presentation skills voice

• Online Degree Explore Bachelor’s & Master’s degrees
• MasterTrack™ Earn credit towards a Master’s degree
• University Certificates Advance your career with graduate-level learning
• Top Courses
• Join for Free

What Are Effective Presentation Skills (and How to Improve Them)

Presentation skills are essential for your personal and professional life. Learn about effective presentations and how to boost your presenting techniques.

At least seven out of 10 Americans agree that presentation skills are essential for a successful career [ 1 ]. Although it might be tempting to think that these are skills reserved for people interested in public speaking roles, they're critical in a diverse range of jobs. For example, you might need to brief your supervisor on research results.

Presentation skills are also essential in other scenarios, including working with a team and explaining your thought process, walking clients through project ideas and timelines, and highlighting your strengths and achievements to your manager during performance reviews.

Whatever the scenario, you have very little time to capture your audience’s attention and get your point across when presenting information—about three seconds, according to research [ 2 ]. Effective presentation skills help you get your point across and connect with the people you’re communicating with, which is why nearly every employer requires them.

Understanding what presentation skills are is only half the battle. Honing your presenting techniques is essential for mastering presentations of all kinds and in all settings.

What are presentation skills?

Presentation skills are the abilities and qualities necessary for creating and delivering a compelling presentation that effectively communicates information and ideas. They encompass what you say, how you structure it, and the materials you include to support what you say, such as slides, videos, or images.

You'll make presentations at various times in your life. Examples include:

Making speeches at a wedding, conference, or another event

Making a toast at a dinner or event

Explaining projects to a team 

Delivering results and findings to management teams

Teaching people specific methods or information

Proposing a vote at community group meetings

Pitching a new idea or business to potential partners or investors

Why are presentation skills important? 

Delivering effective presentations is critical in your professional and personal life. You’ll need to hone your presentation skills in various areas, such as when giving a speech, convincing your partner to make a substantial purchase, and talking to friends and family about an important situation.

No matter if you’re using them in a personal or professional setting, these are the skills that make it easier and more effective to convey your ideas, convince or persuade others, and experience success. A few of the benefits that often accompany improving your presentation skills include:

Enriched written and verbal communication skills

Enhanced confidence and self-image

Boosted critical thinking and problem-solving capabilities

Better motivational techniques

Increased leadership skills

Expanded time management, negotiation, and creativity

The better your presenting techniques, the more engaging your presentations will be. You could also have greater opportunities to make positive impacts in business and other areas of your life.

Effective presentation skills

Imagine yourself in the audience at a TED Talk or sitting with your coworkers at a big meeting held by your employer. What would you be looking for in how they deliver their message? What would make you feel engaged?

These are a few questions to ask yourself as you review this list of some of the most effective presentation skills.

Verbal communication

How you use language and deliver messages play essential roles in how your audience will receive your presentation. Speak clearly and confidently, projecting your voice enough to ensure everyone can hear. Think before you speak, pausing when necessary and tailoring the way you talk to resonate with your particular audience.

Body language

Body language combines various critical elements, including posture, gestures, eye contact, expressions, and position in front of the audience. Body language is one of the elements that can instantly transform a presentation that would otherwise be dull into one that's dynamic and interesting.

Voice projection

The ability to project your voice improves your presentation by allowing your audience to hear what you're saying. It also increases your confidence to help settle any lingering nerves while also making your message more engaging. To project your voice, stand comfortably with your shoulders back. Take deep breaths to power your speaking voice and ensure you enunciate every syllable you speak.

How you present yourself plays a role in your body language and ability to project your voice. It also sets the tone for the presentation. Avoid slouching or looking overly tense. Instead, remain open, upright, and adaptable while taking the formality of the occasion into account.

Storytelling

Incorporating storytelling into a presentation is an effective strategy used by many powerful public speakers. It has the power to bring your subject to life and pique the audience’s curiosity. Don’t be afraid to tell a personal story, slowly building up suspense or adding a dramatic moment. And, of course, be sure to end with a positive takeaway to drive your point home.

Active listening

Active listening is a valuable skill all on its own. When you understand and thoughtfully respond to what you hear—whether it's in a conversation or during a presentation—you’ll likely deepen your personal relationships and actively engage audiences during a presentation. As part of your presentation skill set, it helps catch and maintain the audience’s attention, helping them remain focused while minimizing passive response, ensuring the message is delivered correctly, and encouraging a call to action.

Stage presence

During a presentation, projecting confidence can help keep your audience engaged. Stage presence can help you connect with your audience and encourage them to want to watch you. To improve your presence, try amping up your normal demeanor by infusing it with a bit of enthusiasm. Project confidence and keep your information interesting.

Watch your audience as you’re presenting. If you’re holding their attention, it likely means you’re connecting well with them.

Self-awareness

Monitoring your own emotions and reactions will allow you to react well in various situations. It helps you remain personable throughout your presentation and handle feedback well. Self-awareness can help soothe nervousness during presentations, allowing you to perform more effectively.

Writing skills

Writing is a form of presentation. Sharp writing skills can help you master your presentation’s outline to ensure you stay on message and remain clear about your objectives from the beginning until the end. It’s also helpful to have strong writing abilities for creating compelling slides and other visual aids.

Understanding an audience

When you understand your audience's needs and interests, you can design your presentation around them. In turn, you'll deliver maximum value to them and enhance your ability to make your message easy to understand.

Learn more about presentation skills from industry experts at SAP:

How to improve presentation skills

There’s an art to public speaking. Just like any other type of art, this is one that requires practice. Improving your presentation skills will help reduce miscommunications, enhance your time management capabilities, and boost your leadership skills. Here are some ways you can improve these skills:

Work on self-confidence.

When you’re confident, you naturally speak more clearly and with more authority. Taking the time to prepare your presentation with a strong opening and compelling visual aids can help you feel more confident. Other ways to improve your self-confidence include practicing positive self-talk, surrounding yourself with positive people, and avoiding comparing yourself (or your presentation) to others.

Develop strategies for overcoming fear.

Many people are nervous or fearful before giving a presentation. A bad memory of a past performance or insufficient self-confidence can contribute to fear and anxiety. Having a few go-to strategies like deep breathing, practicing your presentation, and grounding can help you transform that fear into extra energy to put into your stage presence.

Learn grounding techniques.

Grounding is any type of technique that helps you steer your focus away from distressing thoughts and keeps you connected with your present self. To ground yourself, stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and imagine you’re a large, mature tree with roots extending deep into the earth—like the tree, you can become unshakable.

Learn how to use presentation tools.

Visual aids and other technical support can transform an otherwise good presentation into a wow-worthy one. A few popular presentation tools include:

Canva: Provides easy-to-design templates you can customize

Powtoon: Animation software that makes video creation fast and easy

PowerPoint: Microsoft's iconic program popular for dynamic marketing and sales presentations

Practice breathing techniques.

Breathing techniques can help quell anxiety, making it easier to shake off pre-presentation jitters and nerves. It also helps relax your muscles and get more oxygen to your brain.  For some pre-presentation calmness, you can take deep breaths, slowly inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth.

While presenting, breathe in through your mouth with the back of your tongue relaxed so your audience doesn't hear a gasping sound. Speak on your exhalation, maintaining a smooth voice.

Gain experience.

The more you practice, the better you’ll become. The more you doanything, the more comfortable you’ll feel engaging in that activity. Presentations are no different. Repeatedly practicing your own presentation also offers the opportunity to get feedback from other people and tweak your style and content as needed.

Tips to help you ace your presentation

Your presentation isn’t about you; it’s about the material you’re presenting. Sometimes, reminding yourself of this ahead of taking center stage can help take you out of your head, allowing you to connect effectively with your audience. The following are some of the many actions you can take on the day of your presentation.

Arrive early.

Since you may have a bit of presentation-related anxiety, it’s important to avoid adding travel stress. Give yourself an abundance of time to arrive at your destination, and take into account heavy traffic and other unforeseen events. By arriving early, you also give yourself time to meet with any on-site technicians, test your equipment, and connect with people ahead of the presentation.

Become familiar with the layout of the room.

Arriving early also gives you time to assess the room and figure out where you want to stand. Experiment with the acoustics to determine how loudly you need to project your voice, and test your equipment to make sure everything connects and appears properly with the available setup. This is an excellent opportunity to work out any last-minute concerns and move around to familiarize yourself with the setting for improved stage presence.

Listen to presenters ahead of you.

When you watch others present, you'll get a feel for the room's acoustics and lighting. You can also listen for any data that’s relevant to your presentation and revisit it during your presentation—this can make the presentation more interactive and engaging.

Use note cards.

Writing yourself a script could provide you with more comfort. To prevent sounding too robotic or disengaged, only include talking points in your note cards in case you get off track. Using note cards can help keep your presentation organized while sounding more authentic to your audience.

Learn to deliver clear and confident presentations with Dynamic Public Speaking from the University of Washington. Build confidence, develop new delivery techniques, and practice strategies for crafting compelling presentations for different purposes, occasions, and audiences.

Article sources

Forbes. “ New Survey: 70% Say Presentation Skills are Critical for Career Success , https://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2014/09/25/new-survey-70-percent-say-presentation-skills-critical-for-career-success/?sh=619f3ff78890.” Accessed December 7, 2022.

Beautiful.ai. “ 15 Presentation and Public Speaking Stats You Need to Know , https://www.beautiful.ai/blog/15-presentation-and-public-speaking-stats-you-need-to-know. Accessed December 7, 2022.

Keep reading

Coursera staff.

Editorial Team

Coursera’s editorial team is comprised of highly experienced professional editors, writers, and fact...

This content has been made available for informational purposes only. Learners are advised to conduct additional research to ensure that courses and other credentials pursued meet their personal, professional, and financial goals.

How it works

Transform your enterprise with the scalable mindsets, skills, & behavior change that drive performance.

Explore how BetterUp connects to your core business systems.

We pair AI with the latest in human-centered coaching to drive powerful, lasting learning and behavior change.

Build leaders that accelerate team performance and engagement.

Unlock performance potential at scale with AI-powered curated growth journeys.

Build resilience, well-being and agility to drive performance across your entire enterprise.

Transform your business, starting with your sales leaders.

Unlock business impact from the top with executive coaching.

Foster a culture of inclusion and belonging.

Accelerate the performance and potential of your agencies and employees.

See how innovative organizations use BetterUp to build a thriving workforce.

Discover how BetterUp measurably impacts key business outcomes for organizations like yours.

A demo is the first step to transforming your business. Meet with us to develop a plan for attaining your goals.

• What is coaching?

Learn how 1:1 coaching works, who its for, and if it's right for you.

Accelerate your personal and professional growth with the expert guidance of a BetterUp Coach.

Types of Coaching

Navigate career transitions, accelerate your professional growth, and achieve your career goals with expert coaching.

Enhance your communication skills for better personal and professional relationships, with tailored coaching that focuses on your needs.

Find balance, resilience, and well-being in all areas of your life with holistic coaching designed to empower you.

Discover your perfect match : Take our 5-minute assessment and let us pair you with one of our top Coaches tailored just for you.

Research, expert insights, and resources to develop courageous leaders within your organization.

Best practices, research, and tools to fuel individual and business growth.

View on-demand BetterUp events and learn about upcoming live discussions.

The latest insights and ideas for building a high-performing workplace.

• BetterUp Briefing

The online magazine that helps you understand tomorrow's workforce trends, today.

Innovative research featured in peer-reviewed journals, press, and more.

Founded in 2022 to deepen the understanding of the intersection of well-being, purpose, and performance

We're on a mission to help everyone live with clarity, purpose, and passion.

Join us and create impactful change.

Read the buzz about BetterUp.

Meet the leadership that's passionate about empowering your workforce.

For Business

For Individuals

6 presentation skills and how to improve them

Jump to section

What are presentation skills?

The importance of presentation skills, 6 presentation skills examples, how to improve presentation skills.

Tips for dealing with presentation anxiety

Learn how to captivate an audience with ease

Capturing an audience’s attention takes practice. 

Over time, great presenters learn how to organize their speeches and captivate an audience from start to finish. They spark curiosity, know how to read a room , and understand what their audience needs to walk away feeling like they learned something valuable.

Regardless of your profession, you most likely use presentation skills on a monthly or even weekly basis. Maybe you lead brainstorming sessions or host client calls. 

Developing effective presentation skills makes it easier to contribute ideas with confidence and show others you’re someone to trust. Although speaking in front of a crowd sometimes brings nerves and anxiety , it also sparks new opportunities.

Presentation skills are the qualities and abilities you need to communicate ideas effectively and deliver a compelling speech. They influence how you structure a presentation and how an audience receives it. Understanding body language , creating impactful visual aids, and projecting your voice all fall under this umbrella.

A great presentation depends on more than what you say. It’s about how you say it. Storytelling , stage presence, and voice projection all shape how well you express your ideas and connect with the audience. These skills do take practice, but they’re worth developing — especially if public speaking makes you nervous. 

Engaging a crowd isn’t easy. You may feel anxious to step in front of an audience and have all eyes and ears on you.

But feeling that anxiety doesn’t mean your ideas aren’t worth sharing. Whether you’re giving an inspiring speech or delivering a monthly recap at work, your audience is there to listen to you. Harness that nervous energy and turn it into progress.

Strong presentation skills make it easier to convey your thoughts to audiences of all sizes. They can help you tell a compelling story, convince people of a pitch , or teach a group something entirely new to them. And when it comes to the workplace, the strength of your presentation skills could play a part in getting a promotion or contributing to a new initiative.

To fully understand the impact these skills have on creating a successful presentation, it’s helpful to look at each one individually. Here are six valuable skills you can develop:

1. Active listening

Active listening is an excellent communication skill for any professional to hone. When you have strong active listening skills, you can listen to others effectively and observe their nonverbal cues . This helps you assess whether or not your audience members are engaged in and understand what you’re sharing. 

Great public speakers use active listening to assess the audience’s reactions and adjust their speech if they find it lacks impact. Signs like slouching, negative facial expressions, and roaming eye contact are all signs to watch out for when giving a presentation.

2. Body language

If you’re researching presentation skills, chances are you’ve already watched a few notable speeches like TED Talks or industry seminars. And one thing you probably noticed is that speakers can capture attention with their body language. 

A mixture of eye contact, hand gestures , and purposeful pacing makes a presentation more interesting and engaging. If you stand in one spot and don’t move your body, the audience might zone out.

3. Stage presence

A great stage presence looks different for everyone. A comedian might aim for more movement and excitement, and a conference speaker might focus their energy on the content of their speech. Although neither is better than the other, both understand their strengths and their audience’s needs. 

Developing a stage presence involves finding your own unique communication style . Lean into your strengths, whether that’s adding an injection of humor or asking questions to make it interactive . To give a great presentation, you might even incorporate relevant props or presentation slides.

4. Storytelling

According to Forbes, audiences typically pay attention for about 10 minutes before tuning out . But you can lengthen their attention span by offering a presentation that interests them for longer. Include a narrative they’ll want to listen to, and tell a story as you go along. 

Shaping your content to follow a clear narrative can spark your audience’s curiosity and entice them to pay careful attention. You can use anecdotes from your personal or professional life that take your audience along through relevant moments. If you’re pitching a product, you can start with a problem and lead your audience through the stages of how your product provides a solution.

5. Voice projection

Although this skill may be obvious, you need your audience to hear what you’re saying. This can be challenging if you’re naturally soft-spoken and struggle to project your voice.

Remember to straighten your posture and take deep breaths before speaking, which will help you speak louder and fill the room. If you’re talking into a microphone or participating in a virtual meeting, you can use your regular conversational voice, but you still want to sound confident and self-assured with a strong tone.

If you’re unsure whether everyone can hear you, you can always ask the audience at the beginning of your speech and wait for confirmation. That way, they won’t have to potentially interrupt you later.

Ensuring everyone can hear you also includes your speed and annunciation. It’s easy to speak quickly when nervous, but try to slow down and pronounce every word. Mumbling can make your presentation difficult to understand and pay attention to.

6. Verbal communication 

Although verbal communication involves your projection and tone, it also covers the language and pacing you use to get your point across. This includes where you choose to place pauses in your speech or the tone you use to emphasize important ideas.

If you’re giving a presentation on collaboration in the workplace , you might start your speech by saying, “There’s something every workplace needs to succeed: teamwork.” By placing emphasis on the word “ teamwork ,” you give your audience a hint on what ideas will follow.

To further connect with your audience through diction, pay careful attention to who you’re speaking to. The way you talk to your colleagues might be different from how you speak to a group of superiors, even if you’re discussing the same subject. You might use more humor and a conversational tone for the former and more serious, formal diction for the latter.

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses when it comes to presenting. Maybe you’re confident in your use of body language, but your voice projection needs work. Maybe you’re a great storyteller in small group settings, but need to work on your stage presence in front of larger crowds. 

The first step to improving presentation skills is pinpointing your gaps and determining which qualities to build upon first. Here are four tips for enhancing your presentation skills:

1. Build self-confidence

Confident people know how to speak with authority and share their ideas. Although feeling good about your presentation skills is easier said than done, building confidence is key to helping your audience believe in what you’re saying. Try practicing positive self-talk and continuously researching your topic's ins and outs.

If you don’t feel confident on the inside, fake it until you make it. Stand up straight, project your voice, and try your best to appear engaged and excited. Chances are, the audience doesn’t know you’re unsure of your skills — and they don’t need to.

Another tip is to lean into your slideshow, if you’re using one. Create something colorful and interesting so the audience’s eyes fall there instead of on you. And when you feel proud of your slideshow, you’ll be more eager to share it with others, bringing more energy to your presentation.

2. Watch other presentations

Developing the soft skills necessary for a good presentation can be challenging without seeing them in action. Watch as many as possible to become more familiar with public speaking skills and what makes a great presentation. You could attend events with keynote speakers or view past speeches on similar topics online.

Take a close look at how those presenters use verbal communication and body language to engage their audiences. Grab a notebook and jot down what you enjoyed and your main takeaways. Try to recall the techniques they used to emphasize their main points, whether they used pauses effectively, had interesting visual aids, or told a fascinating story.

3. Get in front of a crowd

You don’t need a large auditorium to practice public speaking. There are dozens of other ways to feel confident and develop good presentation skills.

If you’re a natural comedian, consider joining a small stand-up comedy club. If you’re an avid writer, participate in a public poetry reading. Even music and acting can help you feel more comfortable in front of a crowd.

If you’d rather keep it professional, you can still work on your presentation skills in the office. Challenge yourself to participate at least once in every team meeting, or plan and present a project to become more comfortable vocalizing your ideas. You could also speak to your manager about opportunities that flex your public speaking abilities.

4. Overcome fear

Many people experience feelings of fear before presenting in front of an audience, whether those feelings appear as a few butterflies or more severe anxiety. Try grounding yourself to shift your focus to the present moment. If you’re stuck dwelling on previous experiences that didn’t go well, use those mistakes as learning experiences and focus on what you can improve to do better in the future.

Tips for dealing with presentation anxiety 

It’s normal to feel nervous when sharing your ideas. In fact, according to a report from the Journal of Graduate Medical Education, public speaking anxiety is prevalent in 15–30% of the general population .

Even though having a fear of public speaking is common, it doesn’t make it easier. You might feel overwhelmed, become stiff, and forget what you were going to say. But although the moment might scare you, there are ways to overcome the fear and put mind over matter.

Use these tactics to reduce your stress when you have to make a presentation:

1. Practice breathing techniques

If you experience anxiety often, you’re probably familiar with breathing techniques for stress relief . Incorporating these exercises into your daily routine can help you stop worrying and regulate anxious feelings. 

Before a big presentation, take a moment alone to practice breathing techniques, ground yourself, and reduce tension. It’s also a good idea to take breaths throughout the presentation to speak slower and calm yourself down .

2. Get organized

The more organized you are, the more prepared you’ll feel. Carefully outline all of the critical information you want to use in your presentation, including your main talking points and visual aids, so you don’t forget anything. Use bullet points and visuals on each slide to remind you of what you want to talk about, and create handheld notes to help you stay on track.

3. Embrace moments of silence

It’s okay to lose your train of thought. It happens to even the most experienced public speakers once in a while. If your mind goes blank, don’t panic. Take a moment to breathe, gather your thoughts, and refer to your notes to see where you left off. You can drink some water or make a quick joke to ease the silence or regain your footing. And it’s okay to say, “Give me a moment while I find my notes.” Chances are, people understand the position you’re in.

4. Practice makes progress

Before presenting, rehearse in front of friends and family members you trust. This gives you the chance to work out any weak spots in your speech and become comfortable communicating out loud. If you want to go the extra mile, ask your makeshift audience to ask a surprise question. This tests your on-the-spot thinking and will prove that you can keep cool when things come up.

Whether you’re new to public speaking or are a seasoned presenter, you’re bound to make a few slip-ups. It happens to everyone. The most important thing is that you try your best, brush things off, and work on improving your skills to do better in your next presentation.

Although your job may require a different level of public speaking than your favorite TED Talk , developing presentation skills is handy in any profession. You can use presentation skills in a wide range of tasks in the workplace, whether you’re sharing your ideas with colleagues, expressing concerns to higher-ups, or pitching strategies to potential clients.

Remember to use active listening to read the room and engage your audience with an interesting narrative. Don’t forget to step outside your comfort zone once in a while and put your skills to practice in front of a crowd. After facing your fears, you’ll feel confident enough to put presentation skills on your resume.

If you’re trying to build your skills and become a better employee overall, try a communications coach with BetterUp. 

Elevate your communication skills

Unlock the power of clear and persuasive communication. Our coaches can guide you to build strong relationships and succeed in both personal and professional life.

Elizabeth Perry, ACC

Elizabeth Perry is a Coach Community Manager at BetterUp. She uses strategic engagement strategies to cultivate a learning community across a global network of Coaches through in-person and virtual experiences, technology-enabled platforms, and strategic coaching industry partnerships. With over 3 years of coaching experience and a certification in transformative leadership and life coaching from Sofia University, Elizabeth leverages transpersonal psychology expertise to help coaches and clients gain awareness of their behavioral and thought patterns, discover their purpose and passions, and elevate their potential. She is a lifelong student of psychology, personal growth, and human potential as well as an ICF-certified ACC transpersonal life and leadership Coach.

The importance of good speech: 5 tips to be more articulate

The 11 tips that will improve your public speaking skills, show gratitude with “thank you for your leadership and vision” message examples, learn types of gestures and their meanings to improve your communication, make the connection: 10 effective ways to connect with people, why it's good to have a bff at work and how to find one, 6 career changes for teachers that truly pay off, member story: developing communication skills and owning the spotlight, what is a career path definition, examples, and steps for paving yours, similar articles, how to write a speech that your audience remembers, 8 tip to improve your public speaking skills, 30 presentation feedback examples, your ultimate guide on how to be a good storyteller, how to give a good presentation that captivates any audience, 8 clever hooks for presentations (with tips), communication coach: what they are and how to find one, how to make a presentation interactive and exciting, stay connected with betterup, get our newsletter, event invites, plus product insights and research..

3100 E 5th Street, Suite 350 Austin, TX 78702

• Platform Overview
• Integrations
• Powered by AI
• BetterUp Lead
• BetterUp Manage™
• BetterUp Care™
• Sales Performance
• Diversity & Inclusion
• Case Studies
• Why BetterUp?
• About Coaching
• Find your Coach
• Career Coaching
• Communication Coaching
• Life Coaching
• News and Press
• Leadership Team
• Become a BetterUp Coach
• BetterUp Labs
• Center for Purpose & Performance
• Leadership Training
• Business Coaching
• Contact Support
• Contact Sales
• Privacy Policy
• Acceptable Use Policy
• Trust & Security
• Cookie Preferences

How to Use Your Voice Effectively During A Presentation

In this article, we’ll explore some practical tips and techniques for using your voice effectively during a presentation. From speaking clearly and varying your tone and pitch to using inflection and emphasis, these strategies can boost your vocal delivery and feel more confident and in control.

1. Vary Your Tone and Pitch

2. use inflection and emphasis, 3. speak clearly and concisely, 4. avoid filler words and phrases, 5. use pauses strategically, 6. pay attention to your body language, 7. avoid monotony, 8. use vocal pacing, 9. speak with confidence, 10. use repetition, final thoughts.

Another important aspect of using your voice effectively during a presentation is varying your tone and pitch. This helps to keep your audience engaged and interested in what you are saying. 

Try to avoid a monotone voice and instead vary the pitch and tone of your voice throughout the presentation. For example, you might raise your voice slightly when making an important point, or lower it when speaking more softly or confidentially.

In addition to varying your tone and pitch, it’s important to use inflection and emphasis to help convey your message. This means emphasizing key words or phrases in your presentation, such as by raising your voice slightly or pausing before or after the emphasized word. 

Inflection can also be used to convey different emotions, such as excitement or concern, depending on the content of your presentation.

The first tip for using your voice effectively during a presentation is to speak clearly and concisely. This means articulating your words carefully, pronouncing them correctly, and avoiding filler words such as “um” or “like.” 

It’s also important to speak at an appropriate pace, neither too fast nor too slow, so that your audience can follow along easily. Take your time when speaking and pause at appropriate moments to emphasize key points.

Filler words and phrases, such as “um,” “like,” and “you know,” can be distracting and take away from the impact of your message. Try to avoid using them as much as possible. 

If you find yourself slipping into using filler words, take a moment to pause, collect your thoughts, and continue speaking. This will help you to speak more clearly and effectively.

Pauses can be a powerful tool when used strategically during a presentation. Pausing before or after a key point can emphasize its importance and allow your audience to digest the information. 

Pausing can also help you to collect your thoughts and regain your composure if you are feeling nervous. Be sure to practice your pauses during your practice sessions to ensure that they are effective and not too long.

Your body language can also impact your vocal delivery. Standing up straight and using confident gestures can help to project confidence and authority in your voice. Avoid slouching or fidgeting, as this can detract from your message and make you appear nervous or uncertain.

Monotony refers to a lack of variation or excitement in your vocal delivery. This can make your presentation seem dull or uninteresting to your audience. 

To avoid monotony, try to vary your tone, pitch, pacing, and volume throughout your presentation. This can help to keep your audience engaged and interested in your message.

Vocal pacing refers to the speed at which you speak. Varying your pacing can help to keep your audience engaged and interested in your message. 

You can use a slower pace to emphasize important points or a faster pace to add excitement to your presentation. Practice adjusting your pacing during your rehearsals to find the right balance for your presentation.

Confidence is key to effective vocal delivery. Practice speaking with conviction and authority to project confidence and credibility in your message. This can help to keep your audience engaged and interested in your presentation.

Repetition can be an effective tool for emphasizing key points and making your message more memorable. By repeating important words or phrases, you can help to reinforce your message and make it more impactful. Practice incorporating repetition into your presentation where appropriate to add emphasis and impact.

Using your voice effectively during a presentation takes practice and attention to detail. By incorporating pauses, active listening, speaking with confidence, using repetition, being authentic, and practicing the other techniques discussed in this article, you can master the art of vocal delivery and deliver a clear, confident, and engaging presentation that leaves a lasting impression on your audience.

Related Posts:

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

How to Look and Sound Confident During a Presentation

• Carmine Gallo

Your audience will make up their minds about you in seconds.

How you look and sound during a speech or presentation are going to make a big impression on your audience. Within seconds, listeners will decide whether you are trustworthy, and they will do it based on your body language and vocal attributes. The good news is that there is plenty of hard evidence that explains how you can give the appearance of confidence and competence — even if you’re nervous or timid on the inside. To look confident, make eye contact, keep an open posture, and use gestures to emphasize your message. To sound confident, eliminate filler words, take time to pause before important messages, and vary your pace.

You’ve crafted the message and created the slides for your next presentation. Now it’s time to wow the audience. How you look and sound are going to make a big impression — and your audience will form opinions quickly .

• Carmine Gallo is a Harvard University instructor, keynote speaker, and author of 10 books translated into 40 languages. Gallo is the author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman  (St. Martin’s Press).

Partner Center

Presentation Skills: A Strong Speaking Voice

This post is  #6  in a longer series of articles based on a presentation I gave to the Public Relations Insitute of Australia on  “How To Make Your Audience Listen Better.”  The Introduction to the series is  here .

After  Eye Contact , t he second way to engage the audience, your voice is how you aurally demonstrate your personality and passion to the audience.

A presentation voice has five characteristics.

1.  Volume or loudness  Can your audience hear you from where they’re sitting?

2.  Pitch: how high or low a voice is.   Pitch is the rate of vibration of the vocal chords.  The faster the vibrations, the higher the voice.  The vibrations are dependent upon the length and thickness of your vocal cords, as well as the tightening and relaxing of the muscles that surround them. Other factors contribute too, such as emotion and moods – namely, fear.

3.  Tone:  the emotion of the voice.   Tone vocalizes what the speaker is feeling.  A positive tone might be described as “friendly” or “confident,” while a negative tone might be “bored” or “fearful.”

4.  Clarity.   Enunciation, the act of speaking precisely.

5.  Speed or pace.

Here are some suggestions to create a strong voice.

Breathe from the diaphragm, not from the chest.  When you inhale – slowly and deeply – the chest should not rise.  Instead, your stomach should rise as your diaphragm expands.  Image your belly button moving away from your spine.  This will give you a full tank of air.  Release it slowly as you talk:  it’ll give you better control of your vocal cords.  

Be prepared for the rush of adrenaline.   When you get nervous or fearful, your body releases adrenaline into the blood stream.  Among other symptoms, your vocal cords are restricted and your breathing becomes more quick.  When your brain realizes you’re not in mortal danger, it stops releasing adrenaline – usually after 90 seconds up to 2 minutes.  You can’t control the release of adrenaline, but you can be prepared for it by fully rehearsing the first two minutes of your presentation so it’s flawless.  It not only gives you confidence by starting well, it also cements the audience’s positive first impression of you.

Speak louder than you normally do.   Your presentation voice is not your talking voice. Speak loud enough so the person farthest from you can easily hear.  That’s hard to self-fix in a presentation since you’ll always sound loud to yourself.  You need an objective ear to signal that you’re too quiet.  If possible, place a friend or colleague at the farthest point.  A secret gesture will tell you if you’re not loud enough.

Change the pace of your voice.   Most experts say a slow, deliberate presenting voice is best.  There’s good reason to agree.  A slower speed allows for better enunciation, clarity and understanding.  People who speak quickly often give the impression they’re reckless, nervous and out of control.

At the same time, there’s research from the National Library of Medicine that shows talking fast signals confidence, intelligence, objectivity and superior knowledge.  The general research conclusions are this:

• A faster voice is more persuasive when the audience won’t like your messages. (Their internal voice can’t catch up to create counter-arguments, so they may see you as more persuasive.)
• A slower voice is more persuasive when the audience will like your messages.  (A slower voice allows more time for the audience’s self talk to revel in the good news, so they see you as more persuasive.)

Agree or disagree, one thing is universally true: people don’t listen more quickly. Be sensitive to the audience’s non-verbal skills coming back to you if you think they’re not understanding what you’re saying because of a fast voice. Also true, a flexible voice is most comfortable and interesting to listen to.   Generally, keep your pace at a moderate clip – neither fast or slow. But speed up slightly to add energy, and slow down when you want to add emphasis or gravitas.

Smile.   A natural genuine smile – not a toothy grin – is the most effective and easiest way to emotionally warm up the voice, not to mention makes you look more approachable.

Keep the voice lubricated.   Always keep water at hand.  Not caffeine (it’s a diuretic.)  Not alcohol (it’s drying).  Not milk (it creates phlegm – and for that matter, so does chocolate). And definitely not a cigarette at least 30 minutes prior to your speech.  Water at room temperature is best.

Avoid filler words.  I’ve  already written a post on vocal fillers or tics:  Er, Can I – um – Eliminate – uhhhs – When I Speak?

The post also includes additional recommendations on creating a strong voice.  The best first step:  record your voice so you know what you sound like.

Finally, a word about silence.

Every now and then, it’s important to stop talking for a moment.  If you don’t, when do you give the audience a chance to think about what you’re saying? And it’s good for you too.  A moment of silence gives you the chance to breathe completely and perhaps take a sip of water to wet the mouth.

Cultural Note

The use of eye contact, voice and gestures depends greatly on the culture, status, age and gender of your audience.  If you travel for work internationally, adapt and match the style of your presentation skills to your audience, not vice versa.  Do research and show the utmost respect for your host’s culture.

Any other suggestions on how to use a strong speaking voice while presenting?  Please add your comments or thoughts below.

No comment yet, add your voice below!

Add a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• No Comments
• Categories: Message Development , Presentation Skills
• Tags: adrenaline , diaphragm , pace , presentation skills , presentation voice , slarity , speaking voice , speede' , tone , voice projection

Ideas and insights from Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning

Powerful and Effective Presentation Skills: More in Demand Now Than Ever

When we talk with our L&D colleagues from around the globe, we often hear that presentation skills training is one of the top opportunities they’re looking to provide their learners. And this holds true whether their learners are individual contributors, people managers, or senior leaders. This is not surprising.

Effective communications skills are a powerful career activator, and most of us are called upon to communicate in some type of formal presentation mode at some point along the way.

For instance, you might be asked to brief management on market research results, walk your team through a new process, lay out the new budget, or explain a new product to a client or prospect. Or you may want to build support for a new idea, bring a new employee into the fold, or even just present your achievements to your manager during your performance review.

And now, with so many employees working from home or in hybrid mode, and business travel in decline, there’s a growing need to find new ways to make effective presentations when the audience may be fully virtual or a combination of in person and remote attendees.

Whether you’re making a standup presentation to a large live audience, or a sit-down one-on-one, whether you’re delivering your presentation face to face or virtually, solid presentation skills matter.

Even the most seasoned and accomplished presenters may need to fine-tune or update their skills. Expectations have changed over the last decade or so. Yesterday’s PowerPoint which primarily relied on bulleted points, broken up by the occasional clip-art image, won’t cut it with today’s audience.

The digital revolution has revolutionized the way people want to receive information. People expect presentations that are more visually interesting. They expect to see data, metrics that support assertions. And now, with so many previously in-person meetings occurring virtually, there’s an entirely new level of technical preparedness required.

The leadership development tools and the individual learning opportunities you’re providing should include presentation skills training that covers both the evergreen fundamentals and the up-to-date capabilities that can make or break a presentation.

So, just what should be included in solid presentation skills training? Here’s what I think.

The fundamentals will always apply When it comes to making a powerful and effective presentation, the fundamentals will always apply. You need to understand your objective. Is it strictly to convey information, so that your audience’s knowledge is increased? Is it to persuade your audience to take some action? Is it to convince people to support your idea? Once you understand what your objective is, you need to define your central message. There may be a lot of things you want to share with your audience during your presentation, but find – and stick with – the core, the most important point you want them to walk away with. And make sure that your message is clear and compelling.

You also need to tailor your presentation to your audience. Who are they and what might they be expecting? Say you’re giving a product pitch to a client. A technical team may be interested in a lot of nitty-gritty product detail. The business side will no doubt be more interested in what returns they can expect on their investment.

Another consideration is the setting: is this a formal presentation to a large audience with questions reserved for the end, or a presentation in a smaller setting where there’s the possibility for conversation throughout? Is your presentation virtual or in-person? To be delivered individually or as a group? What time of the day will you be speaking? Will there be others speaking before you and might that impact how your message will be received?

Once these fundamentals are established, you’re in building mode. What are the specific points you want to share that will help you best meet your objective and get across your core message? Now figure out how to convey those points in the clearest, most straightforward, and succinct way. This doesn’t mean that your presentation has to be a series of clipped bullet points. No one wants to sit through a presentation in which the presenter reads through what’s on the slide. You can get your points across using stories, fact, diagrams, videos, props, and other types of media.

Visual design matters While you don’t want to clutter up your presentation with too many visual elements that don’t serve your objective and can be distracting, using a variety of visual formats to convey your core message will make your presentation more memorable than slides filled with text. A couple of tips: avoid images that are cliched and overdone. Be careful not to mix up too many different types of images. If you’re using photos, stick with photos. If you’re using drawn images, keep the style consistent. When data are presented, stay consistent with colors and fonts from one type of chart to the next. Keep things clear and simple, using data to support key points without overwhelming your audience with too much information. And don’t assume that your audience is composed of statisticians (unless, of course, it is).

When presenting qualitative data, brief videos provide a way to engage your audience and create emotional connection and impact. Word clouds are another way to get qualitative data across.

Practice makes perfect You’ve pulled together a perfect presentation. But it likely won’t be perfect unless it’s well delivered. So don’t forget to practice your presentation ahead of time. Pro tip: record yourself as you practice out loud. This will force you to think through what you’re going to say for each element of your presentation. And watching your recording will help you identify your mistakes—such as fidgeting, using too many fillers (such as “umm,” or “like”), or speaking too fast.

A key element of your preparation should involve anticipating any technical difficulties. If you’ve embedded videos, make sure they work. If you’re presenting virtually, make sure that the lighting is good, and that your speaker and camera are working. Whether presenting in person or virtually, get there early enough to work out any technical glitches before your presentation is scheduled to begin. Few things are a bigger audience turn-off than sitting there watching the presenter struggle with the delivery mechanisms!

Finally, be kind to yourself. Despite thorough preparation and practice, sometimes, things go wrong, and you need to recover in the moment, adapt, and carry on. It’s unlikely that you’ll have caused any lasting damage and the important thing is to learn from your experience, so your next presentation is stronger.

How are you providing presentation skills training for your learners?

Manika Gandhi is Senior Learning Design Manager at Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning. Email her at [email protected] .

Let’s talk

Change isn’t easy, but we can help. Together we’ll create informed and inspired leaders ready to shape the future of your business.

© 2024 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. Harvard Business Publishing is an affiliate of Harvard Business School.

• Privacy Policy
• Copyright Information
• Terms of Use
• About Harvard Business Publishing
• Higher Education
• Harvard Business Review
• Harvard Business School

We use cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your experience. By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies and revised Privacy Policy .

Cookie and Privacy Settings

We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.

Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.

We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.

We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.

We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.

Google Webfont Settings:

Google Map Settings:

Google reCaptcha Settings:

Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:

You can read about our cookies and privacy settings in detail on our Privacy Policy Page.

Home Blog Education Presentation Skills 101: A Guide to Presentation Success

Presentation Skills 101: A Guide to Presentation Success

Getting the perfect presentation design is just a step toward a successful presentation. For the experienced user, building presentation skills is the answer to elevating the power of your message and showing expertise on any subject. Still, one can ask: is it the same set of skills, or are they dependable on the type of presentation?

In this article, we will introduce the different types of presentations accompanied by the skillset required to master them. The purpose, as always, is to retain the audience’s interest for a long-lasting and convincing message.

Table of Contents

The Importance of Presentation Skills

Persuasive presentations, instructional presentations, informative presentations, inspirational presentations, basic presentation skills, what are the main difficulties when giving a presentation, recommendations to improve your presentation skills, closing statement.

Effective communication is the answer to reaching business and academic goals. The scenarios in which we can be required to deliver a presentation are as diverse as one can imagine. Still, some core concepts apply to all presentations.

 We define presentation skills as a compendium of soft skills that directly affect your presentation performance and contribute to creating a great presentation. These are not qualities acquired by birth but skills you ought to train and master to delve into professional environments.

You may ask: is it really that evident when a presenter is not prepared? Here are some common signs people can experience during presentations:

• Evasive body language: Not making eye contact with the audience, arms closed tightly to the body, hands in pockets all the time.
• Lack of interest in the presenter’s voice: dull tone, not putting an effort to articulate the topics.
• Doubting when asked to answer a question
• Irksome mood

The list can go on about common presenter mistakes , and most certainly, it will affect the performance of any presented data if the lack of interest by the presenter is blatantly obvious.  Another element to consider is anxiety, and according to research by the National Institute of Mental Health, 73% of the population in the USA is affected by glossophobia , which is the fear of public speaking, judgment, or negative evaluation by other people.

Therefore, presentation skills training is essential for any business professional who wants to achieve effective communication . It will remove the anxiety from presentation performance and help users effectively deliver their message and connect with the audience.

Archetypes of presentations

Persuasive presentations aim to convince the audience – often in short periods – to acquire a product or service, adhere to a cause, or invest in a company. For business entrepreneurs or politicians, persuasive presentations are their tool for the trade.

Unless you aim to be perceived as an imposter, a proper persuasive presentation has the elements of facts, empathy, and logic, balanced under a well-crafted narrative. The central pillar of these presentations is to identify the single factor that gathered your audience: it could be a market need, a social cause, or a revolutionary concept for today’s society. It has to be something with enough power to gather critiques – both good and bad.

That single factor has to be backed up by facts. Research that builds your hypothesis on how to solve that problem. A deep understanding of the target audience’s needs , concerns, and social position regarding the solution your means can offer. When those elements are in place, building a pitch becomes an easy task. 

Graphics can help you introduce information in a compelling format, lowering the need for lengthy presentations. Good presentation skills for persuasive presentations go by the hand of filtering relevant data and creating the visual cues that resonate with what your audience demands.

One powerful example of a persuasive presentation is the technique known as the elevator pitch . You must introduce your idea or product convincingly to the audience in a timeframe between 30 seconds and less than 2 minutes. You have to expose:

• What do you do 
• What’s the problem to solve
• Why is your solution different from others 
• Why should the audience care about your expertise

For that very purpose, using engaging graphics with contrasting colors elevates the potential power of your message. It speaks professionalism, care for details, and out-of-the-box thinking. Knowing how to end a presentation is also critical, as your CTAs should be placed with care.

Therefore, let’s resume the requirements of persuasive presentations in terms of good presentation skills:

• Identifying problems and needs
• Elaborating “the hook” (the element that grabs the audience’s attention)
• Knowing how to “tie” your audience (introducing a piece of information related to the hook that causes an emotional impact)
• Broad knowledge of body language and hand gestures to quickly convey your message
• Being prepared to argue a defense of your point of view
• Handling rejection
• Having a proactive attitude to convert opportunities into new projects
• Using humor, surprise, or personal anecdotes as elements to sympathize with the audience
• Having confidence
• Be able to summarize facts and information in visually appealing ways

You can learn more about persuasive presentation techniques by clicking here .

In the case of instructional presentations, we ought to differentiate two distinctive types:

• Lecture Presentations : Presentations being held at universities or any other educative institution. Those presentations cover, topic by topic, and the contents of a syllabus and are created by the team of teachers in charge of the course.
• Training Presentations : These presentations take place during in-company training sessions and usually comprise a good amount of content that is resumed into easy-to-take solutions. They are aimed to coach employees over certain topics relevant to their work performance. The 70-20-10 Model is frequently used to address these training situations.

Lecture presentations appeal to the gradual introduction of complex concepts, following a structure set in the course’s syllabus. These presentations often have a similar aesthetic as a group of professors or researchers created to share their knowledge about a topic. Personal experience does tell that course presentations often rely on factual data, adequately documented, and on the theoretical side.

An example of a presentation that lies under this concept is a Syllabus Presentation, used by the teaching team to introduce the subject to new students, evaluation methods, concepts to be learned, and expectations to pass the course.

On the other hand, training presentations are slide decks designed to meet an organization’s specific needs in the formal education of their personnel. Commonly known as “continuous education,” plenty of companies invest resources in coaching their employees to achieve higher performance results. These presentations have the trademark of being concise since their idea is to introduce the concepts that shall be applied in practice sessions. 

Ideally, the training presentations are introduced with little text and easy-to-recognize visual cues. Since the idea is to summarize as much as possible, these are visually appealing for the audience. They must be dynamic enough to allow the presenter to convey the message.

Those key takeaways remind employees when they revisit their learning resources and allow them to ruminate on questions that fellow workers raise. 

To sum up this point, building presentation skills for instructional presentations requires:

• Ability to put complex concepts into simpler words
• Patience and a constant learning mindset
• Voice training to deliver lengthy speeches without being too dense
• Ability to summarize points and note the key takeaways
• Empathizing with the audience to understand their challenges in the learning process

The informative presentations take place in business situations, such as when to present project reports from different departments to the management. Another potential usage of these presentations is in SCRUM or other Agile methodologies, when a sprint is completed, to discuss the advance of the project with the Product Owner.

As they are presentations heavily dependent on data insights, it’s common to see the usage of infographics and charts to express usually dense data in simpler terms and easy to remember. 

Informative presentations don’t just fall into the business category. Ph.D. Dissertation and Thesis presentations are topics that belong to the informative presentations category as they condense countless research hours into manageable reports for the academic jury. 

Since these informational presentations can be perceived as lengthy and data-filled, it is important to learn the following professional presentation skills:

• Attention to detail
• Be able to explain complex information in simpler terms
• Creative thinking
• Powerful diction
• Working on pauses and transitions
• Pacing the presentation, so not too much information is divulged per slide

The leading inspirational platform, TEDx, comes to mind when talking about inspirational presentations. This presentation format has the peculiarity of maximizing the engagement with the audience to divulge a message, and due to that, it has specific requirements any presenter must meet.

This presentation format usually involves a speaker on a stage, either sitting or better standing, in which the presenter engages with the audience with a storytelling format about a life experience, a job done that provided a remarkable improvement for society, etc.

Empathizing with the audience is the key ingredient for these inspirational presentations. Still, creativity is what shapes the outcome of your performance as people are constantly looking for different experiences – not the same recipe rephrased with personal touches. The human factor is what matters here, way above data and research. What has your experience to offer to others? How can it motivate another human being to pursue a similar path or discover their true calling?

To achieve success in terms of communication skills presentation, these inspirational presentations have the following requirements:

• Focus on the audience (engage, consider their interests, and make them a part of your story)
• Putting ego aside
• Creative communication skills
• Storytelling skills
• Body language knowledge to apply the correct gestures to accompany your story
• Voice training
• Using powerful words

After discussing the different kinds of presentations we can come across at any stage of our lives, a group of presentation skills is standard in any type of presentation. See below what makes a good presentation and which skills you must count on to succeed as a presenter.

Punctuality

Punctuality is a crucial aspect of giving an effective presentation. Nothing says more about respect for your audience and the organization you represent than delivering the presentation on time . Arriving last minute puts pressure on the tech team behind audiovisuals, as they don’t have enough preparation to test microphones, stage lights, and projector settings, which can lead to a less powerful presentation Even when discussing presentations hosted in small rooms for a reduced audience, testing the equipment becomes essential for an effective presentation.

A solution for this is to arrive at least 30 minutes early. Ideally, one hour is a sweet spot since the AV crew has time to check the gear and requirements for your presentation. Another benefit of this, for example, in inspirational presentations, is measuring the previous presenter’s impact on the audience. This gives insights about how to resonate with the public, and their interest, and how to accommodate your presentation for maximum impact.

Body Language

Our bodies can make emotions transparent for others, even when we are unaware of such a fact. Proper training for body language skills reduces performance anxiety, giving the audience a sense of expertise about the presented topic. 

Give your presentation and the audience the respect they deserve by watching over these potential mistakes:

• Turning your back to the audience for extended periods : It’s okay to do so when introducing an important piece of information or explaining a graph, but it is considered rude to give your back to the audience constantly.
• Fidgeting : We are all nervous in the presence of strangers, even more, if we are the center of attention for that moment. Instead of playing with your hair or making weird hand gestures, take a deep breath to center yourself before the presentation and remember that everything you could do to prepare is already done. Trust your instincts and give your best.
• Intense eye contact : Have you watched a video where the presenter stared at the camera the entire time? That’s the feeling you transmit to spectators through intense eye contact. It’s a practice often used by politicians to persuade.
• Swearing : This is a no-brainer. Even when you see influencers swearing on camera or in podcasts or live presentations, it is considered an informal and lousy practice for business and academic situations. If you have a habit to break when it comes to this point, find the humor in these situations and replace your swear words with funny alternatives (if the presentation allows for it). 

Voice Tone plays a crucial role in delivering effective presentations and knowing how to give a good presentation. Your voice is a powerful tool for exposing your ideas and feelings . Your voice can articulate the message you are telling, briefing the audience if you feel excited about what you are sharing or, in contrast, if you feel the presentation is a burden you ought to complete.

Remember, passion is a primary ingredient in convincing people. Therefore, transmitting such passion with a vibrant voice may help gather potential business partners’ interest.  

But what if you feel sick prior to the presentation? If, by chance, your throat is sore minutes before setting foot on the stage, try this: when introducing yourself, mention that you are feeling a bit under the weather. This resonates with the audience to pay more attention to your efforts. In case you don’t feel comfortable about that, ask the organizers for a cup of tea, as it will settle your throat and relax your nerves.

Tech Skills

Believe it or not, people still feel challenged by technology these days. Maybe that’s the reason why presentation giants like Tony Robbins opt not to use PowerPoint presentations . The reality is that there are plenty of elements involved in a presentation that can go wrong from the tech side:

• A PDF not opening
• Saving your presentation in a too-recent PowerPoint version
• A computer not booting up
• Mac laptops and their never-ending compatibility nightmare
• Not knowing how to change between slides
• Not knowing how to use a laser pointer
• Internet not working
• Audio not working

We can come up with a pretty long list of potential tech pitfalls, and yet more than half of them fall in presenters not being knowledgeable about technology.

If computers aren’t your thing, let the organization know about this beforehand. There is always a crew member available to help presenters switch between slides or configure the presentation for streaming. This takes the pressure off your shoulders, allowing you to concentrate on the content to present. Remember, even Bill Gates can get a BSOD during a presentation .

Presentations, while valuable for conveying information and ideas, can be daunting for many individuals. Here are some common difficulties people encounter when giving presentations:

Public Speaking Anxiety

Glossophobia, the fear of public speaking, affects a significant portion of the population. This anxiety can lead to nervousness, trembling, and forgetfulness during a presentation.

Lack of Confidence

Many presenters struggle with self-doubt, fearing that they may not be knowledgeable or skilled enough to engage their audience effectively.

Content Organization

Organizing information in a coherent and engaging manner can be challenging. Presenters often grapple with how to structure their content to make it easily digestible for the audience. Artificial Intelligence can help us significantly reduce the content arrangement time when you work with tools like our AI Presentation Maker (made for presenters by experts in presentation design). 

Audience Engagement

Keeping the audience’s attention and interest throughout the presentation can be difficult. Distractions, disengaged attendees, or lack of interaction can pose challenges.

Technical Issues

Technology glitches, such as malfunctioning equipment, incompatible file formats, or poor internet connectivity, can disrupt presentations and increase stress.

Time Management

Striking the right balance between providing enough information and staying within time limits is a common challenge. Going over or under the allotted time can affect the effectiveness of the presentation.

Handling Questions and Challenges

Responding to unexpected questions, criticism, or challenges from the audience can be difficult, especially when presenters are unprepared or lack confidence in their subject matter.

Visual Aids and Technology

Creating and effectively using visual aids like slides or multimedia can be a struggle for some presenters. Technical competence is essential in this aspect.

Language and Articulation

Poor language skills or unclear articulation can hinder effective communication. Presenters may worry about stumbling over words or failing to convey their message clearly.

Maintaining appropriate and confident body language can be challenging. Avoiding nervous habits, maintaining eye contact, and using gestures effectively requires practice.

Overcoming Impersonal Delivery

In virtual presentations, maintaining a personal connection with the audience can be difficult. The absence of face-to-face interaction can make it challenging to engage and read the audience.

Cultural and Diversity Awareness

Presenting to diverse audiences requires sensitivity to cultural differences and varying levels of familiarity with the topic.

In this section, we gathered some tips on how to improve presentation skills that can certainly make an impact if applied to your presentation skills. We believe these skills can be cultivated to transform into habits for your work routine.

Tip #1: Build a narrative

One memorable way to guarantee presentation success is by writing a story of all the points you desire to cover. This statement is based on the logic behind storytelling and its power to connect with people .

Don’t waste time memorizing slides or reading your presentation to the audience. It feels unnatural, and any question that diverts from the topic in discussion certainly puts you in jeopardy or, worse, exposes you as a fraud in the eyes of the audience. And before you ask, it is really evident when a presenter has a memorized speech. 

Build and rehearse the presentation as if telling a story to a group of interested people. Lower the language barrier by avoiding complex terms that maybe even you aren’t fully aware of their meaning. Consider the ramifications of that story, what it could lead to, and which are the opportunities to explore. Then, visualize yourself giving the presentation in a natural way.

Applying this technique makes the presentation feel like second nature to you. It broadens the spectrum in which you can show expertise over a topic or even build the basis for new interesting points of view about the project.

Tip #2: Don’t talk for more than 3 minutes per slide

It is a common practice of presenters to bombard the audience with facts and information whilst retaining the same slide on the screen. Why can this happen? It could be because the presenter condensed the talk into very few slides and preferred to talk. The reality is that your spectators won’t retain the information you are giving unless you give visual cues to help that process. 

Opt to prepare more slides and pace your speech to match the topics shown on each slide. Don’t spend more than 3 minutes per slide unless you have to introduce a complex piece of data. Use visual cues to direct the spectators about what you talk about, and summarize the principal concepts discussed at the end of each section.

Tip #3: Practice meditation daily

Anxiety is the number one enemy of professional presenters. It slowly builds without you being aware of your doubts and can hinder your performance in multiple ways: making you feel paralyzed, fidgeting, making you forget language skills or concepts, affecting your health, etc.

Meditation is an ancient practice taken from Buddhist teachings that train your mind to be here in the present. We often see the concepts of meditation and mindfulness as synonyms, whereas you should be aware that meditation is a practice that sets the blocks to reach a state of mindfulness. For presenters, being in the here and now is essential to retain focus, but meditation techniques also teach us to control our breathing and be in touch with our body signals when stress builds up. 

The customary practice of meditation has an impact on imagination and creativity but also helps to build patience – a skill much needed for connecting with your audience in instructional presentations.

Having the proper set of presentation skills can be quite subjective. It goes beyond presentation tips and deepens into how flexible we can be in our ability to communicate ideas.

Different presentations and different audiences shape the outcome of our efforts. Therefore, having a basic understanding of how to connect, raise awareness, and empathize with people can be key ingredients for your career as a presenter. A word of advice: success doesn’t happen overnight. It takes dedication and patience to build communication skills . Don’t condition your work to believe you will be ready “someday”; it’s best to practice and experience failure as part of the learning process.

Like this article? Please share

Business Presentations, Presentation Approaches, Presentation Skills Filed under Education

Related Articles

Filed under Design • March 27th, 2024

How to Make a Presentation Graph

Detailed step-by-step instructions to master the art of how to make a presentation graph in PowerPoint and Google Slides. Check it out!

Filed under Presentation Ideas • February 29th, 2024

How to Make a Fundraising Presentation (with Thermometer Templates & Slides)

Meet a new framework to design fundraising presentations by harnessing the power of fundraising thermometer templates. Detailed guide with examples.

Filed under Presentation Ideas • February 15th, 2024

How to Create a 5 Minutes Presentation

Master the art of short-format speeches like the 5 minutes presentation with this article. Insights on content structure, audience engagement and more.

Leave a Reply

British Council

How to improve your voice for presentations, by ros and neil johnson, 18 august 2016 - 01:43.

Ros and Neil Johnson, speech and drama specialists at  Theatresaursus , explain the benefits for presentations of improving the voice, and offer some techniques.

Have you ever given a presentation or done any other form of public speaking? If so, you probably spent some time thinking about the words you were going to use and the ideas you were going to express. But, as Dr Emily Grossman has  pointed out , when someone is speaking, most of the information we receive as an audience comes through the speaker's body language, their enthusiasm, and – very importantly – the tone of their voice.

Why is it important to improve the way we use our voice?

When we make a presentation or speak to a large group of people, it's important to have an authoritative and appealing tone of voice. This will come from the ability to make your voice resonate, as a resonant voice is more pleasing on the ear and can make you sound more confident. This in turn helps the audience relax and enjoy the presentation.

An audience will ‘pick up’ on your voice and respond favourably, potentially affording you a greater deal of respect and attention. Often, the audience won’t know or understand why this is the case, so having the ability to control and improve the way you use your voice can be a useful and powerful skill.

There are practical reasons, too. Using your voice skilfully can stop you getting a sore throat. When we shout, our vocal folds (often known as vocal chords) crash together and become swollen and red, sometimes causing damage. So learning how to use your voice by warming it up will prevent soreness in the throat.

How does our body produce sound?

Breath is the power behind the voice, but this is only the start. As we breathe in, our lungs expand. When we speak, the air comes up through the  trachea , making the vocal folds (which are situated at the top of the trachea) vibrate. This creates sound. The ability to control the breath is very important and is the basis of all voice work.

We then use the resonators in our throat, nose, mouth and cheek cavities (sinuses) to amplify the sound, and our articulators (tongue, teeth, lips, etc.) to create specific sounds that become understandable words and therefore speech.

However, as with any sport or exercise, it is important to warm up before we start. This means first warming up our body from head to toe before we start to work on our voice.

Exercise 1:

Check through the body, shaking each part from the toes upwards. Shake your legs and arms. Then, stretch up to the ceiling or sky. Roll the shoulders and lift them up to the ears and then back down again, all the time making sure that they end in a relaxed position. Finally, relax your neck. Gently roll your head by first putting your chin on your chest and roll the head round to the back clockwise and anti-clockwise.

Exercise 2:

Yawn – this relaxes the throat and all the vocal areas. Then, yawn and stretch at the same time.

How do we improve our breath control?

The most important thing is to learn how to relax and allow yourself to expand and increase your breath capacity. The natural tendency is to breathe only in our upper chest, so learning to breath down into our lower lungs and using the  diaphragm  properly is the first step. The diaphragm is a muscle separating the thorax from the abdomen – by finding and exercising this muscle, we can learn to better control our breath during speech.

Exercise 3:

Lie on the floor on your back with feet on the floor, so that your legs are bent with your knees pointing upwards. Check your posture: you should be relaxed, shoulders down, fists unclenched, etc. Now mentally take a journey through your body from head to toe, making sure you are relaxed. Start with your feet, ankles, legs and work your way up to your head. When you find tension, ask your body to release it.

Relax and breathe. Take the breathing deeper, breathing in to a count of four (in your head). Breathe in through your nose and feel the breath expanding the ribs like an umbrella up and out. Place a hand just below your belly button and feel the belly rise and drop.

Remember you must try to be relaxed at all times – always check (see exercise 1) and do not force anything.

If the upper chest begins to lift while you are breathing, gently place a hand on it to keep it still and down. Release all the abdominal muscles. Take your time and breath in and out (in through the nose and out through the mouth). Breathe in and release the breath to produce a long 'huh...ahh' sound. Do this a few times.

Now, apply tension throughout the body so it is completely tense and then release. Feel your body relax.

Go back to your breathing – in through the nose and out through the mouth. Feel your muscles through your back and keep your upper body still, but not tense.

Now slowly stand up. Centre yourself with your legs shoulder-width apart, arms and shoulders relaxed, knees unlocked. Your head should be perched upon your neck. Make sure your chin is not jutting out or pulled in.

Let your head drop, chin to chest (relaxed) and then let your body roll down vertebrae by vertebrae so your body is hanging, arms loose, and stay like this hanging, relaxed and breathing. Roll back up (make sure your head comes up last). Hug yourself, with your arms, your hands touching your ribs. Roll down again into the hanging position. Breathe gently in and out and feel the rib cage move. Gently roll back up as before (head last).

This is a great exercise for feeling the movement needed in the ribcage and to help get the muscles working.

Please note: as this way of breathing may feel very different to what you are used to, you may not notice a great deal of movement to begin with. However, as with anything new, 'practice makes perfect'.

How do we articulate sound into speech?

Articulation creates the specific sounds that make up words. By using our tongue, teeth, palate and lips (our articulators), we create recognisable words. In order to be clear in our speech, we need to exercise our articulators by going through the vowel sounds. The following exercises 4-6 will help improve your articulation:

Exercise 4:

Make a 'hum' sound with your lips together but not tight – feel your lips tickle or vibrate. Move the 'hum' sound around inside your mouth from the lips to nose and back to the lips. Feel the vibrations in the different areas.

Chew some imaginary gum. Imagine it is growing and growing. Now, imagine you have toffee stuck in your mouth and use your tongue to get it out.

Exercise 5:

Always from a relaxed and centred position, say out loud:

'pah paw poo pee pay...pah paw poo pee pay'

'lah, law, loo lee lay...lah law loo lee lay'

'gah gaw goo gee gay...gah gaw goo gee gay'

Use these structures to go through different sounds and, in particular, sounds that you find difficult. For the 'lah' sound, the tip of the tongue should be behind the front teeth before flicking out to an open mouth.

Exercise 6:

Say out loud:

'ba da ga...ba da ga' (making the sound of the consonants, i.e., 'buh' not 'baah', 'duh' not 'daah', etc.). Repeat.

'pa ta ka...pa ta ka'  (again make the sound of the letters 'p', 't' and 'k').

You can do this anywhere, but try to use your full voice and also whispering (which should always be voiceless).

Tongue twisters are also a good way to exercise the articulators and help improve fluency of articulation and diction. You can find many on the internet, for example: 'She sells sea shells on the sea-shore' and 'Peter piper picked a peck of pickled pepper'.

Exercise 7:

Place your hand on your chest and yawn. Feel the vibrations and resonance in your chest. Now say 'hello, hello, hello' from deep down in your chest.

Why is the ability to project our voices important? 

If you want to be heard, you need to learn how to project. Projection comes from taking control of the breath.

If you can, arrange to visit the room you are going to be speaking in and walk around it. Use your speech and play with it, walking around while speaking, playing with the volume. Ask a colleague to listen to you – can they hear you clearly? Does your voice resonate?

Try speaking very slowly. Now try singing your speech. Now 'throw' your voice to the farthest wall. This should always be done from a place of relaxation. Check that your shoulders are down. Wriggle and roll them to check for tension. Check your posture.

Finally, make sure you check your pace – we always speak much faster than normal when we are nervous. Practise speaking very slowly. You will feel that it's too slow, but it almost certainly won’t be.

Ros and Neil Johnson are founders of  Theatresaursus , which runs Shakespeare workshops, drama courses and holiday courses. They recently delivered a course for teachers and trainers at the  British Council in Malaysia  about how to use theatre-based techniques in the classroom.

Find out about the British Council's  Shakespeare Lives  programme of events and activities in 2016, celebrating Shakespeare’s work on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of his death.

You might also be interested in:

• Classroom techniques to help pupils tackle Shakespeare
• How to present complex ideas clearly
• How to become good at debating

View the discussion thread.

British Council Worldwide

• Afghanistan
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Czech Republic
• Hong Kong, SAR of China
• Korea, Republic of
• Myanmar (Burma)
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• North Macedonia
• Northern Ireland
• Occupied Palestinian Territories
• Philippines
• Saudi Arabia
• Sierra Leone
• South Africa
• South Sudan
• Switzerland
• United Arab Emirates
• United States of America

• PRESENTATION SKILLS

Search SkillsYouNeed:

Presentation Skills:

• A - Z List of Presentation Skills
• Top Tips for Effective Presentations
• General Presentation Skills
• What is a Presentation?
• Preparing for a Presentation
• Organising the Material
• Writing Your Presentation
• Deciding the Presentation Method
• Managing your Presentation Notes
• Working with Visual Aids
• Presenting Data
• Managing the Event
• Coping with Presentation Nerves
• Dealing with Questions
• How to Build Presentations Like a Consultant
• Self-Presentation in Presentations
• Specific Presentation Events
• Remote Meetings and Presentations
• Giving a Speech
• Presentations in Interviews
• Presenting to Large Groups and Conferences
• Giving Lectures and Seminars
• Managing a Press Conference
• Attending Public Consultation Meetings
• Managing a Public Consultation Meeting
• Crisis Communications
• Elsewhere on Skills You Need:
• Communication Skills
• Facilitation Skills
• Teams, Groups and Meetings
• Effective Speaking
• Question Types

Subscribe to our FREE newsletter and start improving your life in just 5 minutes a day.

You'll get our 5 free 'One Minute Life Skills' and our weekly newsletter.

We'll never share your email address and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Presentation Skills

Presenting information clearly and effectively is a key skill in getting your message across. Today, presentation skills are required in almost every field, and most of us are required to give presentations on occasions. While some people take this in their stride, others find it much more challenging.

It is, however, possible to improve your presentation skills with a bit of work. This section of SkillsYouNeed is designed to help.

Many people feel terrified when asked to talk in public, especially to bigger groups. However, these fears can be reduced by good preparation, which will also lay the groundwork for making an effective presentation.

There are Different Types of Presentations, but They’re All Presentations

There are any number of occasions when you may be asked to speak in public or to a group of people. They include:

• Presenting or making a speech at a conference or event.
• Objecting to a planning proposal at a council meeting.
• Making a speech at a wedding.
• Proposing a vote of thanks to someone at a club or society.
• On behalf of a team, saying goodbye and presenting a gift to a colleague who is leaving.
• Seeking investment or a loan to help you set up a new business.

These can all be considered presentations.

They do not, however, all require the same approach. You would not, for example, use PowerPoint to thank a colleague who was leaving. It would be unusual (though it has been done) to use it in a speech at a wedding. However, a conference audience would be somewhat surprised NOT to see slides projected onto a screen.

It follows, therefore, that there is no single set of rules that apply to all presentations. There are, however, some things that every presentation opportunity has in common. These include:

You will present better if you have prepared effectively . This does NOT necessarily mean that you have written out your speech verbatim and rehearsed it until you know it off by heart—although that might work for some people. It does, however, mean that you have to be confident that you are saying the right thing, in the right way, to the right people.

You need to be clear about your audience and your message . Every presentation will be better if you have clearly considered the message that you want or need to convey, and how best to convey it to your audience. These two pieces of information drive your style, structure, content, and use of visual aids.

You must never overrun your allocated time .  In other words, don’t outstay your welcome. Almost every speech or presentation is better if it is shorter. Nobody minds going for coffee early or finishing before they expected to do so. Everybody minds being held up.

Generally speaking, your audience starts on your side. As a rule, your audience is there (more or less) voluntarily. They have chosen to listen to you, and they want to enjoy your presentation. The occasion is yours to lose.

An Important Point

There is one very important point to remember: if what you’re doing or saying is not working, do something else.

One of the worst feelings as a presenter is that you have lost your audience. You know that’s happened, but you continue to stumble through your remaining PowerPoint slides for the next 15 minutes, as your audience checks their phones and wishes it was coffee time. You think you have no choice, but that’s not actually true.

When you present, you are in charge of the room . The audience has effectively handed you control and is sitting back waiting for you to do something. You may have prepared a specific talk, but if you see that isn’t working, you can always change it. You are, after all, the expert.

You can, for example:

• Skip through some slides to a section that they may find more interesting;
• Ask your audience whether there is particular information that they were expecting that you are not providing;
• Suggest that everyone looks a bit sleepy, and maybe it would be better to start questions early, or have a discussion; or
• Ask the audience at the start of the presentation what they are expecting and what they want you to cover. That way, you can tailor the presentation to fit their expectations.

Just as when you are facilitating, you want to help your audience get the most out of your presentation. The best way to do that is to accept feedback—which may include smiles, nods of interest, or people getting their phones out.

Quick Guide to Effective Presentations

If you need to improve your presentation skills quickly, then a really good place to start is with our Top Tips for Effective Presentations .

This will give you some ‘quick wins’ that will help you improve your presentations. If you’re already an experienced presenter, this page should be a useful refresher, or even take your skills from good to great.

Our tips include general ideas about connecting with your audience, information about the importance of voice and body language, and detailed tips about preparing slide-shows.

The most important tip of all, however, is to remember that it's all about your audience.

Keep that in mind, and your presentation skills will almost instantly improve.

If you have more time to develop your presentation skills…

…then the Presentation Skills section of SkillsYouNeed is designed to help.

Our Presentation Skills section is split into two parts.

• The first gives you a step-by-step guide to putting together and delivering a professional and effective presentation .
• The second provides more detailed information about presenting and communicating in particular circumstances .

You can either use our step-by-step guide to walk you through the presentation preparation and delivery process, or you can focus on particular areas that are an issue for you.

Preparing for Your Presentation

The guide starts by explaining What is a Presentation?

We define a presentation as a means of communication that can be adapted to various speaking situations, such as talking to a group, addressing a meeting or briefing a team. Effective presentations usually require careful thought and preparation—although this preparation need not take very long.

Preparation is the most important part of making a successful presentation.  Our page on Preparing For A Presentation explains what information you need before you can really start to plan your presentation and decide what you are going to say. The most important aspects include the objective of the presentation, the subject, and the audience.

Irrespective of whether the occasion is formal or informal, you should always aim to give a clear, well-structured delivery. To do so, you need to organise your presentation material . You can either do this in your head, or use a technique like mind-mapping to help you identify links and good flow.

By the time you come to write your presentation , you should know exactly what you want to say and the order in which you want to say it. You may want to use one of the standard presentation structures, such as ‘What, Why, How?’. You will also find it helpful to consider how to tell your story most effectively, and to use stories in your presentation to illustrate points. There is more about this in our page on writing your presentation .

You also need to decide on your presentation method . Presentations range from the formal to the informal. Your choice of presentation method will depend on many factors, including the audience, the venue, the facilities, and your own preferences.

Visual aids can add another dimension to your presentation, helping to hold your audience’s attention, and also act as a reminder of what you wanted to say. However, they need handling with care. Only use visual aids if they are necessary to maintain interest and assist comprehension . If visual aids are not used well, they can ruin a presentation.

See Working with Visual Aids to avoid falling into the trap of the dreaded ‘ Death by PowerPoint’ .

A particular case of visual aids is the use of data in a presentation.

There are times when using data in a presentation can really help you to tell the story better. It is, however, important not to blind your audience with statistics. You also need to remember that many people find numbers difficult to understand. Our page on Presenting Data gives some hints and tips about using data effectively in a presentation situation.

On the Day of the Presentation

There are a number of aspects to delivering your presentation on the day.

The practicalities of how you manage your presentation can make a significant difference to its success, and to your nerves! For example, turning up early means that you have will have a chance to see the room, and ensure that you can operate all the necessary equipment. There is more about how to cope, including managing sound systems, audio-visual equipment and lecterns in our page on Managing the Presentation Event .

Many people also feel very nervous before and during a presentation. This is entirely normal, and can even be helpful if you can channel it in the right way. There are some tried and tested strategies and techniques to manage your nerves so that you can concentrate on delivering an effective and engaging presentation.

See Coping with Presentation Nerves for some ideas that will help.

How you present yourself can also affect how your audience responds to your presentation.

You need to fit with your audience's expectations if they are not going to spend quite a large chunk of your presentation dealing with the differences between expectations and reality.

For more about aspects of self-presentation, see our page on Self-Presentation in Presentations .

You also need to consider how to manage your presentation notes .

Few people are able to give a presentation without notes. You will need to know your own abilities and decide how best to make the presentation. You might manage your talk by using full text, notes on cue cards, keywords on cue cards, or mind maps. There is more about this in our page on Managing your Presentation Notes .

After the presentation, you may be faced with a question-and-answer session. For many people, this is the worst part of the event.

Decide in advance how and when you wish to handle questions. Some speakers prefer questions to be raised as they arise during the presentation whilst others prefer to deal with questions at the end. At the start of your presentation, you should make clear your preferences to the audience. See our page on Dealing with Questions for more ideas about how to make the question session pleasant and productive, rather than something to dread.

Presenting Under Particular Circumstances

You may find that you need to give a presentation under certain circumstances, where your previous experience is less helpful.

Circumstances that may be new to you include:

• Giving a Speech , for example, at a wedding.

One particular special case is attending public consultation meetings.

Our pages on Attending Public Consultation Meetings , and Managing Public Consultation Meetings provide information to help whether you are a concerned member of the public, or responsible for organising a public meeting.

You may also find yourself required to organise or manage a press conference.

Although this may not strictly be what you would describe as a ‘presentation’, it is nonetheless an event at which you are required to present your organisation in a particular light.

Our page on Managing a Press Conference gives some ideas about how best to do that.

Finally, should you be unlucky enough to be involved in a serious crisis or disaster that affects your organisation, our page on Crisis Communications gives some ideas about how to manage press and public relations on these occasions.

Start with: What is a Presentation? Top Tips for Effective Presentations

See also: Personal Appearance Interpersonal Communication Skills

• Theater-Based Techniques
• Dr. Gary Genard
• What Our Clients Say
• Client List
• Dr. Genard in the Media
• Leadership Communication
• Fearless Speaking
• Voice and Speech Improvement
• Presentation Coaching
• Speaking Virtually
• Presentation Skills
• Executive Speech Coaching
• The Benefits of Deep Breathing
• How to Calm Your Nerves Before Speaking
• Leadership Skills: The 5 Essential Speaking Techniques
• 5 Ways to Captivate an Audience
• The Body Language Rules: 12 Ways to be a More Powerful Speaker
• 4 Characteristics of an Influential Speaker
• 6 Skills Building Exercises for Effective Body Language
• 7 Tips for Overcoming Audience Resistance
• 5 Rules for Succeeding with PowerPoint
• Great Speaking? – It's About Performance Over Content!
• 5 Key Tools of Vocal Dynamics
• 5 Secrets of Powerful Body Language
• 10 Ways to Stay Fully Focused when Speaking
• 25 Words or Phrases to Avoid in Speeches and Presentations
• 6 Rules of Effective Public Speaking
• 7 Key Components of Successful Presentations
• 12 Easy Ways to Achieve Presence and Charisma
• 6 Skills Building Exercises Video

Gary Genard's

Speak for success.

"Be a voice not an echo." - Albert Einstein

Presentation Skills: Vocal Techniques that Add Color to Your Speech

Want to add color, expressiveness, and power to your speech? That's easy: Learn the key vocal techniques for successful public speaking.

The Genard Method includes these tools of vocal dynamics:

• Energy and emphasis
• Pitch inflection
• Rhythm and pacing
• Pauses and silence
• Vocal quality

Learn more here about the 5 Key Tools of Vocal Dynamics for speaking success.

It's important to remember two things about these tools: they add variety and interest to your speech, and they're made to be used together. In other words, one of the tools shouldn't be isolated and used exclusively.

The speaker who uses these vocal techniques not only is more interesting and engaging to listen to. He or she also aids listeners' comprehension by making clear important content versus supporting material. Your audience can clearly hear the difference!

Speaking at Your Best

How can you tell this for yourself? Simply pay attention the next time you're speaking to friends or colleagues—in other words, people you're comfortable and unselfconscious being around. Notice how you use every one of the key tools effortlessly.

Now videotape yourself practicing a speech or presentation—or better yet, delivering an actual presentation. Does your vocal technique seem inhibited or tentative? If that's the case, you're not alone. Many speakers and presenters are not lively and dynamic in formal speaking appearances, even though they might be quite expressive in casual situations.

Too many of them are playing it safe while speaking in "serious" settings. The worlds of business, education, finance, healthcare, nonprofits, government, politics, and other professional endeavors seem to call for no-nonsense presentations. The truth is, however, audiences will never receive the full impact and value of what you're saying if you don't tap into your expressive voice.

Break Out Your Box of Crayons

Think of it this way: If your vocal delivery lacks full expressiveness, you're using a coloring book with none of the pictures colored in. You know what such a book looks like: pretty line drawings that remain, well, colorless, sketches only that haven't come to life.

Such a book in a child's hands has tremendous potential. But that's all that it will ever be until that child throws caution to the winds and gets to work with his or her crayons. 

What fun ensues when the characters in the book are fleshed out in living color—and sometimes those colors aren't realistic at all. No matter. Richness, tonality, vibrancy, subtlety, brashness, softness, warmth, and excitement—these traits and more appear and communicate themselves with the help of the color palette in that crayon box.

You have exactly the same limitless potential available to you through the use of your voice. Anything less runs the danger of leaving your audience bored, unimpressed, and missing the excitement your voice can add to your material. Your content gives listeners the information they need. Your voice makes that content come alive.

Key takeaways from this blog:

• Vocal techniques add color, expressiveness, and power to your speech.
• The 5 Key Tools of Vocal Dynamics will aid your voice improvement.
• If you use these tools you'll be more interesting and engaging.
• Bring your typically expressive voice into "serious" business settings.
• Your voice should color your content as crayons color line drawings.

Tags: presentation skills , voice improvement , vocal techniques

Subscribe to the blog

Follow gary genard.

• Training Techniques

Main Office - Boston

[email protected] 617-993-3410

• Executive Presentation Skills
• Rehearsal & Preparation
• Group Presentation Skills

• Presentation Tips 7: How to use your voice effectively
• Presentation Skills

When you give a presentation your first goal should be to capture and hold the attention of your audience. Everyone must be able to hear and easily follow what you are saying. Fortunately you have one very valuable and versatile tool at your disposal to make this happen – and that’s your voice. In this post I will explain how to use your voice to best effect and have the impact you want on your audience.

First of all it’s important to recognise that giving a presentation is not the same as having a conversation with an individual or a small group at a meeting. When speaking in public you need to put a lot more effort into how you use your voice.

How to improve your speaking voice – the 4 essentials

No doubt you’ve sat through a presentation where it was difficult to hear the speaker or they spoke in a monotonous voice. Perhaps you persevered and tried hard to concentrate on the message. The truth is that the majority of audience members will drift off, give in to boredom and find alternative activities such as doodling on their notepads or fiddling with their smartphones. To keep your audience engaged you must use your voice well.

Be aware of the volume of your voice. Generally that means speaking out and projecting your voice more than you would in a normal conversation. It depends of course on the size of the room and numbers in the audience. Don’t speak too loudly or it will sound as if you are lecturing your audience. Don’t speak too softly either or they will simply lose interest. Whilst the most important thing is to be heard at all times, you should also try to vary your volume e.g. raise your voice to draw attention to a point; lower it to lend a bit of intrigue to what you are saying.

As well as making yourself audible, it is of course essential that you speak clearly. That means articulating words properly and taking care not to mumble or to ‘swallow’ word endings. The best way to achieve clarity is to move your lips and open your mouth wide enough for the sound to escape!

• Tone and emphasis

The content of your presentation may be of high quality, but you’ve got to make it sound interesting too. This means using your voice to convey enthusiasm, conviction, empathy etc. The tone you adopt should be consistent with the content of your message e.g. avoid sounding too cheerful if you’re announcing some bad news to your workforce!

Bear in mind that it’s possible to change the meaning of a sentence depending on the particular words you emphasise. So it’s important to decide on what words you should emphasise, perhaps by highlighting them in your notes and by practising out loud.

Avoid dropping your voice at the end of sentences as you are likely to send your audience to sleep – a technique used by hypnotists! Instead, try to put a little bit more emphasis into the final word of a sentence, without exaggerating too much.

• Pace and Pauses

There’s a tendency for people to speak too fast when they are presenting. This may come about because of nerves and an eagerness to get the presentation over and done with. As a general rule, when presenting you should speak more slowly than in ordinary conversation. Aim for about 150 words per minute to allow your audience enough time to take in what you are saying.

No doubt you will have noticed how comedians use a deliberate pause before delivering a punch line. This is a technique you can use also in formal presentations for deliberate effect and to allow your audience time to absorb a key point.

Voice and relaxation exercises

Your voice is capable of making a wide range of sounds, although typically we use only a limited amount of our voice capacity when presenting. Some of the inhibition comes from feeling nervous about speaking in public. If you have to deliver many high level presentations, then you may like to consider using the services of a voice coach.

Here are some simple exercises you can try by yourself to help warm up your voice before delivering a presentation.

• Get your vocal chords working by humming a tune.
• Pretend you are chewing a sticky toffee.
• Practise breathing deeply to fuel your voice.
• Think of some tongue-twisters and say them out loud, taking care to articulate every word.

Improving your vocal quality will enhance your presentations and make you come across as more confident and credible. Your body language and the visual impression you make matters a great deal too.

Click here to read one of my previous posts on How to make a great first impression.

Please contact me if you would like to find out about training courses or coaching on Presentation Skills. Click her e to view a sample Presentation Skills training programme.

Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!

About the author: margaret johnston.

Related Posts

Presentation Tips 10: How to make a team presentation

Presentation Tips 9: How to deal with audience questions

Presentation Tips 8: How to use visual aids

Presentation Tips 6: How to make a great first impression

Presentation Tips 5: How to structure a presentation

One comment.

This is great

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

7 Presentation Skills to Wow Your Audience

We’ve all been there, sitting in a presentation or speech, struggling to keep our eyes open as the presenter drones on. Maybe the content is interesting, but the delivery is lacklustre. Or maybe the delivery is fantastic, but the content is disorganised or hard to follow. Whatever the reason, there’s no denying that effective presentation skills are critical to captivating and inspiring your audience.

So, whether you’re a seasoned speaker or a novice presenter, it’s always a good idea to brush up on your skills. That’s why in this blog post, we’ll be covering seven effective presentation skills that are sure to wow your audience. From knowing your audience to engaging with them, these skills will help you deliver powerful presentations that leave a lasting impact.

So, let’s dive in and explore these seven effective presentation skills that will take your speaking abilities to the next level. And to help you hone these skills, we’d like to introduce you to our specialised effective presentation skills training  programs.

Skill 1: Knowing Your Audience

One of the most effective presentation skills is knowing your audience. Understanding your audience helps you tailor your presentation to their needs, interests, and expectations.

Knowing your audience allows you to focus on the topics that are most relevant to them and speak in a language they can understand. Failure to know your audience can lead to a disengaged and uninterested audience, which can ultimately derail your presentation.

Tips for Identifying and Understanding Your Audience

When it comes to delivering a presentation, understanding your audience is essential. Identifying their needs, interests, and expectations can help you tailor your presentation to keep them engaged and interested throughout. Here are some tips to help you better identify and understand your audience:

1. Research your audience

Before your presentation, research your audience to understand their demographics, interests, and expectations. This can be done through social media, surveys, or by asking the event organisers for details about the attendees.

2. Ask questions

During your presentation, ask questions that engage the audience and help you understand their needs and interests. This can help you tailor your presentation to meet their expectations.

3. Analyse non-verbal cues

Pay attention to non-verbal cues, such as facial expressions and body language. This can help you gauge the audience's level of engagement and adjust your presentation accordingly.

4. Consider the occasion

The type of event can affect the expectations of your audience. If you're presenting at a formal event, your audience may expect a more polished and structured presentation. On the other hand, if you're presenting at a more casual event, your audience may appreciate a more relaxed and conversational tone.

5. Use social media

Social media can be a great tool for understanding your audience. Look for groups or hashtags related to your topic to see what people are saying about it. You can also use social media to ask questions and get feedback from your audience.

Skill 2: Storytelling

Storytelling is a powerful tool that can make your presentation stand out from the rest. It can help you engage your audience emotionally and make your message more memorable.

A well-crafted story can take your audience on a journey, creating a connection between you and them. In a world where attention spans are short, storytelling can be an effective way to hold the attention of your audience and keep them engaged.

Tips for crafting a compelling story for your presentation

Crafting a compelling story for your presentation takes some effort, but the result can be powerful. Here are some tips to help you create a story that resonates with your audience:

1. Start with a clear message

Before you begin crafting your story, identify the key message you want to convey. This will help you structure your story around the central idea and ensure that it aligns with your overall goal.

2. Use a simple structure

A simple structure can help you keep your story focused and easy to follow. Consider using a traditional story arc, which includes an introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.

3. Create relatable characters

Characters are an important part of any story. Create characters that your audience can relate to, and make them feel human and believable. This will help your audience connect with your story on an emotional level.

4. Use sensory language

Sensory language can help bring your story to life. Use descriptive words to paint a picture in the minds of your audience. This can help them better understand and remember your story.

5. Incorporate humour

Humour can be an effective way to engage your audience and create a memorable presentation. However, be sure to use humour that is appropriate, relevant and not sexist, ageist or ableist. 

Skill 3: Visual Aids

Visual aids can be a powerful tool to enhance your presentation and improve its effectiveness. They can help you convey complex information in an easy-to-understand way and make your presentation more engaging and memorable. 

The human brain processes visual information much faster than text, so incorporating visual aids in your presentation can help your audience understand your message more quickly and effectively.

Tips for creating effective visual aids

Now that we've covered the importance of visual aids, here are some tips for effective presentation skills :

1. Keep it simple

Visual aids should be simple and easy to understand. Avoid cluttered or complicated images, and use clear and concise language. Your audience should be able to quickly and easily understand the information you are presenting.

2. Use high-quality images

Low-quality images can be distracting and detract from your message. Use high-quality images that are relevant to your message and enhance the overall tone of your presentation.

3. Avoid too much text

Visual aids should be used to support your message, not replace them. Avoid using too much text on your slides or graphs, and instead, use bullet points or brief phrases to convey your message.

4. Use colour strategically

Colour can be a powerful tool to help emphasise important information, but it should be used strategically. Avoid using too many colours or bright colours that can be distracting.

5. Incorporate multimedia

Videos and audio can be effective tools to help engage your audience and make your presentation more interactive. Just be sure to use multimedia that is relevant to your message and supports the overall tone of your presentation.

Skill 4: Body Language

Body language is a critical aspect of effective communication skills for presentation , especially in a presentation setting. The way you use your body can have a significant impact on how your message is received by your audience. 

Your body language can convey confidence, interest, enthusiasm, and many other emotions and attitudes that can affect how your audience perceives you and your message.

Tips for using effective body language

Here are some tips for effective presentation skills :

1. Stand up straight

Good posture is key to projecting confidence and authority. Stand up straight with your shoulders back and your feet shoulder-width apart.

2. Make eye contact

Eye contact is a powerful way to connect with your audience and build trust. Try to make eye contact with different members of your audience throughout your presentation.

3. Use hand gestures

Appropriate hand gestures can help emphasise your message and make your presentation more engaging. However, be careful not to overdo it or use gestures that are distracting or inappropriate.

4. Avoid fidgeting

Fidgeting can be distracting and convey nervousness or anxiety. Try to stand still and avoid pacing, tapping your feet, or playing with objects.

5. Use facial expressions

Your facial expressions can convey a wide range of emotions and attitudes, from enthusiasm and interest to boredom and disengagement. Use appropriate facial expressions to match the tone of your message.

Skill 5: Voice and Tone

The way you use your voice can have a significant impact on how your presentation is perceived by your audience. 

Your voice and tone can convey a range of emotions and attitudes, such as confidence, authority, enthusiasm, and interest. Your tone can also indicate the level of importance or urgency of your message.

Tips for using effective voice and tone

Now that we understand the impact that voice and tone can have on a presentation, let's explore some tips for effective presentation skills:

1. Practice speaking with intention

Before your presentation, take some time to practice your speaking with intention. Think about the key messages you want to convey and how you want your audience to feel while listening to your presentation. This will help you deliver your message with a clear and purposeful voice and tone.

2. Vary your pace

Varying your pace can help keep your audience engaged and interested in your presentation. Slow down during important or complex points, and speed up during lighter or more exciting parts. By varying your pace, you can also create a sense of urgency or importance in your message.

3. Use pitch to convey emotion

Varying the pitch of your voice can help convey different emotions and attitudes in your presentation. For example, a higher pitch can convey excitement, while a lower pitch can convey seriousness or importance.

4. Pay attention to your volume

Be sure to project your voice so that everyone in the room can hear you. However, be careful not to speak too loudly, which can be distracting or overwhelming for your audience.

5. Pause for emphasis

Pausing at strategic moments can help emphasise important points and give your audience time to process your message. Take a breath and pause before making an important point to give it more weight.

Skill 6: Engaging Your Audience

One of the most important aspects of giving a presentation is engaging your audience. Without audience engagement, your presentation can quickly become boring, forgettable, or even frustrating for your listeners. Engaging your audience is a crucial skill that can help you build rapport, gain trust, and effectively communicate your message through your communication skills for presentation .

Tips for engaging your audience throughout your presentation

Engaging your audience is a crucial skill that can help you build rapport, gain trust, and effectively communicate your message using your communication skills for presentation . In this section, we will explore some tips for effective presentation skills .

1. Use storytelling

Storytelling is a powerful tool that can help you capture your audience's attention and keep them engaged. Use personal stories, anecdotes, or case studies to illustrate your points and make your presentation more relatable.

Asking questions can help you create a dialogue with your audience and make them feel like they are part of the conversation. Use open-ended questions to encourage participation and discussion.

3. Use humour

Appropriate humour can help lighten the mood and create a sense of rapport with your audience. Use jokes, puns, or funny anecdotes to break up the monotony of your presentation and keep your audience engaged.

4. Use visual aids

Visual aids, such as graphs, charts, or videos, can help illustrate your points and make your presentation more dynamic. Use them strategically to support your message and keep your audience engaged.

5. Use audience participation

Incorporating interactive elements, such as polls, quizzes, or games, can help keep your audience engaged and create a sense of excitement or competition. Use them strategically to break up your presentation and keep your audience engaged.

Skill 7: Handling Questions and Feedback

Handling questions and feedback is a critical skill that can make or break a presentation. It provides an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge, address any concerns, and show your audience that you value their input.

Tips for handling questions and feedback effectively

Handling questions and feedback can be daunting, but with some practice, it can become an opportunity to showcase your expertise and engage with your audience. Here are some tips on how to handle questions and feedback effectively:

1. Listen carefully

Listen carefully to the question or feedback, and take a moment to think about your response. This shows that you respect the person asking the question and value their input.

2. Repeat or rephrase the question

This ensures that you have understood the question correctly, and it also helps the audience hear the question clearly. Rephrasing the question can also help clarify any misunderstandings or confusion.

3. Be concise

Keep your answers concise and to the point. Avoid giving long-winded answers that might confuse or bore the audience.

4. Use real-life examples

Using examples or stories can help illustrate your points and make them more relatable to the audience. It can also help keep the audience engaged.

5. Be honest

If you don't know the answer to a question, it's okay to say so. You can offer to follow up with the person after the presentation or suggest resources where they can find more information.

Wrapping It Up

In conclusion, effective presentation skills are an essential part of being a successful communicator. Knowing your audience, storytelling, using visual aids, body language, voice, and tone, engaging your audience, and handling questions and feedback are all key skills that can help you deliver a powerful and impactful presentation.

By following the tips and strategies we've shared, you can improve your communication skills for presentation  and leave a lasting impression on your audience. And if you're looking to take your skills to the next level, some.Education provides presentation skills training that can help you develop and hone these skills.

Remember, a great presentation isn't just about the content - it's also about the delivery. By mastering these skills, you can engage your audience, build your credibility, and leave a lasting impression. So go out there and wow your audience!

Useful Resources :   10 importance of speech communication |  Communication skills presentation |  Grapevine communication

Recent Blogs

What is Social Learning Theory? How to Adopt It in The Workplace

Explore the transformative power of social learning theory in the OB. If you're curious about what social learning theory is and how it can revolutionize your workplace,...

Why Are Employees Your Greatest Asset and How to Mentor Them

In the dynamic landscape of modern businesses, employees are the most valuable asset of any organisation. Their skills, knowledge, creativity, and dedication fuel an organisation's...

Dealing with difficult employees: An employer's guide

In any workplace, you're likely to encounter a variety of personalities and work styles. While most employees are cooperative and contribute positively to the team, there may be in...

How to stop being self-conscious: Strategies to feel more confident

In a world where self-confidence reigns supreme, it's all too easy to feel self-conscious. But what does it really mean to be self-conscious?And why does it have such a profound im...

How to prepare your team to handle negotiations?

In the dynamic business world, the ability to negotiate effectively and deliver persuasive pitches can be the key differentiator between triumph and failure. Whether you're seeking...

Effective Communication skills can improve your self-confidence and boost career growth

In today's fast-paced and competitive professional world, self-confidence is a valuable asset that can significantly impact your career growth and success. Whether you're seeking a...

Difference between KRA and KPI

In the realm of performance management and goal setting, the terms KRA (Key Result Area) and KPI (Key Performance Indicator) are frequently used, but they serve distinct purposes i...

What is the difference between a boss and a leader?

In the world of management and leadership, the terms "boss" and "leader" are often used interchangeably. However, they represent distinct approaches to managing and inspiring a tea...

How to interview for a job when you have no work experience?

Landing your first job can be both exciting and nerve-wracking, especially when you lack work experience. However, with the right approach and preparation, you can ace your job int...

9 steps for improving collaboration between teams

In today's rapidly evolving workplace, effective team collaboration is more critical than ever. Whether you're in a traditional office, a remote team, or a hybrid work environment,...

How being intentional can advance your career?

In a world filled with constant distractions and fast-paced living, the concept of being intentional stands out as a beacon of purpose and direction. But what does it mean to...

How to improve your problem solving skills?

Problem solving is a critical skill that permeates various aspects of life, from personal challenges to professional endeavors. The ability to tackle issues, make decisions, and fi...

Complete Guide to Debating: Improve your Debating Skills

In the world of communication and persuasion, mastering the art of debate is a skill that can truly set you apart. Whether you're a student, a professional, or simply someone who w...

Experimentation brings innovation: An experimental workplace

Experimentation is the lifeblood of innovation, breathing new life into stagnant routines and sparking transformative ideas. Organisations that embrace a culture of experimentation...

How to Build a Healthy Workplace Environment?

In today's highly competitive work landscape, the importance of cultivating a healthy workplace environment cannot be overstated. A positive work environment not only contributes t...

How Would You Define Success?

Success, a word that carries different meanings for different individuals, is a universal aspiration.The concept of what is success in life has captivated minds for centuries, fuel...

Why is Networking Important

The importance of networking has never been more evident. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting out, building and nurturing a strong professional network can be t...

Guide to Choosing a Successful Speech Topic

Effective communication skills have become more crucial in today's rapidly changing world. Whether you're a student, a professional, or someone simply looking to enhance your publi...

The Importance of Storytelling in Business, with Examples

In the dynamic world of business, where information is abundant, and attention spans are fleeting, storytelling has emerged as a powerful tool that captivates audiences and leaves...

10 Best Practices for Giving a Remote Presentation

After COVID, with more companies embracing the WFH hybrid model of working, virtual presentations have become a fundamental part of professional communication. Whether you're an ex...

Your success. Powered by the Six Cs.

Knowledge centre.

Copyright © School Of Meaningful Experiences private limited, Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy and Terms of Use | Sitemap

Chat with us now

Your account has been created.

Join our team

Interact with our admission team, download brochure.

OTP has been sent, Please check your E-mail

Resend OTP in:

Verify Your Details

21 Ways To Improve Your Presentation Skills

Published: April 07, 2023

You know the feeling of sitting through a boring presentation. A text distracts you. A noise outside pulls your gaze. Your dog begs for attention. By the time the presentation ends, you question why you needed to sit and listen in the first place.

Effective presentation skills can stop you from boring an audience to oblivion. Delivering strong presentations can help you stand out as a leader, showcase your expertise, and build confidence.

Table of contents:

• Presentation skills definition
• Importance of presentation skills
• How to improve presentation skills
• Effective presentation skills
• Presentation skills for executives

Presentation Skills Definition

Presentation skills include anything you need to create and deliver clear, effective presentations to an audience. This includes creating a compelling set of slides , ensuring the information flows, and keeping your audience engaged.

Speakers with strong presentation skills can perform the following tasks:

• Bring together different sources of information to form a compelling narrative
• Hook audiences with a strong beginning and end
• Ensure audiences engage with their content through questions or surveys
• Understand what their audience wants and needs from their presentation

Importance of Presentation Skills

At some point in your career, you will present something. You might pitch a startup to a group of investors or show your research findings to your manager at work. Those in leading or executive roles often deliver presentations on a weekly or monthly basis.

Improving your presentation skills betters different aspects of your working life, including the following:

Communication: Improving your presentation skills can make you a better communicator with your co-workers and friends.

Confidence: 75% of people fear public speaking. By working on your presentation skills, you can gain confidence when speaking in front of a crowd.

Creativity: You learn to understand how to use imagery and examples to engage an audience.

Management: Presentations involve pulling together information to form a succinct summary, helping you build project and time management skills.

How To Improve Presentation Skills

1. create an outline.

Before designing slides and writing a script, outline your presentation. Start with your introduction, segue into key points you want to make, and finish with a conclusion.

2. Practice, Practice, Practice

Almost 8 in 10 professionals practice their presentations for at least an hour. So, practice your presentation in the mirror or to a close friend.

3. Start With a Hook

When presenting, grab your audience with a hook. Consider starting with a surprising statistic or a thoughtful question before diving into the core information.

4. Stay Focused on Your Topic

You might want to cover everything under the sun, but information overload can overwhelm your audience. Instead, stay focused on what you want to cover. Aim for key points and avoid including unnecessary details.

5. Remember To Introduce Yourself

At the beginning of the presentation, introduce yourself. Kill any tension in the room by mentioning your name, your role, and any other helpful details. You could even mention a fun fact about yourself, putting the audience at ease.

6. Work on Your Body Language

55% of people look to nonverbal communication when judging a presentation. Straighten your back, minimize unnecessary gestures, and keep your voice confident and calm. Remember to work on these aspects when practicing.

7. Memorize Structure, Not Words

You might feel better knowing exactly what you want to say. But skip the script and stick to memorizing the key points of your presentation. For example, consider picking three to four phrases or insights you want to mention for each part of your presentation rather than line-by-line memorization.

8. Learn Your Audience

Before crafting a killer outline and slide deck, research your audience. Find out what they likely already know, such as industry jargon, and where they might need additional information. Remember: You're presenting for them, not you.

9. Reframe Your Anxiety as Excitement

A study conducted by Harvard Business School demonstrates that reframing your anxiety as excitement can improve performance. For example, by saying simple phrases out loud, such as “I’m excited,” you then adopt an opportunity-oriented mentality.

10. Get Comfortable With the Setting

If you plan to present in person, explore the room. Find where you’re going to stand and deliver your presentation. Practice looking into the seats. By decreasing the number of unknowns, you can clear your head and focus on the job.

11. Get Familiar With Technology

Presenting online has unique challenges, such as microphone problems and background noise. Before a Zoom presentation, ensure your microphone works, clean up your background, test your slides, and consider any background noise.

12. Think Positively

Optimistic workers enjoy faster promotions and happier lives. By reminding yourself of the positives — for example, your manager found your last presentation impressive — you can shake off nerves and find joy in the process.

13. Tell a Story

To engage your audience, weave storytelling into your presentation — more than 5 in 10 people believe stories hold their focus during a presentation. Consider ways to connect different parts of your slides into a compelling narrative.

14. Prepare for Questions

At the end of your presentation, your audience will likely have questions. Brainstorm different questions and potential answers so you’re prepared.

15. Maintain Eye Contact

Eye contact signals honesty. When possible, maintain eye contact with your audience. For in-person presentations, pay attention to each audience member. For online ones, stare at your camera lens as you deliver.

16. Condense Your Presentation

After you finish the first draft of your outline, think about ways to condense it. Short and sweet often keeps people interested instead of checking their phones.

17. Use Videos

Keep your audience’s attention by incorporating video clips when relevant. For example, videos can help demonstrate examples or explain difficult concepts.

18. Engage With Your Audience

Almost 8 in 10 professionals view presentations as boring. Turn the tide by engaging with your audience. Encourage audience participation by asking questions or conducting a live survey.

19. Present Slowly and Pause Frequently

When you get nervous, you talk faster. To combat this, remember to slow yourself down when practicing. Place deep pauses throughout your presentation, especially when transitioning between slides, as it gives you time to breathe and your audience time to absorb.

20. Start and End With a Summary

A summary at the start of a presentation can pique your audience’s interest. One at the end brings everything together, highlighting key points your audience should take with them.

21. Ask for Feedback

You will never deliver the perfect presentation, so ask for feedback. Talk to your managers about where you could improve. Consider surveying your audience for an unbiased look into your presentation skills.

Effective Presentation Skills

Effective presentation skills include communicating clearly, presenting with structure, and engaging with the audience.

As an example, say a content manager is presenting a quarterly review to their team. They start off with a summary. Their introduction mentions an unprecedented 233% growth in organic traffic — numbers their team has not seen in years. Immediately, the presenter grabs their team’s attention. Now, everyone wants to know how they achieved that in one quarter.

Alternatively, think of an entrepreneur delivering their pitch to a group of investors. They start with a question: How many of you struggle to stay awake at work? They then segue into an exciting product designed to improve the sleep quality of working professionals. Their presentation includes videos demonstrating the science behind sleep and surprising statistics about the demand for their product.

Both examples demonstrate effective presentation skills. They incorporate strong attention grabbers, summaries, and attempts to engage the audience.

Think back to strong presentations you viewed as an audience member. Ask yourself: What made them so memorable, and how can I incorporate those elements into my presentations?

Presentation Skills for Executives

Presentations take up a significant portion of an executive’s workload. Executives regularly showcase key company initiatives, team changes, quarterly and annual reviews, and more. Improving your presentation skills as a leader can help with different parts of your job, such as:

Trust: Delivering great, effective presentations can build trust between you and your team.

Confidence: Most people dread presentations — so a strong presenter projects the confidence needed by a leader.

Emotional intelligence: A great presentation taps into the audience’s perspectives, helping executives improve their emotional intelligence .

Expertise: Presentations help executives display their subject-matter expertise, making employees safe in their hands.

Delegation: At times, executives might need to pull information from different sources for a presentation — improving their ability to delegate as managers.

What did you think of this article?

Give Feedback

Don't forget to share this post!

Outline your company's sales strategy in one simple, coherent plan.

Powerful and easy-to-use sales software that drives productivity, enables customer connection, and supports growing sales orgs

• Log in Create free account

Presentation Skills and Techniques

Please login to like or save this resource

Presentations skills and public speaking skills are very useful in many aspects of work and life. Effective presentations and public speaking skills are important in business, sales and selling, training, teaching, lecturing, and generally feeling comfortable speaking to a group of people.

Developing the confidence and capability to give good presentations, and to stand up in front of an audience and speak well, are also extremely helpful competencies for self-development and social situations.

Presentation skills and public speaking abilities are not limited to certain special people - anyone can give a good presentation, or perform public speaking to a professional and impressive standard. Like most specialisms, this requires  preparation  and  practice .

The formats and purposes of presentations can be very different, for example: oral (spoken), multimedia (using various media - visuals, audio, etc), PowerPoint presentations, short impromptu presentations, long-planned presentations, educational or training sessions, lectures, and simply giving a talk on a subject to a group on a voluntary basis for pleasure. Even speeches at weddings and eulogies at funerals are types of presentations.

Yet every successful presentation uses broadly the essential techniques and structures explained here.

This article provides:

• A guide to the process of creating effective presentations ,
• Tips and techniques for successfully delivering presentations
• Explanations and methods for reducing presentation fears and stresses  - notably through the use of  preparation  and  control , to build  confidence

Fear of Public Speaking and Presentations

You are not alone if the thought of speaking in public scares you. On the contrary.

Everyone feels fearful of presenting and public speaking to one degree or another.

Giving a presentation is very worrying for many people. Presenting or speaking to an audience regularly tops the list in surveys of people's top fears - more than heights, flying or dying.

Here is a popular saying (which features in many presentations) about giving presentations and public speaking:

" Most people would prefer to be lying in the casket rather than giving the eulogy. "

I first heard a speaker called Michelle Ray use this quote in the early 1990s. The quote is often credited to Jerry Seinfeld, although the basic message is much older. For example (thanks Dr N Ashraf) the ancient Tamil work Thirukkural (also called Tirrukural) includes the following words in its aptly titled chapter,  Fearlessness in an Assembly :

" Many are ready to even die in battle, but few can face an assembly without nerves. " 

Couplet 723, from Thirukkural/Tirrukural, also called the Kural - a seminal guide to life and ethics attributed to the Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar, said to have lived between about 200-10BC.

I am grateful also to R Ersapah for an alternative translation of couplet 723, and below, a more modern literal interpretation:

" Many encountering death in face of foe will hold their ground; who speak undaunted in the council hall are rarely found. "

In more modern language this means:

" Many indeed may (fearlessly) die in the presence of (their) foes; (but) few are those who are fearless in the assembly (of the learned). "

In a French translation, this is:

" Nombreux sont ceux qui peuvent affronter la mort face à leurs ennemis; rares sont ceux qui peuvent sans crainte se tenir devant une assemblée. "

The title of Tirrukural's chapter 73 is: Not to dread the Council (French: Ne pas craindre les assemblees).

Couplet 727 says, amusingly and incisively:

" The learning of him who is diffident before an assembly is like the shining sword of an hermaphrodite in the presence of his foes... " (French: " Les connaissances de celui qui a peur des auditoires sont comme l'epee tranchante que tient l'eunuque en presence de son ennemi... " )

I am informed (thanks again R Ersapah) that all of chapter 73 fits the theme of  public speech  being  one of the greatest challenges many people face in their lives .

This is further evidence that speaking in public is not just a modern fear - this fear has been in humankind for at least 2,000 years.

Incidentally the English translation of Tirrukural comprises various chapters such as: Domestic Virtues, Ascetic Virtue, Royalty, Ministers of State, The Essentials of a State. The English Translations are by Rev Dr G U Pope and Rev W H Drew. The French translation is by a Mauritian author M Sangeelee.

I'm always keen to receive and share old examples of public-speaking-and-fear analogies - if you know any  please send them .

Understanding and Overcoming Fear

The key to managing and controlling anything is first to understand it, especially its causes.

The cause of fear is (a feeling of) insecurity and/or an unfamiliar or uncontrollable threat.

In the context of presentations and public speaking, this is usually due to:

• Lack of  confidence , and/or
• Lack of  control  (or a feeling of not having control) - over the situation, other people (the audience) and our own reactions and feelings
• And (in some cases) possibly a bad memory or experience from our past

The effects of these are heightened according to the  size of the audience , and potentially also the  nature of the audience/situation  - which combine to represent a perceived uncontrollable threat to us at a very basic and instinctive level (which we imagine in the form or critical judgement, embarrassment, humiliation, etc).

This 'audience' aspect is illustrated by the following:

" Most of us would not feel very fearful if required to give a presentation to a class of 30 five-year-old children, but we would feel somewhat more fearful if required to give a presentation to an interview panel of three high court judges. So audience size is not everything - it's the nature of the situation and audience too. "

As such audience size and situation are circumstantial factors which can influence the degree of anxiety, but they are not causal factors in themselves. The causes exist because of the pressure to command, control, impress, etc.

Confidence and Control

The two big causal factors (low  confidence  and  control ) stem typically from:

• Inadequate  preparation/rehearsal , and/or
• Low  experience .

If we have a bad memory which is triggering a fear response, then it is likely that the original situation we recall, which prompts our feelings of anxiety, resulted from one or both of the above factors.

Preparation and rehearsal  are usually very manageable elements. It's a matter of making the effort to prepare and rehearse before the task is upon us. Presentations which do not work well usually do so because they have not been properly prepared and rehearsed.

Experience  can be gained simply by seeking opportunities for public speaking and presenting to people and groups, wherever you feel most comfortable (and then try speaking to groups where you feel less comfortable). Given that humankind and society everywhere are arranged in all sorts of groups - schools and colleges, evening classes, voluntary groups, open-mic nights, debating societies, public meetings, conferences, the local pub, sports and hobby clubs, hospitals, old people's homes, etc, etc - there are countless groups everywhere of people and potential audiences by which you can gain speaking and presenting experience - this is not so difficult to achieve.

So  experience , is actually just another manageable element before the task, although more time and imagination are required than in preparing and rehearsing a particular presentation.

Besides these preparatory points, it's useful to consider that  fear  relates to  stress .

Stress can be managed in various ways.  Understanding stress and stress management methods  can be very helpful in reducing the anxiety we feel before and while giving presentations and public speaking.

Physiology, Chemistry, Stress

Fear of public speaking is strongly related to stress - see the  causes of stress and stress management .

A common physical reaction in people when having to speak in public is a release of adrenaline and cortisol into our systems, which is sometimes likened to drinking several cups of coffee. Even experienced speakers feel their hearts thumping very excitedly indeed.

This sensational reaction to speaking in public is certainly not only felt by novices, and even some of the great professional actors and entertainers suffer from real physical sickness before taking the stage or podium.

So you are not alone. Speaking in public is genuinely scary for most people, including many who outwardly seem very calm.

Our primitive brain shuts down normal functions as the 'fight or flight' impulse takes over - see FEAR under the  acronyms  section (note: there is some adult content among these acronyms for training and presentations).

But don't worry - every person in your audience wants you to succeed. The audience is on your side (if only because they are very pleased that it's you up there in the spotlight speaking and not them).

All you need to do is follow the guidelines contained on this page, and everything will be fine. As the saying goes, don't try to get rid of the butterflies - just get them flying in formation.

Incidentally, the origins of this famous public-speaking/performing butterflies metaphor are typically given as "There is nothing wrong with stomach butterflies! You just have to get them to fly in formation!" - see the attribution information for the  butterflies metaphor  on the inspirational quotes page.

So, how do you calm the butterflies and get them flying in formation?

The answer (where  butterflies  equate to  fear ) is clear and simple in the following maxim:

To  calm the butterflies  you must  be relaxed . To  be relaxed  you must  be confident . To  be confident  you must  be prepared and rehearsed .

Good preparation  is the key to  confidence , which is the key to  being relaxed , and this calms the butterflies,(i.e., overcomes the fear).

Put another way, according to logical ' cause and effect':

Good preparation and rehearsal will reduce your nerves by 75%, and increase the likelihood of avoiding errors to 95%. (Source: Fred Pryor Organisation, a significant provider of seminars and open presentation events.)

And so this is the most important rule for effective presentations and public speaking:

Prepare , which means  plan it , and  practise/rehearse it .

Then you'll be in control, and confident.

Your audience will see this and respond accordingly, which in turn will help build your confidence, and you even start to enjoy yourself too.

And remember that there is a cumulative effect:

Every successful presentation that you create and deliver generates more experience and confidence for you, which makes every future presentation easier and more successful for you, and so it goes, until every last butterfly is calmed.

Tips for Effective Presentations

• Preparation and knowledge (of subject and the presentation itself) are the pre-requisites for a successful presentation, which importantly produce confidence and control, which in turn is important for relaxing the presenter, and the audience.
• As a presenter, remember and apply Eleanor Roosevelt's maxim that " no one can intimidate me without my permission ". When you are a presenter you are in charge. The audience generally accepts this, and you are within your rights to control anyone who does not.
• Remember also that " depth of conviction counts more than the height of logic, and enthusiasm is worth more than knowledge ", (which is apparently attributed to David Peebles, about whom I have no further details - please let me know if you do).  Passion  is therefore a very powerful component in any successful presentation.
• Good presenting is about  entertaining  as well as conveying information. As well, people retain more if they are enjoying themselves and feeling relaxed. So whatever your subject and audience, try to find ways to make the content and delivery enjoyable - even the most serious of occasions, and the driest of subjects, can be lifted to an enjoyable or even an amusing level one way or another with a little research, imagination, and humour.
• Enjoyment and humour are mostly in the preparation. These effects are not easily produced spontaneously. You don't need to be a natural stand-up comedian to inject enjoyment and humour into a presentation or talk. It's the content that enables it, which is very definitely within your control.
• Research and studies generally indicate that in presentations you have between 4 - 7 seconds in which to make a positive impact and good opening impression, so make sure you have a good, strong, solid introduction, and rehearse it until it is 'second nature' to you and an action of  'unconscious competence' .
• Try to build your own credibility in your introduction, and create a safe comfortable environment for your audience,  which you will do quite naturally if you appear to be comfortable yourself .
• Smiling helps a lot. It will relax you and the audience. In addition to giving you a relaxed calm appearance, smiling actually releases helpful 'happy' chemicals into your nervous system, and makes you feel good.
• So does taking a few deep slow breaths to make you feel relaxed - low down from the pit of your stomach - before you take to the stage.
• Avoid starting with a joke unless you are supremely confident - jokes are high-risk things at the best of times, let alone at the start of a presentation. I was sent this excellent and simple idea for a presentation - actually used in a job interview - which will perhaps prompt similar ideas and adaptations for your own situations. At the start of the presentation the letters T, E, A, and M - fridge magnets - were given to members of the audience. At the end of the presentation, the speaker made the point that individually the letters meant little, but together they made a team This powerful use of simple props created a wonderful connection between start and finish, and supported a concept in a memorable and impactful way. (Thanks P Hodgson) N.B. There is a big difference between telling a joke and injecting enjoyment and humour (US spelling, humor) into your talk. Jokes are risky. Enjoyment and humour are safe. A joke requires quite a special skill in its delivery. Joke-telling is something of an art form. Only a few people can do it well without specific training. A joke creates pressure on the audience to laugh at a critical moment. A joke creates tension - that's why it's funny (when it works). This tension equates to an expectation in the listener, which produces a small degree of pleasure when the joke works well, but a very unhelpful awkwardness if the joke is not well-delivered or well-received. A joke also has the potential to offend, and jokes are culturally very sensitive - different people like different jokes. Even experienced comedians can 'die' on stage if their jokes and delivery are at odds with the audience type or mood. On the other hand, enjoyment and humour are much more general, they not dependent on creating tension or the expectation of a punchline. Enjoyment and humour can be injected in very many different ways - for example, a few funny quotes or examples; a bit of audience participation; an amusing prop; an amusing picture or cartoon; or an amusing story (not a joke). Another way to realise the difference between jokes and enjoyment is to consider that you are merely seeking to make people smile and be mildly amused - not to have them belly-laughing in the aisles.
• " Observant delegates among you perhaps will have noticed (refer to the error)... "
• " Welcome everyone. Who among you has noticed my deliberate mistake?... "
• " Welcome everyone. You might have noticed the experimental 'deliberate mistake' icebreaker this morning (refer to the mistake). Could you split into groups of three; analyse the situation, and prepare a two-minute presentation as to how the 'corrective-action loop' might be applied to minimise the chances of this happening again...... No, seriously... "
• Try to start on time even if some of the audience is late. Waiting too long undermines your confidence and the audience's respect for you.
• The average attention span of an average listener is apparently (according to various sources I've seen over the years) between five and ten minutes for any single unbroken subject. Younger 'Playstation' and 'texter' generations will have even less tolerance than this, so structure your content accordingly.
• Any audience will begin to wriggle and feel less comfortable in their seats after about 40 minutes of sitting listening/watching. So presentations which are longer than this time should include a reason for the audience to move a little, or ideally stand up and move about, after about 40 minutes.
• Break up the content so that no single item takes longer than a few minutes, and between each item try to inject something amusing, amazing, remarkable or spicy - a picture, a quote, a bit of audience interaction - anything to break it up and keep people attentive.
• Staying too long (ten minutes or more) on the same subject in the same mode of delivery will send people into a trance-like state, when they are not properly listening, watching or concentrating on the presentation - often called the MEGO state (My Eyes Glaze Over). So break it up, and inject diversions and variety - in terms of content and media (the different ways you can communicate to people or engage their interest). Using a variety of media and movements will maintain maximum interest. Think of it like this - the audience can be stimulated via several senses - not just audio and visual (listening and watching) - consider including content and activity which addresses the other senses too - touch certainly - taste maybe, smell maybe - anything's possible if you use your imagination. The more senses you can stimulate the more your audience will remain attentive and engaged.
• You can stimulate other things in your audience besides the usual 'senses'. You can use content and activities to stimulate feelings, emotions, memories, and even physical movement. Simply asking the audience to stand up, snap their fingers, or blink their eyes (assuming you give them a good reason for doing so) immediately stimulates physical awareness and involvement. Passing several props or samples around is also a great way to stimulate physical activity and involvement.
• Quotes are a wonderful and easy way to stimulate emotions and feelings, and of course, quotes can be used to illustrate and emphasise just about any point or concept you can imagine. Research and collect good quotations and include them in your notes. Memorise one or two if you can because this makes the delivery seem more powerful. See the  funny quotations  and  inspirational quotes  webpages for ideas and examples. Always credit the source of quotes you use. Interestingly, Bobby Kennedy once famously failed to credit George Bernard Shaw when he said that " Some men see things as they are and ask 'why?'; I dare to dream of things that never were and ask 'why not?'. ".
• Failing to attribute a quote undermines a speaker's integrity and professionalism. Conversely, giving credit to someone else is rightly seen as a positive and dignified behaviour. Having quotes and other devices is important to give your presentation depth and texture, as well as keep your audience interested... " If the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer you'll treat everything as a nail. " (Abraham Maslow)
• So don't just speak at people. Give them a variety of content, and different methods of delivery - and activities too if possible.
• Be daring and bold and have fun. Use props and pass them around if you can. The more senses you can stimulate the more fun your audience will have and the more they'll remember.
• Some trainers of public speaking warn that passing props around can cause a loss of control or chaos. This is true, and I argue that it's good. It's far better to keep people active and engaged, even if it all needs a little additional control. Better to have an audience slightly chaotic than bored to death.
• Planned chaos is actually a wonderful way to keep people involved and enjoying themselves. Clap your hands a couple of times and say calmly "Okay now - let's crack on," or something similarly confident and unphased, and you will be back in control, with the audience refreshed for another 5-10 minutes.
• Create analogies and themes, and use props to illustrate and reinforce them. For example, a bag of fresh lemons works well: they look great, they smell great, they feel great, and they're cheap, so you can give out loads and not ask for them back - all you have to do is think of an excuse to use them!
• Questions and 'hands-up' feedback
• Pictures, cartoons and video-clips
• Video-clips  and sound-clips
• Surveys and statistics
• Straw polls (a series of hands-up votes/reactions which you record and then announce results)
• Inviting a volunteer to take the stage with you (for a carefully planned reason)
• Audience participation exercises
• Asking the audience to do something physical (clapping, deep breathing, blinking, finger-snapping, shouting, and other more inventive ideas)
• Asking the audience to engage with each other (for example introductions to person in next chair)
• Funny quotations  (be careful not to offend anyone)
• Inspirational quotations
• Props, samples, physical objects (see the  visual aids ideas page )
• Examples and case-study references
• Fables  and analogies
• Prizes, awards and recognising people/achievements
• Book recommendations
• Fascinating facts (research is easy these days about virtually any subject)
• Statistics (which dramatically improve audience 'buy-in' if you're trying to persuade)
• Games and exercises and icebreakers
• Body language , and the changing tone and pitch of your voice.
• For long presentations of more than an hour or two, such as training sessions, aim to have a 'rest' break every 45-60 minutes for people to get up and stretch their legs, otherwise, you'll be losing their attention regardless of the amount of variety and diversion 'spice' you include.
• Take the pressure off yourself by not speaking all the time. Get the audience doing things, and make use of all the communications senses available.
• Interestingly the use of visual aids generally heightens retention of the spoken word - by 70% or more. The figure is demonstrably and substantially more than 70% for certain things, for example: try memorising a person's face from purely a verbal description, compared with actually seeing the face. A verbal or written description is only fractionally as memorable as actually seeing anything which has more than a basic level of complexity.

Edgar Dale's Cone of Experience

• Heard and Seen 50%
• Said and Done 90%
• So use visual aids a lot in your presentations.  Your voice is not the only or main tool at your disposal. Get visuals working fully for you, and your presentations will be more engaging, and a lot easier for you to deliver and enjoy.

Tips for Using Visual Aids

• For printed visual aids with several paragraphs of text, use serif fonts (a font is a typeface) for quicker readability.
• For computer and LCD projectors use sans serif fonts, especially if the point size (letter size) is quite small.
• Arial is a sans serif font. Times is a serif font. (A serif font has the extra little cross-lines at the ends of the strokes of the letters. Interestingly, serif fonts originated in the days of engraving, before printing, when the engraver needed a neat exit from each letter.)
• Extensive sections of text can be read more quickly in a serif font because the words have a horizontal flow, but serif fonts have a more old-fashioned traditional appearance than sans serif, and so stylistically can seem old-fashioned, which does not fit certain presentations.
• If you need to comply with a company/corporate typeface (font/letter design) you'll maybe have no choice of lettering style. If you are creating and delivering the presentation for a company or organization of any sort then ask if there is a recommended/compulsory 'house' typeface, and if so, then use it, along with corporate colour/colour schemes and branding. Marketing departments usually keep this information.
• Generally, try to use no more than two different typefaces (fonts) and no more than two size/bold/italic variants, or the text presentation becomes confused and very distracting to read quickly and easily.
• Whatever - try to select fonts and point sizes that are the best fit for your medium and purpose.
• If in doubt simply pick a well-readable serif font and use it big and bold about 20-30pt for headings, and 14 - 16 point size for the body text.
• See the  marketing and advertising  section for lots of tips and secrets about presenting written/typed/electronic/printed words.
• See also the writing tips on this website for good general guidance and tips about writing effectively, so that your audience can read, understand, and absorb what you want to communicate to them.
•  Your own written cue/prompt cards and notes  - Create your own prompts and notes to suit your purpose and situation. Cue cards are usually very effective aids, but make sure to  number them  and  tie them together, in order . In the pressure of a presentation, it is very easy to accidentally shuffle or drop your cue cards, which is then a serious nuisance and distraction for any presenter. A single  ' at-a-glance timetable sheet  is a useful aid for any presenter, especially for presentations longer than half an hour, where keeping track is more challenging. A timetable on one sheet is also useful to monitor your timing and pace.

Preparation and Creating Your Presentation

This is a sequential step-by-step process - a list of the main action points - for creating and preparing a successful and effective presentation - large or small. The process includes preparing, creating, checking, rehearsing, refining and finalising the presentation.

• Think about your audience, your aims, their expectations, the surroundings, the facilities available, and what type of presentation you are going to give (lecture style, informative, participative, etc).
• What are your aims? To inform, inspire and entertain, maybe to demonstrate and prove, and maybe to persuade.
• How do you want the audience to react?
• Thinking about these things will help you ensure that your presentation is going to achieve its purpose.
• Clearly identify your subject and your purpose to yourself, and then let the creative process take over for a while to gather all the possible ideas for the subject matter and how you could present it.
• Think about interesting ways to convey and illustrate and bring your points to life, so that your presentation is full of interesting things (think of these as 'spices') to stimulate as many senses as possible. A presentation is not restricted to spoken and visual words - you can use physical samples and props, sound and video, body movement, audience participation, games and questions, statistics, amazing facts, quotes, and lots more ideas to support your points and keep the audience engaged.
• Use  brainstorming  and 'mind-mapping' methods (mind-mapping is sketching out ideas in extensions, like the branches of a tree, from a central idea or aim). Both processes involve freely putting random ideas and connections on a piece of paper - the bigger the sheet the better - using different coloured pens will help too.
• Don't try to write the presentation in detail until you have decided on the content you need and created a rough structure from your random collected ideas and material. See the  brainstorming  process - it's very helpful and relevant for creating and writing presentations.
• When you have all your ideas on paper, organise them into subject categories. Three categories often work best. Does it flow? Is there a logical sequence that people will follow, and which makes you feel comfortable?
• Use the  'rule of three'  to structure the presentation where possible, because sets of three have a natural balance and flow. A simple approach is to have three main sections. Each section has three sub-sections. Each of these can have three sub-sections, and so on. A 30-minute presentation is unlikely to need more than three sections, with three sub-sections each. A three-day training course presentation need to have no more than four levels of three, giving 81 sub-sections in all. Simple!
• Presentations almost always take longer to deliver than you imagine.
• When you have a rough draft of your presentation you should practise it, as if you were actually in front of an audience, and check the timings.  If your timings are not right - (usually you will have too much material) - then you can now adjust the amount of content, and avoid unnecessarily refining sections that need to be cut out. Or if you are short of content, you can expand the presentation material accordingly, or take longer to explain the content you already have.
• You must create a  strong introduction  and a  strong close .
• You must  tell people what you're going to speak about  and the  purpose or aim of your presentation .
• And if you finish with a stirring quotation or a stunning statistic, you must, before this,  summarise what you have spoken about  and if appropriate,  demand action from your audience , even if it is to go away and think about what you have said.
• Essentially the structure of all good presentations is to:  " Tell'em what you're gonna tell'em. Tell'em. Then tell'em what you told'em. "  (Thanks N Toptani for suggesting that this famous quote about public speaking originated by George Bernard Shaw)
• When you have structured your presentation, it will have an opening, a middle with headed sections of subject matter, and a close, with an opportunity for questions, if relevant. This is still a somewhat flat 'single-dimensional' script.  Practice it in its rough form , which is effectively a 'read-through' rather than a fully formed presentation with all aids and equipment.
• Next, you bring it to life as a fully formed presentation - give it space and life and physicality and character - by blending in your presentation methods, aids, props, and devices, as appropriate. This entails the equipment and materials you use, case studies, examples, quotations, analogies, questions and answers, individual and syndicate exercises, interesting statistics, samples, visual and physical aids, and any other presentation aid you think will work.  This stage often requires more time than you imagine if you have to source props and materials.
• Practice your presentation in rough  full form  with all your aids and devices. Review and record the timings. They will be different compared to earlier simple read-throughs. Amend and refine the presentation accordingly. Practising at this stage is essential to build your competence and confidence - especially in handling and managing the aids and devices you plan to use - and also to rehearse the pace and timings. You'll probably be amazed at this stage to realise how much longer the presentation takes to deliver than you imagined when you were simply reading on your cards or notes.
• If your presentation entails audio-visual (AV) support and equipment provision by specialist providers then ensure you control the environment and these services. If there are audio-visual aspects happening that you don't understand then seek clarification. You must understand, manage and control these services - do not assume that providers know what you need - tell the providers what you want, and ask what you need to know.
• Ask an honest and tactful friend to listen and watch you practice. Ask for his/her comments about how you can improve, especially your body language and movement, your pace and voice, and whether everything you present and say can be easily understood. If your test-listener can't make at least half a dozen constructive suggestions then ask someone else to watch and listen and give you feedback.
• Refine your presentation, taking account of the feedback you receive, and your own judgement. Test the presentation again if there are major changes, and repeat this cycle of refinement and testing until you are satisfied.
• Produce the presentation materials and organise the equipment, and ensure you are comfortable with your method of reading from notes, cards etc.
• Practice your presentation in its refined full form. Amend and refine as necessary, and if possible have a final rehearsal in the real setting, especially if the venue/situation is strange to you.
• Take nothing for granted. Don't guess or make assumptions about anything that could influence your success. Check and double-check, and plan contingencies for anything that might go wrong.
• Plan and control the layout of the room as much as you are able. If you are a speaker at someone else's event you'll not have complete control over this, but if it's your event then take care to position yourself, your equipment and your audience and the seating plan so that it suits you and the situation. For instance, don't lay out a room theatre-style if you want people to participate in teams; use a cabaret layout instead. Use a boardroom layout (everyone around a big long table) if you want a cooperative debating approach for a group of up to 10-12 people. Consider splitting people into sub-groups if the total group size is more than 10-12 people. (See guidance on managing group sizes in the team building section.)
• Make sure, when the room/venue is prepared, that (before delegates arrive) everyone will be able to see you, and all of the visual displays (screen, whiteboard, etc).
• Make sure you understand, and if appropriate control and convey, the domestic arrangements (fire drill, catering, smoking, messages, coffee and lunch breaks etc). If you are running/starting the event, then this is your responsibility. It is also good to remind people of these arrangements when restarting after a lunch break. To build these aspects into your presentation and timings if they are required.

Delivering Presentations Successfully

• The day before your presentation  see again the notes about calming your butterflies - i.e., be prepared and rehearsed, be  confident , calm your butterflies, and overcome any fears you have.
• In the half-hour before your presentation: Relax.  If you are not relaxed then try to find a way to become so. Think about breathing slowly and deeply. Think about calming relaxing things. Smile. If despite all your preparations you remain scared, a good way to overcome your fear is just to do it. Paraphrasing the great philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.. " What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. " Remember you are not alone among presenters in having these feelings, and the audience is on your side. Remember also, the initial impact is made and audience's mood towards you is established in the first 4-7 seconds. So go for it.
• Start with your solid practised opening, and  smile .  Enjoy it.  Or look like you are enjoying it.
• Be firm, be confident and be in control; the stage is yours, and the audience is on your side.
• Introduce yourself and tell them what you're going to tell them. Tell them why you are telling them it; why it's important, and why it's you that's telling them.
• Tell the audience how long your presentation will last, and explain when in the presentation the audience is able to ask questions.
• It is generally easier to deliver and manage a presentation if you tell the audience to ask their questions at the end. For a more participative and involving presentation you can allow questions at any time, but ensure you keep firm control of your timings, and the audience.
• If your audience is more than about 30-40 people then it can become difficult to take questions during the presentation, so for large groups, and certainly, groups exceeding 100 people it's generally best to take questions at the end of the presentation.
• By the time you've done this introduction, you've established your authority, created respect and credibility, and overcome the worst of your nerves. You are probably enjoying it. If you're just giving a short presentation then by the time you've done all this you've completed a quarter of it!
• Be aware of your own  body language  and remember what advice you got from your friend on your practice run. You are the most powerful visual aid of all, so use your body movement and position well. Don't stand in front of the screen when the projector is on.
• If people talk amongst themselves just stop and look at them. Say nothing, just look. You will be amazed at the effect, and how quickly your authority increases. This silent tactic usually works with a chaotic audience too.
• If you really need to change things during the presentation then change them, and explain to the audience why you are doing it if that helps you and them.
• If you want a respite or some thinking time, asking the audience a question or involving them in an exercise takes the pressure off you, and gives you a bit of breathing space.
• Pausing is fine. A pause tends to seem like an age when you're up there presenting, but actually, the audience won't notice a pause, and will not think a pause is a mistake unless you draw attention to it. An occasional pause is perfectly fine, and very reasonably helps you to concentrate on what you're going to say next.
• Keep control. No one will question your authority when you have control, so don't give it up.
• If you don't know the answer to a question then say so and deal with it later. You have the right to defer questions until the end (on the grounds that you may well be covering it in the presentation later anyway, or just simply because you say so).
• Close positively and firmly, thank the audience, and accept plaudits graciously.

Creating presentations: Step-by-Step

This is the basic sequence of actions for creating and preparing a presentation up to the point of actually delivering the presentation to an audience:

• Define purpose
• Gather content and presentation ideas
• Structure the subject matter (sections, headings, order)
• Develop how to present it (style, elements, props, equipment)
• Prepare presentation (wording, design, materials, equipment)
• Practise and rehearsals (get feedback, refinement)
• Plan venue, control the environment
• 'Dress rehearsal' if warranted
• Relax and prepare yourself - confidence and control

And in a little more detail..

Prepare the Presentation

• What's the purpose?
• What outcomes and reactions are you seeking?

Consider the more detailed nature of:

• Subject and content, audience needs, type of presentation, equipment and venue.
• Create and gather ideas - brainstorm, mind-map, initially random, be innovative and daring.
• Materials, media, exercises, case studies, statistics, props, quotations, analogies, and participation.
• Anticipate questions, know your subject and reference points
• Decide your notes system - cue cards, sheet notes.

Create and Design the Presentation

• Plan the structure - sections, order, headings, intro/middle/close.
• Tell'em what you're gonna tell'em, tell'em, tell'em what you told'em.
• Use the ' rule of three'
• Points of interest ('spice') and activities - early impact - create a credible impression.
• Consider audience attention span and audience profile to get the language and tone right
• Build the presentation, prepare equipment, prepare materials and props, and create your prompts or notes.
• Dry-run practise timings, fall-backs/contingencies.
• Practise full presentation ('dress rehearsal'), get feedback, refine, practise and practise. Practice gives you control. Control gives you confidence. Confidence and control overcome fear.

Deliver your Presentation

• If necessary revisit your notes about how to relax. Stress can be managed, and to a small degree, it is part of the presentation experience. Butterflies are exciting and beautiful, even if they are not in perfect formation.
• You have prepared and practised, so your presentation will succeed and be enjoyable.
• The audience is on your side.
• Use a solid well-rehearsed opening, to make an immediate friendly impact.
• " Tell'em what you're gonna tell'em, tell'em, then tell'em what you told'em. "
• Use confident body language, control, firmness, and confidence, speak your audience's language, and accentuate the positive (be positive and upbeat).
• Pause when you need to and don't apologise for it - pausing is perfectly okay.
• Use audience participation where possible, be clear, calm, close powerfully and simply and gratefully, and have fun!

Related Materials

• BODY LANGUAGE THEORY, GUIDE, DE-CODER
• CLEAN LANGUAGE - DAVID GROVE QUESTIONING METHOD
• MEHRABIAN'S COMMUNICATION THEORY - VERBAL, NON-VERBAL, BODY LANGUAGE
• NEURO-LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING (NLP)
• TEAM BRIEFING PROCESS
• TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS - ERIC BERNE - EARLY THEORY
• TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS - ERIC BERNE - RECENT THEORY
• TREE SWING CARTOONS (NEW VERSIONS)