Effective Presentation Skills Of Design And Outline

The effective presentation skills of design and outline are concerned selecting the appropriate means of delivery and organizing of the presentation. This is how you will achieve your purpose and keep the audience interested.

The steps involved in the design and outline are:-

1. Selecting the idea or topic to support the purpose
2. Gathering information - researching material to include the speech
3. Outlining the presentation - determining the main points of the speech,
4. Organizing the presentation - deciding on the best order, what to put in and what to leave out
5. Deciding on the visual aids to use including PowerPoint slides

It is with these effective presentation skills that a successful presentation takes step. The clearer the purpose is, and the better the knowledge of the audience the more effective the presentation skills of design and outline are.

Effective Presentation Skills - It's Not About You

An audience expects worthwhile content that is interesting. They are not interested in great oratory. Each audience is different. An effective business presentation is probably different to a presentation that would given to a school.

The next of the effective presentation skills related to objective is - Know Your Audience. This covers understanding your audience's expectations of why they are there, the level of experience, the age, their knowledge of your topic etc. The more you know about them the easier it is to develop an effective presentation.

If you do not know your audience it can be difficult to develop a presentation that they consider interesting and worthwhile. It will make it more difficult to achieve the purpose of the presentation.

The 2 effective presentation skills of purpose setting and know your audience make it much easier to design and prepare an effective presentation.

Effective Presentation Skills Planning

The first of the effective presentation skills is objective setting. Before you start to prepare your presentation it is important to know why it is to be given. There are 2 parts to objective setting:-

1. What is your reason for presenting?
2. Who is your audience?

A presentation without a purpose is of little use to the audience or the presenter. It is a waste of every-one's time. The clearer you are on the purpose the more effective the presentation. The general purpose for the presenter is "tell" or "sell" or entertain the audience while keeping the audience interested.

For example if you were presenting at a charity fundraiser, the purpose could be to convince (sell) the audience to make donations.

Knowing your purpose for presenting is is one of the most important of the effective presentation skills because without it the presentation will meander and the audience will wonder what it was about.

Effective Presentation Skills Areas

There are a 6 broad areas that effective presentation skills can be broken down that help to understand and apply them:

1. Objective Setting
2. Design & Outline
3. Preparation
4. Give Presentation
5. Review
6. Other

The order I have presented the points, other than point 6 to use the effective presentation skills develop and give a good presentation - i.e starting with objectives, then planning, followed by designing, next comes preparing speech and slides plus practice. After these actions have been completed you are reeady to give your presentation. The review step is how to learn lesson and develop more effective presentation skills.

The other effective presentation skills cover skills that cover some general ideas for presenting which will enhance the presentation for yourself and the audience.

The Goal Of Effective Presentation Skills

The goal of effective presentation skills, in general terms, is to give an effective presentation. Effective presentation skills need to be assessed against this objective. It is important I give my definition of what is an effective presentation so there is understandable context for tips I give on developing effective presentation skills.

In deciding whether a presentation is effective it needs to considered from two parties perspective - the audience and the presenter. From an audience point of view an effective presentation is where they have benefited from listening from it - e.g. they have been updated and understand a situation, they now understand something better, or they have been entertained etc.

The presenter will have their own objectives and determines the effectiveness of the presentation by how well they achieved them - e.g. they have successfully informed or explained something to the audience, convinced the audience to take a certain course of action etc.

Effective presentation skills are the skills that result in a presentation that meets the objectives of the audience and the presenter.

Are Effective Presentation Skills Needed Today?

As an introduction to effective presentation skills I am going to talk about some the reasons why developing effective presentation skills is still essential in these high tech times.

Today there are many communication means - text messaging, tele-conferences, emails etc. There high tech means are highly efficient forms of convey messages, but they are not as effective as face to face meetings or presentations. People are social animals and continue to like the high touch approach. It is much easier to build trust and credibility.

Effective presentation skills are needed to progress a career after a certain point - technical skills will only take you so far. They are need to communicate ideas, persuade and sell to small groups and large audiences.

Developing effective presentation skills will help you achieve your business, career goals and your community support objectives (asking for funding or support etc).