Tips for Presentations

Today's topic: Tips for presentations

Last week I hosted a workshop on this topic for the nurses at Chandler, and it was so well received that I thought I'd share some of the high points with you. Here are some tips for making your presentation pop:

1. Think about your audience.

A little audience analysis can help you tailor your presentation to your listeners, thereby ensuring a captivated--not captive--audience. Ask yourself:

*Who will be in the audience? Even if you'll be speaking to an audience of fellow nurses, consider their reasons for attending, what they want or need to get out of your presentation, what they are likely to already know about your topic, etc.

The category of nurses could include a wide range of people with a wide range of knowledge, skills, and interests. Are they nurses with decades of experience? Are they fresh out of nursing school? Are they direct care providers, administrators, educators, scholars? Theorists or practitioners?

This will help you determine content, style, and tone. New nurses may need more (or different) information and explanations than seasoned nurses. Administrators may want different information than direct care providers. An audience of laypeople (parents, patients, legislators) may require different terminology than an audience of health care providers. A small audience of coworkers may expect a more casual tone than an audience of hospital executives.

*Why are they there? In addition to considering what you want your audience to glean from your presentation, think about what they are hoping and expecting to get out of it. Promote your talk accurately by providing clear, specific information in the abstract or advertisements. When preparing your presentation, put yourself in your audience's shoes and think about their motivation for attending. Anticipate their questions and prepare clear, complete answers.

2. Give as much attention to the organization of your presentation as you would to the organization of a paper. Just as a paper should have an introduction, body, and conclusion, a presentation should follow that same general structure.

*The introduction should do two main things: Get your audience's attention and clearly preview the main points of the presentation. There are many ways to grab your listeners' attention. You can open with a quotation or a startling fact or statistic. You can open with anecdote. Which option you choose will depend on the situation.

*The body: As you would in a paper, use topic sentences and transitions to guide your listeners logically from idea to idea. In a PowerPoint presentation, put the most important idea or information at the top of the slide. Use transition words and sentences to let listeners know that you are moving on to a new idea. In PowerPoint, you can also use section header slides to signal transitions. Make sure that everything in your presentation relates directly to the main idea/s expressed in the introduction.

*Remember that examples are more powerful than explanations. You might use a hypothetical example to illustrate a complex or hard to understand concept. For example, you might use an example to illustrate how to apply a particular theoretical model to an everyday practice situation. You might use a story to put a real human face on an issue. What kind of example you use will depend on the situation.

*The conclusion: Last impressions are as important as first impressions! The conclusion should accomplish a couple of things. First, it should concisely recap the main points of the presentation. The conclusion should also leave us with a little something more to ponder. Conclusions often address the implications of the ideas and information covered in the presentation. What does this mean (for practice, for further research, for administration, etc.)? Where do we go from here?

If the aim of your presentation was to persuade your listeners to think or do something, the conclusion is your last chance to achieve that. Many speakers employ the same devices they used to grab listeners' attention at the beginning of the presentation (quotations, anecdotes, persuasive or startling facts/statistics, etc.). If you want your listeners to take a particular action, remind them what.

3. When it comes to slide design, less is more. Many presenters make the mistake of cramming too much onto their PowerPoint slides. Too much information on a slide will overwhelm your viewers and encourage them to read your slides instead of listening to your presentation. Follow these simple guidelines when designing your slides:

*Remember that your narration, not your slides, should drive the bus. The slides are there as visual aids, to emphasize main ideas and key words, to provide interesting visual stimuli, and to orient you if you get lost in the middle of a sentence. DON'T READ YOUR SLIDES (unless you want your audience to fall asleep). And avoid using full sentences in your slides unless you are reproducing a quotation.

*Limit yourself to one or two main ideas or bits of info per slide. Use key words, and give more detail in your narration.

*Use a consistent color palette. Mix images with text to add interest, but don't go overboard. Always keep the principles of readability and professionalism in mind.

*Avoid anything that makes the slide hard to read. Examples: Fancy fonts, italics, multiple fonts on the same slide, light text on light backgrounds, dark text on dark backgrounds, complex backgrounds that make the text hard to see, etc. Put spaces between lines to make the text easier to read.

*Emphasize key words/main points with boldface type or underlining. Avoid all caps--believe it or not, they are hard to read from a distance.

4. Follow these useful tips for speakers.

*Nervous? 

-Practice, practice, practice. The more prepared you are, the more confident you'll be. If at all possible, practice with an audience (even if the audience consists solely of your spouse or roommate). Write yourself clear, easy to read notes, and use index cards rather than full sheets of paper (when you're nervous, paper wobbles quite noisily).

-Fake confidence. Smile, pay attention to your posture. Even if you are petrified, don't tell your audience you're nervous. If you make a mistake, laugh it off or say something like, "I'm sorry, I seem to have lost my place; bear with me a moment." Don't make a big deal out of a small stumble. Even seasoned public speakers make mistakes. It will bother you a thousand times more than it bothers your audience. Also, make eye contact with your audience; don't spend the whole presentation looking down at your notes.

-If possible, visit the presentation site beforehand. You'll feel more confident if you go into your presentation knowing what to expect. A site visit also gives you a chance to check out the technology and make sure you are comfortable using it.

-Work hard on your introduction. If you start strong, that confidence will carry you through the rest of your presentation. Also, concentrate on your purpose--what you want to say--rather than how you're doing as a speaker.

-Breathe. This is an actor's trick and you will be amazed at how much it helps. Before you go on, take 5-10 slow, deep breaths. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, and don't rush. Count slowly to five on the inhale and again on the exhale.

*Remember to stop for questions, if time and circumstances permit. You can do this periodically throughout the presentation (between sections, for example), or you can wait until the end of your talk. You can build this into your notes so that you won't forget.

*Consider printing handouts. You can hit the high points so that your listeners will remember your main  ideas, and offer additional detail where necessary.

**Disclaimer: Those of you who frequent the Blackboard "Writing Resources" site may be wondering why many of the PowerPoint presentations I offer there do not follow the design guidelines I've listed here. This is because I designed most of those PowerPoint presentations to be read, not presented. Since I'm not providing any narration, I had to provide more text.

I hope this post has been helpful. For more tips on making an effective presentation, check out my PowerPoint presentation on this topic--available on the Blackboard Writing Resources site. Happy presenting!


Whitney Kurtz-Ogilvie, MFAW