Presentation Skills
Notes from last night class in professional design practices. A guest speaker from Marriott gave us advice on presentation skills.
Famous presenters
- Steve Jobs
- Barack Obama
- John F. Kennedy
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Building greatness
- Preparing you
- The tool
- Preparing your message
- Your style
Preparation
- Know your audience
- Know your materials
- Know yourself
Know your audience
- What do they need to know?
- Why should they care?
- What do you want them to walk away with
Know your material
- Grabbing them in the first few seconds
- Clear and concise
- Compelling
Avoid using buzz words
- Synergy
- Best practices
- Out of the loop
- Value added
- Think outside the box
- Bandwidth
- Make it pop
Know Yourself
- Gestures: Be natural
- Poster: Stand up or sit up straight
- Movement: Move with purpose
- Eye contact and expressions: look people in the eye
- Voice, projection: Make sure your voice carries the message. Speak with confidence
- Diction and pace: Make sure you’re not mumbling
Challenging audience
- keeping it on track
- Topic migration
- Time mismanagement
Phone interview
- Practice with technology: Be ready ahead of time. Check to make sure Skype or whatever software is used for the interview works
- Focus on speaking style
- Timely: Make sure to be on time
- Introductions
- Connection: Make sure your phone has good reception. Use a landline
- Documents in advance
- Visual translation
Other tips to remember
- Be brief. Be bright. Be gone
- Command: Confident not cocky
- It’s fine to pause. Take the pause to gather your thoughts if you get lost
Topics in a hat
Each of us takes out a topic in the hat and present it for one minute. It was a nerve-racking but helpful exercise.