Recently, attended an interesting session, 'Advanced Oral Presentations: Secrets of Great Presenters' by Dr Steve Hutchinson. He is an international project management consultant. He also published four books, and "Enhancing the Doctoral Experience" is one among them. This is a summary of the session. Most of the ideas in this article are his, with my interpretations, and in my words. You can read more about him on his website www.hutchingsontraining.com.

Introduction

Overview of the session

Have you ever seen a really great presenter and wondered how they do what they do? Being a great presenter is mostly about practice, but there are many things that you can learn to do that will improve your stage presence and the way that you connect with an audience. The session focused on participants' needs and explored the tricks, tips and techniques of great presenters.

Objectives

• Deliver a message the audience will respond to, and guide an audience through dense and difficult material

• Build a rapport with an audience

• Handle questions with confidence

• Show a confident stage presence, project your voice more effectively and deal with nervousness

• Use audiovisuals effectively and so avoid PowerPointlessness

Content

Secretes of Great Presenters

Following are the common things done by any good presenters. These are the things run throughout the presentations.

Energy: They project the energy, and it is reflected in their every action. They use all artefacts for the same. It is done with the intention to share the energy required for them to share the ideas they come with. It may vary according to the context, occasions and content. But there is certain energy required for each presentation, and that should be communicated to the audience.

Story: Good presenters just not tell the facts, but they tell the Story. People are not interested in the fact, well they are, but they can read it in the documents as well. Important is, how you weave those facts with the Story. It will make that presentation interesting. People should be able to remember and connect to the presentation. It is possible if they see some journey in it. The Story makes it happen for you. When your presentation becomes Story, then it needs everything a story demands, for example, excitement, transitions, suspense.

Analysis and Expertise: People are there to listen to the expert or somebody who has done something different than usual. Make sure that you focus on that and communicate it well to the audience. Demonstrate your analysis and expertise throughout the presentation. Come out with the interesting ideas, interpretations and connections, which are not communicated before. The audience is looking for that and not the general talk.

Connections: Establish and then maintain the connect the audience throughout the presentation. You establish the connection from the start. You can very well do it even before starting the session. If you don't have that chance, then you also do it at the start of the presentation. Your opening statements and various strategies establish that connect. You can also deploy different strategies to establish that connect. But it is really important for you to maintain that to communicate your ideas through.

Structure of the Presentation

The presentation should be designed as a funnel, where you start with the larger thoughts and then slowly move towards the specifics. Why, how, and what is the best structure for any presentation. If you are there for a long presentation, then your summary talks about these things in the introduction and then can follow the same structure for the elaboration and summary. He aptly used the analogy of Funnel to explain this concept. You should keep narrowing down the things and should come to specifics towards the end of this point.

Why - Passion: This section shows your commitment to the topic or presentation. It should communicate why you feel so important to work on this. Even if its any official presentation, you have larger ideas to back up your thoughts. Let your people understand those.

Why - Benefits: Start with why this is important to them as well. The audience should also feel connected to it. Make them understand why this topic connects to the larger concerns everybody has. You can talk about Humanity, life, global, and universal concerns here.

How - Preparations: You can share the practices and preparations here. It is good to share concise details than giving everything to the audience. You can try to keep few (obvious) things as suspense.

What - Plans: This section will talk about the specific plans. What are you proposing to do? The audience should be in the position to interpret your proposal and concepts based on the thoughts mentioned earlier. It should pave the path for discussion here onward throughout the remaining time in the presentation.

Key suggestions

Build your presentation around one idea: It is really good if you can build enter presentation around on the central idea. Your audience should be able to tell unanimously one thought at the end of it. There can be various sub-topics and chain of arguments. But it should be directed towards one central theme. It will help look everything coherent. In the case of academic presentations, it is even more important as you will get talking to experts in your topic, and they would love to listen to your central thought.

Make it fun, entertaining but maintain professionalism: It is really good if you hold your audience with the fun or settle humour. But it will be good if you can restrict according to the audience. Acceptable level of humour really depends on the context, content and audience. Avoid looking stupid in the attempt to engage the audience using fun. It can entertaining but surely not unbearable laughter. Ultimately, it is about holding your audience. Don't lose them just by being an entertainer.

Follow your audience: Good presenters can easily sense the audience. It will be good if you can follow them. Understand what your audience is trying to tell you. It will be good if you can react to those needs. You can bring your audience back if you manage to judge the pulse of the audience. It will be easier in the small audience as you will have a chance to interact with them. But similarly, large crowd talks to you. Listen and respond to them.

First impression count: First impression is everything in the presentations. People judge you even before you start talking. Make sure that you leave with the best first impression. You can wear appropriately, style according to the occasion and appear in sync with the context. You can also choose to be different if you want to stand out from the crowd. But be natural.

Be CONFIDENT (or at least ACT): You postures and walk matters a lot. People are observing each move and your responsibility is to communicate confidence through each of those. Wear a smile on the face and comfortable expressions. Stand stable and erected. Always look in the eyes of the individuals while talking.

Reach early at the Venue: If you are presenting, it's your duty to be there at least 15 mins before and check if everything is set-up as per expectations. You will have somebody to take care of it, but that does not mean that you leave everything to them. In the end, any goof-up will affect your presentation and their's.

Interact with the audience before starting: If you can get a chance to interact with your audience before the start, then nothing like it. You can get the nerve of the people and can also general sense. You also get additional time to communicate yourself. At least a few of them knows you beforehand, and it makes your life simple.

Talk to yourself before starting: You should be convinced that there is something extraordinary happening today, and then only people will be eager to listen to you. Talk to yourself and tell that, 'You are going to talk something important today'. This reminder will set a tone of your every step ahead.

Fundamentals of Presentation

Objective: Identify the keywords (Verbs) that defines the aim of your talk. That is what you are doing everything for. You can be presenting to stimulate the crowd, to empathize, to make them think and anything else. If you have it clearly identified with you, then it gives you enough ground for preparations.

Preparation: You need to align everything according to your objective. Your Verbals (What you say), Vocals (How you say it..) and Visuals (How you look and Act..) has to aligned to deliver your objectives. The same content can be used to deliver various objectives. Therefore, how you prepare really makes a difference.

Relationship: Maintaining connect with the audience is a tough job. You can prepare three questions which will come at the right intervals to hook the interest of the audience. It will get their attention back.

What they want: When people come to listen to you, they have basic expectations from the presenter: confidence, commitment and connection. You should be in a position to convince the people that you have all these while presenting.

Value to their life: In the end, only one thing matters to them. What value are you adding to their life? If you can share that initially and convince them in the end. You end up giving a good presentation.

Your Introduction

A - Attention: You should do something that will grab their attention. One good opening slide or punch statement may also grab the attention of the audience.

B- Benefits: Share the benefits they have after listening to you. Everybody wants to understand what is there for them. If you don't have a specific audience, then share a very general point which can be a concern for everybody.

C- Credentials: Mention what credentials you hold to talk about those things. What you have done before and what are you doing now. Don't mention general or duplicate details. Use experiences or qualifications which are most relevant to the talk.

D-Direction: Share the directions of the presentation and follow those directions. People should be aware of the journey and should get excited about that. Therefore, mention the interesting twists and turn you going to bring them to.

Specific about the Conference Presentations

Heterogeneous audience: Normally, conferences have heterogeneous audiences, and they are not aware of your domain of work. Your responsibility is to simplify the things for them. It is good if you get the sense of the audience beforehand decide what level simplicity will be expected.

Avoid overuse of Jargon: You can surely use a few of the jargon and explain them to the audiences if required. But avoid overusing that jargon as it may disconnect you from the audiences.

Be flexible: If your slides are not clotted with text, then it gives you the flexibility to simplify the things according to the need of the audiences. You can spend more time on any particular slides and then speed up a few. But adding jargon on the slides hold you back.

Handouts but with graphics: Your slides should be as visuals as possible, and handouts can have good textual content. But there should be connected between both these things. And that connecting point is the graphics. Make sure that graphics are used as the pointers in the handouts.

Q&A Session

Q&A is the best session, I believe. Firstly, one genuine and good question answer 90% of populations. Secondly, you get extra and official time to interact with the audience. It is the best feedback about your presentation. You should handle this session carefully and because listeners will go with those things as their last memory about you.

Set expectations at the start: You set up expectations at the start, and then people don't come up the irrelevant questions. Even if they ask you something out of the syllabus, then you can very well deny answering those questions. But its really essential to that tone from the start.

Respond confidently: Audience is there to listen to you as you know something more than they know about that particular topic. Therefore, you are expected to answer it with confidence. It doesn't mean that you need to arrogant but using strong words is fine.

You can park questions sometimes: If you think that any particular question can lead to a debate then avoid answering such questions. Worst case, you are not aware of the answer then apologies and refuse to answer. You can take an intermediate way and ask them to meet separately to discuss any specific points.

Keep answers short: Q&A is not the extended talk. Everybody has questions in their mind, and they might be waiting for their turn. It is good if you can keep your responses simple and concise.

Summary of the session

You can briefly summarize the session after Q&A. You can choose to do it before Q&A based on the context. Training sessions and official presentations can end with the summary and action plans. Conferences should have summary before the Q&A.

Use the same graphics to connect: You can open with some graphics to share the journey of the presentation. Use the same graphics throughout the presentation. In the end, use the same summaries what you said throughout the presentation. It will be a good strategy.