Reports and Oral Presentations
Don’t leave the question-
and-answer period to chance:
Anticipate potential questions and
think through your answers.
If you don’t have a satisfactory
answer to an important question
from the audience, offer to provide
it after the presentation.
If you ever face hostile questions,
respond honestly and directly
while keeping your cool.
● Remember to breathe. Tension can lead people to breathe in a rapid and shallow
fashion, which can create a lightheaded feeling. Breathe slowly and deeply to maintain
a sense of calm and confidence.
● Be ready with your opening line. Have your first sentence memorized and on the tip
of your tongue.
● Be comfortable. Dress appropriately but as comfortably as is appropriate. Drink plenty
of water ahead of time to hydrate your voice (bring a bottle of water with you, too).
● Take a three-second break. If you sense that you’re starting to race, pause and arrange
your notes or perform some other small task while taking several deep breaths. Then
start again at your normal pace.
● Concentrate on your message and your audience, not on yourself. When you’re busy
thinking about your subject and observing your audience’s response, you tend to forget
your fears.
● Maintain eye contact with friendly audience members. Eye contact not only makes you
appear sincere, confident, and trustworthy but can give you positive feedback as well.
● Keep going. Things usually get better as you move along, with each successful minute
giving you more and more confidence.
HANDLING QUESTIONS RESPONSIVELY
The question-and-answer (Q&A) period is one of the most important parts of an oral pre-
sentation. It gives you a chance to obtain important information, to emphasize your main
idea and supporting points, and to build enthusiasm for your point of view. When you’re
speaking to high-ranking executives in your company, the Q&A period will often consume
most of the time allotted for your presentation.25
Whether or not you can establish ground rules for Q&A depends on the audience and
the situation. If you’re presenting to upper managers or potential investors, for example, you
will probably have no say in the matter: Audience members will likely ask as many questions
as they want, whenever they want, to get the information they need. On the other hand, if
you are presenting to your peers or a large public audience, try to establish some guidelines,
such as the number of questions allowed per person and the overall time limit for questions.
Don’t assume that you can handle whatever comes up without some preparation.26
Learn enough about your audience members to get an idea of their concerns and think
through answers to potential questions.
When people ask questions, pay attention to nonverbal signals to help determine what
each person really means. Repeat the question to confirm your understanding and to ensure
that the entire audience has heard it. If the question is vague or confusing, ask for clarifica-
tion; then give a simple, direct answer.
If you are asked a complex or difficult question, answer carefully. Offer to meet with
the questioner afterward if the issue isn’t relevant to the rest of the audience or if giving an
adequate answer would take too long. If you don’t know the answer, don’t pretend that you
do. Instead, offer to get a complete answer as soon as possible or ask someone in the audi-
ence to volunteer information.
Be on guard for audience members who use questions to make impromptu speeches
or to take control of your presentation. Without offending the questioner, find a way to
stay in control. You might admit that you and the questioner have differing opinions and,
before calling on someone else, offer to get back to the questioner after you’ve done more
research.27
If a question ever puts you on the hot seat, respond honestly but keep your cool. Look
the person in the eye, answer the question as well as you can, and keep your emotions under
control. Defuse hostility by paraphrasing the question and asking the questioner to confirm
that you’ve understood it correctly. Maintain a businesslike tone of voice and a pleasant
expression.28
When the time allotted for your presentation is almost up, prepare the audience for
the end by saying something like, “Our time is almost up. Let’s have one more question.”
 C H AP T ER 1 4 Designing and Delivering Oral and Online Presentations 475

After you reply to that last question, summarize the main idea of the presentation and thank
people for their attention. Conclude with the same confident demeanor you’ve had from
the beginning.

EMBRACING THE BACKCHANNEL

Many business presentations these days involve more than just the spoken conversation Twitter and other social media are
between the speaker and his or her audience. Using Twitter and other electronic media, dramatically changing business
audience members often carry on their own parallel communication during a presentation presentations by making it easy
via the backchannel, which presentation expert Cliff Atkinson defines as “a line of com- for all audience members to
munication created by people in an audience to connect with others inside or outside the participate in the backchannel.
room, with or without the knowledge of the speaker.”29 Chances are you’ve participated in
a backchannel already, such as when texting with your classmates or live-blogging during
a lecture.
The backchannel presents both risks and rewards for business presenters. On the nega-
tive side, for example, listeners can research your claims the instant you make them and
spread the word quickly if they think your information is shaky. The backchannel also gives
contrary audience members more leverage, which can lead to presentations spinning out of
control. On the plus side, listeners who are excited about your message can build support
for it, expand on it, and spread it to a much larger audience in a matter of seconds. You can
also get valuable feedback during and after presentations.30
By embracing the backchannel, rather than trying to fight or ignore it, presenters can Resist the urge to ignore or fight
use this powerful force to their advantage. Follow these tips to make the backchannel work the backchannel; instead, learn
for you:31 how to use it to your advantage.
● Integrate social media into the presentation process. For example, you can set up a
formal backchannel yourself using tools such as BackNoise (http://backnoise.com),
create a website for the presentation so that people can access relevant resources during
or after the presentation, create a Twitter hashtag that everyone can use when sending
tweets, or display the Twitterstream during Q&A so that everyone can see the questions
and comments on the backchannel.
● Monitor and ask for feedback. Using a free service such as Tweetdeck, you can moni-
tor in real time what the people in the audience are writing about. To avoid trying to
monitor the backchannel while speaking, you can schedule “Twitter breaks,” during
which you review comments and respond as needed.
● Review comments to improve your presentation. After a presentation is over, review
comments on audience members’ Twitter accounts and blogs to see how you can im-
prove your content or your presentation habits.
● Automatically tweet key points from your presentation while you speak. Add-ons
for presentation software can send out prewritten tweets as you show specific slides
during a presentation. By making your key points readily available, you make it easy
for listeners to retweet and comment on your presentation.
● Establish expectations with the audience. Explain that
you welcome audience participation, but to ensure a REAL-TIME UPDATES
positive experience for everyone, ask that comments be Learn More by Watching This Video
civil, relevant, and productive.
Maximize the rewards of the backchannel
and minimize the risks
GIVING PRESENTATIONS ONLINE This webinar hosted by author Cliff Atkinson outlines the
principles of the social media backchannel and analyzes a real-
The benefits of online presentations are considerable, includ-
life presentation where the backchannel spurred an audience
ing the opportunity to communicate with a geographically revolt and what presenters can learn from this. Go to http://real-
dispersed audience at a fraction of the cost of travel. How- timeupdates.com/ebc10 and click on Learn More. If you are using
ever, the challenges for a presenter can be significant, thanks MyBcommLab, you can access Real-Time Updates within each
to that layer of technology between you and your audience. chapter or under Student Study Tools.
Many of those “human moments” that guide and encourage
476 PART 4 Preparing Reports and Oral Presentations

you through an in-person presentation won’t

travel across the digital divide. For instance, it’s
often difficult to tell whether audience mem-
bers are bored or confused because your view of
them is usually confined to small video images
(and sometimes not even that).
To ensure successful online presentations,
keep the following advice in mind:
● Consider sending preview study materi-
als ahead of time. Some presenters advise
against giving out your slides ahead of time,
however, because doing so gives away the
ending of your presentation.
● Keep your presentation as simple as pos-

sible. Break complicated slides down into

multiple slides if necessary, and keep the
direction of your discussion clear so that
Online presentations let you reach a wider audience, but the lack of direct contact forces
no one gets lost.
● Ask for feedback frequently. Many online
you to take a more active role in engaging your audience.
Source: © Flirt/SuperStock. viewers will be reluctant to call attention to
themselves by interrupting you to ask for
clarification. Also, setting up a backchannel via Twitter or as part of your online meet-
ing system gives viewers a chance to ask questions without interrupting.
● Consider the viewing experience from the audience members’ point of view. Will

they be able to see what you think they can see? For instance, webcast video is often
displayed in a small window, so viewers may miss important details.
● Allow plenty of time for everyone to get connected and familiar with the screen

they’re viewing. Build extra time into your schedule to ensure that everyone is
connected and ready to start.
Finally, don’t get lost in the technology. Use these tools whenever they’ll help but
remember that the most important aspect of any presentation is getting the audience to
receive, understand, and embrace your message. For the latest information on online pre-
sentations, visit http://real-timeupdates.com/ebc10 and click on Chapter 14.

ON THE JOB: SOLVING COMMUNICATION DILEMMAS AT

Source: Alexander Sibaja/Hulton
Archive/Getty Images.
You share Peter Principato’s
love of comedy, and now you
get to learn from his decades
of experience in the business.
You’ve joined Principato-
Young as an apprentice
talent manager, working side
by side with Principato to
coach comedians through
their careers and to pitch TV
and movie ideas to studio
executives.
Principato was struck by
the rapport you established
with Lysette Laria, a new
PRINCIPATO-YOUNG
ENTERTAINMENT
client, and he has asked you to team up with Laria to pitch a
new weekly situation comedy she created, tentatively called
“You Just Missed Me.” In it she will play a character on the run
from the mob, who hides in plain sight in various professions—
impersonating a new character every week and generally making
a mess of every job she steps into.
1. You and Laria know how important an attention-getting
opening is when it comes to pitching a new show. You have
a meeting with a studio executive next week, and you’ve
brainstormed five possibilities. Which of these should you use?
a. You don’t want to miss “You Just Missed Me”!
b. “You Just Missed Me” gives comic treatment to a fear
that many of us have or can imagine having: being
uncovered as a fraud.