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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 to 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.
- 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.
- 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 to the effects it will have on operations."
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
