Creating a Presentation

Illustration by Ponomariova_Maria

Presentations can be as short as a few minutes or as long as a few days. They can be offered to one person….or to thousands. When you are designing a presentation, consider using one or more of these Top Ten Productivity Tips:

1. What is the goal of this presentation? Make sure you have clarified this goal with the person hosting you to do the presentation if it’s not a presentation you’re doing of your own volition.
2. How will I know if I’ve achieved this goal? What is the evidence and when will you be able to gather that evidence? If you have a host for your presentation, clarify this with them, too.
3. Less is more. Reread tip #1. It is often necessary to help a host or sponsor bring their goal(s) in line with what’s possible. When someone is telling me that they want me to solve ALL of their university’s issues and challenges and problems with my half-day workshop, I try to use humor to help them see that no matter how good the presentation is, there are limits to my magical talents!
4. What do I want people to know, feel, and do as a result of my communication? (Jensen, 2003) Answering these prompts will help you distill your thinking in a way that will serve you and your audience.
5. Mindmap the presentation. If you are not already a mind-mapper, there are many resources to help you learn how. Note: You can’t do it wrong, but without learning more and experimenting with it, you might do it less well.
6. For longer presentations, plan an ebb and flow, considering high and low energy. I have mapped this out on paper for years to be able to see where the places are that might need to be rearranged.
7. Use visuals ONLY if they help make the point you are trying to make. Visuals should supplement, not supplant the message. And for the love of Pete, slides with a jillion words on them are not visuals. Lose the wordy slides. You know this already, don’t you?
8. Talk, don’t read. (My major advisor in graduate school would put her head on the table if any of us got up in class and read our research presentations instead of conversing and teaching the information. It was not a pretty sight when she did that!)
9. Show, illustrate, demonstrate…don’t just tell.
10. Hire someone to assist you. If the stakes are high, you can’t afford not to get all the help you need and deserve.

Making powerful presentations are worth the effort it takes. Use these tips to assist you in that endeavor.