How to Improve Your Presentation Skills

Ongoing Improvement is the Key

The key theme to this article is ongoing improvement. Throughout your career, it is likely that you will have many opportunities to present or speak in front of a group. Learning to present well is an ongoing activity - there is always more that you can do to make an impact. Whenever you make a presentation, focus on just a few things to improve upon. This way, you will get better each time you speak in front of your colleagues without being daunted by the idea that you have to be perfect.

Take Control with the Learning Cycle

There are four phases outlined in this learning cycle: ---> learn ---> plan ---> deliver ---> feedback.

1) Learn Essential Skills

The first step is to learn something that you can apply to your presentations or speeches. You can learn many helpful techniques to improve your skill level and influence over your audience. Attending a presentation skills course is a great way to jump-start your learning. You can also get advice from colleagues, from reading books, or watching clips and reading articles online.

Click here for an article on three tips to connect with your audience.

When you have learned some new skills, decide which points are the most helpful for you to incorporate into your next presentation. Don't try to do everything at once. Take an important new skill and work on that first. For example, you might decide that you want to reduce the number of times that you say "ummmm" in a presentation (as many people do this quite frequently!) by pausing at the end of each sentence.

Tips:

• Get advice from colleagues
• Attend a presentation skills course
• Research online or read articles and books

2) Plan to Succeed

Following any course you may attend, or any tip you receive about improving your presentations, it is essential to put these new techniques into practise. So, you must find the opportunity to speak in front of a group and receive feedback.

Spend some time planning your presentation and tailor it to the needs of your audience. Think about what will be interesting for them. Consider how you are going to incorporate your new skill and practise it before it's time to stand up in front of the audience. If you are planning to use slides, find a place where you can practise what you are going to say (and really say it out loud - not just in your head!) and make sure that it fits perfectly with what is on the slides.

Key points:

• Plan your presentation
• Decide what key skills you'll incorporate
• Practise your presentation out loud and with any slides you'll use

3) Deliver With Confidence

To feel confident when delivering your presentation, remind yourself that you have learned new skills to help you to do your best. You've prepared and put time into practising. You're ready!

You never have to be concerned that your presentation is not perfect. Keep in mind that almost everyone has something to learn about making good presentations. Take the attitude that you'll welcome ideas about how to improve and then do your best to use those ideas at the next opportunity. This will help you to feel good about each presentation you make as you know that you'll be improving your skills every step of the way.

You can feel confident because:

• You have learned new skills you want to use
• You know you are ready as you've prepared and practised
• Each time you deliver is an opportunity to learn more

4) Receive Honest Feedback

Get feedback from your audience. It is not always appropriate to get feedback from the whole audience, but perhaps there is a trusted colleague or friendly customer that you can ask for advice.

When asking for feedback, say "What specifically could I do differently to improve my presentation?"

People often give very general feedback and it can be difficult to know what to do with that feedback. For example, if someone says: "Your presentation wasn't always clear" you might ask "What do you suggest I could do to make the presentation clear?" If you receive the response: "It would help the audience to follow your presentation if you outlined the structure at the beginning" - now you have some specific advice on which you can take action.

To give another example, your colleague might say: "You need to show more confidence". You could ask "What's one thing that you think I could do to appear more confident?" If the response comes, "You were swaying from one foot to another. Try to keep a steady stance to show that your feel confident." Again you now have something to try next time you speak in front of a group.

Tip: Record yourself on video camera! As the old saying goes "the camera never lies". If you have someone record you (or place a camcorder on a tripod unobtrusively at the back of the room), you'll be able to see and hear your presentation and probably decide for yourself on some things that you can do differently to make an impact when speaking.

To get good feedback:

• Ask for it!
• Insist on specific pointers
• Record yourself on camera and decide what you'd like to do differently!

Back to Step 1! Feedback Becomes Learning

Use what you have learned from every speech or presentation by putting into practise next time you stand up in front of a group. For example, if in your last presentation, you received feedback that you looked at your slides too often and not the audience, make that your key learning point.

The "feedback" stage in the cycle links directly into the "learn" step. The feedback that you receive becomes your learning for the next time that you repeat the cycle.