How to Deliver Effective Presentations

How to Deliver an Effective
Presentation?

How to Deliver Presentations
4
Overview
An effective presentation is an organized, audience-centered
communication of key insights derived from highly-focused analysis. It
engages the audience in a dialogue created by a logical structure, and
supported by word choice, the voice and body, and personal style.
Presenter audience
dialogue
Presentation
structure
Word
choice
Voice Body
Personal
style
• Answer-First/
Pyramid
Principle
• Word choice
• Directive
language
• Active speech
• Bad habits
• Vocal delivery
• Vocal “tics”
• Physical
delivery
• Presenting
slides
• Self-
communication
• Credibility
• Overcoming fear
• Handling
questions
• Closing
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7
Agenda
•Presenter audience dialogue: Overview
•Word choice
•Vocal delivery
•Physical delivery
•Personal style
•Key takeaways

10
Active Speech
Source: Adapted from D. David Bourland, Jr. and Paul Dennithorne Johnston, To Be or Not: An E-Prime
Anthology (San Francisco: International Society for General Semantics, 1991)
Eliminate barriers to audience engagement by using the active
voice, direct speech, and lean grammatical construction.
Recommendations Avoid Use
• Change verbs from the
passive to the active
voice
“The sample was taken
from…”
“A team of four assemblers from
the Saginaw plant took samples
from…”
• Replace “is” with an
action verb
“We found 3 out of 5 lid
assembly lines were
inefficient.”
“Poor maintenance contributed to
43% of downtime in 3 out of 5 lid
assembly lines.”
• Make an “is” statement
more concrete
“We believe the decision is a
good one.”
“The decision will save you $214K
per month in purchasing costs.”
• Get to the point by
saying what you mean
“At this point in time, it is our
opinion that you proceed to trim
your portfolio of businesses that
siphon off valuable resources
from your core business.”
“Divest. Now.”
• Link assertions to your
experience by
eliminating “seem.”
“The data would seem to
indicate that…”
“Our experience in similar
situations leads us to suggest
that…”

13Source: Adapted from Thomas Leech, How to Prepare, Stage & Deliver Winning Presentations (New York:
AMACOM, 1993); Introduction to XYZ Presenting (training presentation)
Some frequently-used words and grammatical constructions
undermine the power of the presenter audience dialogue.
Weak Comments Better
• “conduct an analysis of”
• “take into consideration”
• “exhibits a tendency
to…”
Use verbs in their simplest
form.
• “analyze”
• “consider”
• “tends to…”
• “To tell the truth,
layoffs are inevitable.”
“To tell the truth” implies that
you haven’t been totally
candid up to that point. Just
answer the question.
• “Are layoffs inevitable? Yes.”
• “This slide/bar/data
says…”
• “What this slide means
is…”
The slide/bar/data/ isn’t
“saying” a thing. Position
yourself as the medium of
insights.
• “From our analysis, we
concluded that…”
Word Choice: Bad Habits (3 of 3)

16
Use your voice to support the presenter audience dialogue. Make it easy for
the audience to hear and understand your presentation by using appropriate
pitch to communicate the relative importance of elements in your presentation.
• Explore varieties of inflection within your “normative pitch band”
–avoid extremes of high or low pitches that strain your voice
• Avoid speaking in a monotone
–monotony precedes hypnosis
–you can’t sustain dialogue with a comatose partner
• Avoid sing-song patterns
–comes across as talking down to your audience
–promotes instant eye-glazing
• Delete “upspeak” from your vocal repertoire (see next page for explanation)
Vocal Delivery: Pitch

19
Vocal Delivery: Tone
• Audiences react negatively to poor tone
–voices that are dry, raspy, or harsh grind on the audience’s ears (and nerves)
–on the other hand, audiences may also react negatively to voices that are so “pear-
shaped,” resonant, and polished, they call attention to themselves and sound unnatural
• “Regional” accents may also impede the presenter audience dialogue
–some accents not native to the audience’s region may be liabilities
–in the US, some audiences regard broad accents (e.g., Hahvahd) as affectations
• Misunderstanding and abuse of the vocal mechanism cause bad tone
–insufficient breath control
8nervousness aggravates shallow breathing and leads to gasping, panting, and
short, choppy phrasing
8replace shallow upper-chest breathing with lower-ribbed abdominal breathing
–tension in the mouth, throat, or jaw
8isolate areas of tension and relax them to release the voice freely and naturally
–fatigue
–a history of smoking and excessive alcohol consumption
Develop a pleasant tone, or overall vocal quality, to promote audience
attention and engagement.

22
Physical Delivery: Eye Contact
• Communicate your “self” as competent, sympathetic, and candid through eye contact
• Use eye contact to convey your sense of being present to and for each audience
member
–sustain real eye contact
8engage one person, one phrase or idea at a time (roughly for 3-5 seconds)
8longer eye contact (>5 seconds) makes the receiver uncomfortable
8eye contact for less than 2 seconds makes you appear fidgety and “shifty-eyed”
–maintain an unwavering listener focus
8the screen, table, slides, walls, and ceiling make poor dialogue partners
8never begin to speak without first engaging eye contact
8monitor audience reaction
• Vary focus from one person to another, but don’t fall into predictable side-to-side sweep
or circular patterns
Use disciplined eye contact to help your audience engage in the dialogue
set up by the presentation structure.

25
Avoid idiosyncratic gestures which ignore the hands as a valuable
resource for communicating and reinforcing the presenter↔ audience
dialogue.
Gestures to avoid Comments
• “Freudian Clutch” • Primarily resorted to by men, the “clutch” consists of hands
planted firmly over the groin - “Hockey, anyone?”
• In general, use above-the-waist gestures
• Never, ever use the “Freudian Clutch” as your home position
• “At ease” • The opposite of the “clutch,” hands rest firmly behind the
back - conjures up military images
• Without resting “at ease,” convey a sense of ease through
eye contact and confidence
• Never, ever use “at ease” as your home position
• “The Diva” • Hands clasped at navel - “For my next aria…”
• Reads as a profoundly undynamic, tense, defensive
gesture - don’t use as home position
• Replace with more open, asymmetrical gestures
Physical Delivery: Gestures to Avoid (1 of 2)

28
Physical Delivery: Movement Debates
XYZ has not yet reached consensus on some of the finer points of
body position and movement while presenting. Below are highly
personal glosses on three of the issues:
Issues Comments
• Position:
Present from right or
left of the projector?
• Although awkward for right-handed people, present to the right
of the projector (the audience’s left)
–gives you easy access to axes on graphs
–positions you at text slide bullets - people read from left to right
• Movement:
Remain to one side of
the screen image or
move back and forth?
• Do not cross in front of the screen image
–creates significant audience distraction
–if you have been advised to rove about to provide visual
stimulation, you have more serious problems with your
presentation than what to do with your body
• Avoid tattooing your face with the projected image
–to get to those hard-to-reach portions of the slide image, point to
desired element on slide on overhead projector
• Relationship to slide:
Stay at screen or
projector?
• Mix and match depending on room configuration, audience size,
and sightlines
• Always guard against eclipsing the screen image with your body

31
Presenting Slides: False Transitions
Learn to craft and deliver transitions that convey insights. An effective
transition delivered with full eye contact should leave the audience leaning
forward in their chairs. A false transition will leave them disengaged.
False Transition Description
• The Absent
Transition
• Slide after slide presented with no hint of bridging or sequencing
to reinforce the logic of your argument
• What’s missing from the Absent Transition:
–“So far, we have looked at….Now we will explore…”
–“While on the one hand factor A, on the other, factor B…”
–“Not only insight C [which was just introduced and supported],
but also insight D…”
–“Consequently…”
• The Slide as
Surrogate Transition
• “The next slide says…”
–words that promote the slide as surrogate presenter are not -
make that never - a transition
• Similar to the equally ineffective “The next piece of analysis we did…”
• The “Uh-oh. What’s
Next?” Transition
• “Uh” or “ah” is not a transition

34
Agenda
•Word choice
•Vocal delivery
•Personal style
•Key takeaways

37
Personal Style: Overcoming Fear
Sources: Roger Ailes, You Are the Message (New York: Doubleday, 1995); Effective Presentations (XYZ training presentation)
The keys to overcoming fear of presenting are knowing your material cold and
recreating the relaxation, security, and confidence you feel when you are speaking
one-on-one. Fear of presenting tends to fall into three categories:
Fear Remedy
• Fear of performing
poorly
• Understand how your body responds to presentation situations,
e.g., dry throat, trembling, accelerated speech
• Visualize presenting successfully
• Use physical relaxation techniques, such as breathing deeply
and isolating and relaxing areas of muscular tension
• Use the energy that fear produces to trigger alert responses and
mental engagement with your message
• Fear of the audience • Avoid assuming that the audience is your adversary
• Show enthusiasm about sharing your ideas
• Tell yourself: “I have a right to be here. What I have to say is of
value to this audience. No one else here knows this subject as
well as I do.”
• Fear your message
will not stand up to
close scrutinity
• Do your homework
• Anticipate and be prepared to answer potential objections
• Remember that, while practice doesn’t make perfect, at least it
approximates perfection

40
Agenda
•Word choice
•Vocal delivery
•Personal style
•Key takeaways

1
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