What's the first question you should ask yourself when you start preparing your presentation?
a. What are my audience's expectations?
b. What are my objectives?
c. What font should I use in my slides?
Answer? None of the above. Your first question should be: Is it really necessary to give a presentation or is there a more efficient way to communicate this information?
Really think about it.
What would happen if, instead of boring people with twenty slides full of charts and graphs about your organization's quarterly financial performance, you send all of this information by email and ask your audience to review it before your talk? Make it clear that you are not interested in wasting anyone's time reading charts for people in a presentation when they can do it themselves.
Your role in the presentation will then be to interpret, tell them why it's important and to answer questions that your audience has had both the time and the necessary information to formulate. That will take a lot less time than slowly flipping through each slide during the presentation and saying, 'Let me draw your attention to the figures from last month, blah, blah, blah'.
Isn't that a better use of everyone's time? Are you brave enough to try it?
© 2011 Jeanne Trojan. All rights reserved
a. What are my audience's expectations?
b. What are my objectives?
c. What font should I use in my slides?
Answer? None of the above. Your first question should be: Is it really necessary to give a presentation or is there a more efficient way to communicate this information?
Really think about it.
What would happen if, instead of boring people with twenty slides full of charts and graphs about your organization's quarterly financial performance, you send all of this information by email and ask your audience to review it before your talk? Make it clear that you are not interested in wasting anyone's time reading charts for people in a presentation when they can do it themselves.
Your role in the presentation will then be to interpret, tell them why it's important and to answer questions that your audience has had both the time and the necessary information to formulate. That will take a lot less time than slowly flipping through each slide during the presentation and saying, 'Let me draw your attention to the figures from last month, blah, blah, blah'.
Isn't that a better use of everyone's time? Are you brave enough to try it?