Presentation Skills

Compiled by
Prof. Aly Nabih El-Bahrawy
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Visual aids
3. Quickspeech 101
4. Platform pitfalls
5. PowerPoint and Cons
6. Listening Manners
 Visual Aids
Compiled by
Dr. Aly N. El-Bahrawy

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Why Use Visuals? (1)
• Increase understanding
• It is the visual age
• Most of what people learn is ingested through their eyes not their ears
• Save time
• Received faster by the brain
• Make people understand complex ideas
• Enhance attention/retention
• 10% of spoken message (after a week)
• 66% of seen and heard message

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Why Use Visuals? (2)
• Promote attentiveness
(People think faster than you speak)
• Keep audience focused
• Add variety and interest
• Help control nervousness
• Provide physical activity that releases your nervous energy without distracting
the audience

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How to Choose
• Your choice depends on
• Information to convey
• Size of audience
• Physical environment
• Equipment available
• Time to prepare visuals
• Money you can afford

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Types of Visual Aids
• Physical Objects, Props and Models
• White Boards
• Charts and Posters
• Flip Charts
• Overhead Transparencies
• 35 mm Slides
• LCD Panels

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Physical Objects, Props
and Models
• Easy to carry and set up
• Require no preparation
• For small and close audience
• Avoid passing objects around unless you talk about it during handling

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White Boards
• Not easily portable
• Useful for simple lists, diagrams and for recording audience responses
• Requires thorough cleaning
• Suitable only for small audiences

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Charts and Posters

• Versatile, inexpensive and portable

• Offer high contrast and many colors
• Effective when prepared in advance
• Variations include magnetic boards, flannel boards, a with Velcro
adhesive

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Flip Charts
• Suitable for small audience
• You can record audience response
• You can refer back to previous pages
• Can be prepared in advance
• Requires some skill and patience

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Overhead Transparencies (1)
• First introduced in 1940
• Became important after the advent of printers, color copiers and
computer graphics
• Can produce quick, easy, inexpensive and creative visuals

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Overhead Transparencies (2)
• For relatively large audience
• Usually prepared in advance
• You can write without turning your back
• Requires practice and skill
• Requires an electric outlet
• Requires a screen that can be tilted to avoid distortion

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Yes: Simple, but Powerful

An overhead projector
can make wonderful presentations
in the hands of a competent
and creative speaker

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35 mm Slides
• Suitable for audience of any size
• Offer outstanding color and image clarity
• Duplicates can be made easily
• Slide projectors are available but expensive
• Requires planning and preparation
• Requires skill, practice and rehearsal
• Requires electric outlet
• More likely to jam

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LCD Panels
• A square plate set on top of overhead projector and connected to
computer
• Room must be dark!
• You must be familiar with computer graphics program
• Need the right equipment and software

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Tips for Using Visuals
• Make sure they are visible
• ½ inch for each 10 ft to the farthest audience
• Avoid standing in front of them
• Test visibility by viewing from various spots in the room

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Visual Aid Tips (pre-laptop)
• Ask yourself whether you need visuals at all
• If you do, plan for as few as possible
• Consider handouts instead of transparencies
• Start with the simplest visual: white board, flip chart, overhead
• Use more complex visual if absolutely necessary

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Electronic Presentation Tips
• Laptop with standard projector
• may require dim light
• Laptop with better projector
• Palm top computer
• smaller size, may require dim light
• Compact disc, TV and CD slide player
• no computer crash, change in content requires new CD

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Electronic Presentation Tips
• The “6-6” general rule
• Complete sentences not necessary
• Black type on white background
• Serif type
• Consistency of typefaces
• Consider art

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Don’t let the tail wag the dog
• Visuals don’t deliver the message,
they support it
• A dark screen is better than an ineffective visual
• Visuals should:
• explain the message
• reinforce key points
• clarify complex concepts
• enhance audience attention and retention

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 In all cases, the speaker is still
the main event

Stop hiding behind visual aids!

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 What is the Bottom Line?
• Do not impress us with your software skills
• Dump the bullet-point slides and talk to us
• Inspire us with your vision
• Tell us your story, we are interested

It is you and not your visuals

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Control Your Visual
• Positioning
• Stand to the right of the projector
• Glance at the visual or notes without loosing eye contact
• Never talk to the projector or the screen – only to your audience

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Control Your Visual
• Pointing:
• pointers can be wooden, telescoping, light or laser
• can become distracting and dangerous
• use your left hand to point instead
• do not move into the projected image

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Control Your Visual
• Try not to hold notes
to leave your hands free for gestures
• Notes can tempt you to read your presentation
• If you must use notes, keep them to the side on a lectern
• Never talk to your notes – only to your audience

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 Quickspeech 101
A ten-minute course
that provides a surefire way
to design an appropriate speech
in less than an hour

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 Pressed for time?
Don’t sacrifice your speech: Just follow this formula

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Introduction
• Time for speech is seven minutes
• Your speech don’t have to be perfect, just compelling and interesting
• All effective speeches are designed to make a point
• Always remember that the easiest and most effective speech is one
that incorporates your own experiences

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The H-B-A-WIIFM Method
•H the Hook
• An attention getter
• One or two cleverly worded sentences that will ‘grab’ your listeners
• It can be an anecdote, a quote, a poem or a questing relating to your topic
• Along with your close, you have to memorize

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Examples of the Hook
• ‘Let him that would move the earth first move himself’ – Socrates
• How many of you carry a CPR certification card?

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The H-B-A-WIIFM Method
• B the Body
• You need evidence to make your point believable
• Limit the number of points to three
• After each point, provide evidence
• Support your point with events from your life

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The H-B-A-WIIFM Method
• A Ask for it
• Motivate the audience to action
• Don’t assume the audience will know
• It doesn’t matter how trivial you think your subject is
• Any topic can present a case for audience action

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Examples for Ask for it
• Contribute to the National Cancer Society
• Vote for the next election
• Eat at the new steakhouse

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The H-B-A-WIIFM Method
• WIIFM What is in it for me
• Tell them what they get from actions you want them to make
• Gives the audience the final reasons they need to take action
• Convince any fence-sitting listeners

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Examples of WIIFM
• Get the satisfaction of helping science defeat cancer
• Participate in making a difference in the political system
• See an entertaining show and enjoy a fantastic meal

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Review of the Four Steps
• Captivate your audience with an effective hook
• Support your points by adding personal experiences
• Seek action by asking for it
• Tell the audience what they will get

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 Platform Pitfalls:
Glitches, Blunders and Mishaps

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 The PowerPoint
present your data electronically

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Introduction
• Welcome to the world of electronic presentation
• Microsoft product
• Produces many visual aids:
• overheads, 35-mm slides, speaker notes, handouts, or electronic presentation
• The power is the checks for language and appearance

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PowerPoint Features
• Overheads
• Less hardware
• Slide checking (font size, amount of data, etc.)
• Adding effects
• Agendas
• Instant agenda (outline view collapse)
• Handouts
• Mini graphics of slides
• Space for note taking

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PowerPoint Features
• Electronic Presentations
• Sounds and videos
• Animation

• Action Items
• Adding information during presentation
• Agenda for next meeting

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Using PowerPoint
• Easy to learn
• Talks to other Microsoft programs
• LCD panel or data projector
• Loudspeakers

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Tips for Using PowerPoint
• Software compatibility
• Online help
• Navigation
• Paper backup copy
• Turn screen white

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 PowerPoint Cons

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 It can easily be abused

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PP can be abused
a. It's too easy to create slides. Because you can crank
them out quickly, you make far more than are
appropriate for the presentation.

b. It wastes time. You can suck up precious time tweaking a

presentation. “It’s like alcohol in the hands of a drunk,”
says a presentation coach in Greenville.

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PP can be abused
c. It takes too much control away from the presenter. It
makes it too easy to start the presentation with
PowerPoint instead of starting with ideas and using
PowerPoint to reinforce them.

d. It makes for ugly presentations. Most people are not

trained in design. The computer puts tools in average
hands that were once reserved only for artists.

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PP can be abused
e. It too easily becomes a replacement for the presenter, not
a reinforcement. Instead of a visual aid for the speaker, the
speaker becomes an audio aid for the slides. This strips the
presentation of some of it’s most essential appeals.

f. Presenters rely too much on the slides for structure. Clear

structure should still be part of the verbal presentation
even with visual aids. The aids should reinforce the
structure, not replace it.

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PP can be abused
g. Presenters fail to establish the connections necessary to
make their message memorable. They often rely too much
on the visual slide to make the connection and neglect
repetition, examples, metaphors and other devices that
make a message

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 Aristotle
and his Rhetoric

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Definitions
• Rhetoric:
• the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing
• Ethos:
• convincing by the character of the author
• Pathos:
• persuading by appealing to the reader’s emotions
• Logos:
• persuading by the use of reasoning
 The Art of Rhetoric
by Aristotle

• Three types of human rhetoric skill:

• Ethos: how speaker’s character and credibility influence audience
• Pathos: use of emotional appeals to alter audience’s judgment
• Logos: use of reasoning to construct an argument

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Ethos
Presenters fail to establish ethos, their most powerful
appeal. Ethos is the personal appeal of the speaker.
• It is mentioned by Aristotle
• It involves both verbal and nonverbal elements of the
message
• With PowerPoint, however, many of these elements are
blunted or negated.

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Missing Elements of Ethos
❑ Speakers don’t look at the audience and the audience
don’t look at the speaker.

❑ The subtle nonverbal cues are lost such as eye-contact,

posture, etc.

❑ Presentations tend to be read off the slide or handouts

flattening delivery

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Last Remarks

An effective presentation should keep the

audience’s attention without depending on visuals.

The visuals should be aids, not commanders. They

should reinforce the attention factors already
present in the presentation.

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 Listening Manners

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Mind Your Listening Manners
• Have you ever wanted to listen to a speaker, but you couldn’t
because someone was making noise?
• Have you ever been guilty of carrying a side conversation
during someone’s speech?
• If you were the speaker such distraction can make you lose
your train of thought

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Rules of Audience Etiquette (1)
• Arrive on time
• Take off your hat (for men)
• Stand for the national anthem
• Turn off cellular phone
• Be quiet
• Respond to the speaker
• Stay in eye contact and smile
• Nod your head in agreement

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Rules of Audience Etiquette (2)
• Stay awake
• Stepping outside is better than sleeping
• Take deep breaths and take notes
• Clean up your mess before leaving
• Discard gum
• Respect smoke-free areas
• Clap when appropriate
• After introduction
• At moving parts of the presentation
• At the conclusion

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Conclusions
• Passion is the first element of a good presentation
• Learn how and when to use visuals
• The speaker and not the visuals is the most important
• Use the four steps to make a quick and good presentation
• Learn how to deal with platform pitfalls
• PowerPoint is not the best way to make an effective presentation
• Watch for the missing elements of Ethos
• Follow the rules of Listening etiquette