I regularly facilitate “Presentation skills” training courses to the Management and staff of many Corporate, local and multinational clients through my association with MaST Ireland. Many of the delegates on these courses get tremendous value from the tips that are shared as part of these programs. I thought therefore that you might be interested to learn about some of these tips.

1. PowerPoint is a great tool to support your presentation however your audience can get transfixed on this bright coloured image projected up onto a screen behind you which results in your audience’s attention being detracted away from you – the presenter.  To get over this, hit the “B” button on your keyboard when in slideshow mode and the screen turns black, hit the “W” button and the screen turns white.
2. Research has shown that a mere 7% of any message is communicated via the words spoken, 38% is accounted for by the tone used and the remaining 55% of any message is communicated via body language. So, when presenting, make sure to display confident, uplifting, engaging body language and vary and pitch, pace and tone of your voice to bring the words you speak to life.
3. If you are using a flipchart to support your presentation and want to produce a complex graph or diagram, draw the graph or diagram using a light pencil before the presentation begins, then when it comes to constructing your graph or diagram, simply trace over the pencil with an ink pen. Your audience will not see the pencil and will be amazed at how neat your drawing is and how much detail you have apparently “remembered”.
4. Establishing eye contact with your audience is critical when presenting. It engages your audience, it communicates to your audience that you really want them to hear what you have to say and it keeps your audience focused. Making eye contact can poise a challenge for many people so here is a simple “trick” that can help. Imagine an inverted triangle drawn across the top of a person’s eyes with the point of the triangle at the person’s chin. If you look at any point within this imaginary triangle (i.e. their mouth, nose, cheeks etc...), the person you are looking at will think you are making eye-contact with them.  
5. When preparing a presentation from a blank sheet, you should allow 8 times more preparation time than presenting time, so if your presentation is going to be 10minutes, you should allow 80mins preparation time.

If you or your company would like to find out more about “Presentation Skills” or any of the other circa 50 training, coaching and personality profiling solutions that we offer, please contact me on Tel: 061-467287, email: info:synergycoachingservices.net

Copyright © Synergy Coaching Services 2007.