Giving a Presentation

Graduates of the MBA program must be prepared to communicate effectively to a variety of constituents.  Therefore, as a student in the MBA program, you will be evaluated in some of your courses on your ability to deliver an effective informative or persuasive presentation.  This portion of the orientation will familiarize you with one approach to preparing and delivering an effective presentation.

1. State the purpose of your presentation in one sentence.  In most cases, your presentation will be designed to inform your audience about a topic, persuade your audience to agree with your position, or recommend a course of action to your audience.  Until you can articulate what your presentation is intended to accomplish, you will not be able to communicate it clearly.
2. Analyze your audience.  When preparing a presentation, you should have an idea of how many people you will be speaking to, what the demographic profile of the audience will be, and what professional backgrounds will be represented.  You should also consider what the audience's attitude toward both you and your topic is likely to be, and how much the audience may already know about your topic.  Finally, you should have a sense of how formal or informal your presentation needs to be.
3. Decide whether an indirect or direct organizational approach is more appropriate based on your purpose and audience.  In an indirect presentation organization, the audience needs a good deal of background information before they hear your conclusion.  This will be necessary in cases where you are attempting to persuade your audience on a sensitive subject or when you are suggesting a change in the status quo that may be resisted.  If this is the case, you should introduce the supporting information that your audience will find easiest to accept first, and work toward the portion of the presentation in which you anticipate resistance.  In a direct organization, you essentially announce your conclusion, purpose or recommendation during the introduction.  This is appropriate in situations where the audience already feels positive about your presentation, or in situations where your presentation will be complex enough that you audience needs a point to keep in mind throughout.  The direct organization begins with the clear introduction of the main ideas rather than with supporting information.
4. Prepare an introduction.   Begin by deciding how you will you get your audience's attention.  A question, interesting statistic, or quote may be effective, or you may want to find a way to highlight a common goal relating to your presentation that you share with your audience. Provide your audience with some background for why you're giving the presentation--this will give them a context for any conclusion or call to action you're leading them toward.  Give your audience a roadmap of your presentation--let them know what you will be talking about. If you are leaving some relevant aspects of the issue out of the presentation, let the audience know why, or they may spend the entire presentation thinking about the topics you did not cover instead of listening to the information you chose to focus on.  Introduce them to any unusual language or jargon that you'll be using during the presentation.  Finally, share a skeleton outline of your presentation--"Today, I'll be sharing with you the benefits this decision will create in terms of finances, operations, and marketing"--so that your audience can have a mental map of where you are going with this presentation (first you’ll discuss finance, then operations, and finally marketing). By the time you finish your introduction, you should have established your own credibility and motivated your audience to listen, and your audience should have a clear understanding of your purpose.
5. Prepare the body of your presentation.  The body will include three to five main ideas organized in a logical manner--chronologically, topically, by importance, etc..  Keep the weakest of the arguments in the middle.  You want to start and finish strong.  Each idea should be introduced in a way that makes it easy for the audience to keep track of your points.  “Now that you have seen the benefits this change will have on finances, we’ll move on the effects it will have on operations.”
6. Prepare a conclusion.  Your conclusion should briefly summarize the main points you introduced in the body of your presentation.  Do not repeat yourself or introduce new information; simply summarize the arguments that you made in each section of your presentation.  Be sure to include a clear statement about the conclusion you think your audience should draw or the action you think your audience should take, and end positively.
7. Decide how to field questions.  If you are doing a presentation for class, your instructor may dictate whether you will field questions throughout the presentation or only at the end.  If not, decide how you will field questions and tell your audience how to proceed.  Give some thought to the questions your audience is likely to ask and how you will respond.  Some presenters deliberately leave minor points out of a presentation to ensure that the audience will have questions at the end to which the presenter can make intelligent responses.
8. Select your visual aids.  Your visual aids should not be the focus of your presentation--they should only support your presentation and make your message easier for your audience to understand and follow.  Do not read the visual aids to your audience.  Use visual aids to illustrate important or complicated information, and use color for emphasis without making them distracting.  Be prepared to adjust to complications associated with visual aids.  Will you be able to complete your presentation if the projector bulb burns out on your second argument?  Audiences appreciate a presenter who has a Plan B.  (Many faculty will encourage students to use Microsoft PowerPoint or similar software to develop presentation visuals.  If you have never used PowerPoint and would like to learn, contact your academic advisor and request a copy of the courseware.)
9. Review your presentation for language.  The goal of your presentation is to inform or persuade your audience, not impress them with your vocabulary, so make your language conversational.  Use relatively simple sentences, and examples where they will enhance understanding.
10. Practice your delivery.  Become comfortable enough with your topic that you don't have vocal hesitations such as "uh," "um," or longer colloquial expressions which do not add to the content of your presentation.  Make sure you know how to pronounce all of the words in your presentation correctly.  Vary your inflection to make your voice more interesting to listen to.  Make sure your tone supports your credibility--you should sound like an expert on the subject.  Vary your rate of speech as appropriate--slow down on points that you want to emphasize, and speed up in portions of your presentation where not every word is critical and a more rapid pace may be more effective in holding your audience's attention.  Make sure you are speaking loudly enough to be heard by those sitting in the back.  Use humor in your presentation only if it is appropriate, and only if you are good at it.
11. Pay attention to your body language.  You should appear confident, relaxed, and enthusiastic.  Hand gestures should be natural and never distracting, and it should not appear to your audience that you are fidgeting.  Smile when appropriate, and make eye contact with individual members of the audience for long enough to make them feel connected to you, but not so long that they become uncomfortable.  Dress appropriately for class presentations.