This blog post is going to cover my recommendations for how to go about preparing for and giving a presentation, presumably in front of a decent amount of people. Almost everyone feels at least a little uncomfortable getting up in front of a large group of people to give a presentation. If you see a lot of people giving presentations and you do not feel that the presenters are nervous, think about the following:
So if you feel very uncomfortable about presenting, you probably aren’t near as much uncomfortable relative to other people as you might think. Even if you happen to be pretty uncomfortable relative to others, there are still many things you can do to become more comfortable at giving presentations. We will talk about those.
You should view the presentation you are giving as a conversation with the audience. You have studied a topic that interests you and you are interested to have a conversation with others on the topic. That’s it. Let’s talk about how to prepare the PowerPoint.
Create an outline before polishing your presentation. If you try to polish first, you risk needing to throw away a lot of your work in the event that you change your mind about which points you want to make. Your outline should include
For your title slide, you want to include your name, contact information, website, talk name, event name, and date. You can create an appendix at the end of your presentation if you want to give additional information.
If you know anyone who will be in attendance, ask them what they want to get out of the presentation. This information can help you make a presentation that will do a better job covering areas that the audience might be interested in. Depending on what extent you cover these areas, this information may also help reveal what the future questions in the Q&A session are going to be.
The more uncomfortable you feel about giving the presentation, the more you should practice giving the presentation. Give your presentation out loud when you are practicing to better simulate the real environment.
You should avoid trying to memorize the presentation that you are giving. Instead, you should be able to talk freely as you are giving the presentation. The only exception to this is the first portion of your presentation. You should memorize the first 10-15 seconds of the presentation because this part is usually toughest on people’s nerves. You should also avoid putting a lot of text on the slides as that will cause people to be reading the slide instead of listening to you.
When it is closer to the day of the presentation, practice giving a presentation in the room that you will be presenting in. One reason for doing this is to make sure that you are comfortable with the technology and getting your computer screen projected on the wall. Another reason that this will give more valuable practice reps since the practice is being done in the same room that the presentation will be given in.
Show up early so you have some time to get the technology set up and can call someone if the technology isn’t working.
Around ten minutes before starting the presentation, walk down to the people in the front row and start having a conversation with them. Ask them what they want to get out of the presentation to again help reveal what might be asked in the Q&A session. Unlike when you asked this question many days ago, this time you don’t need to change your presentation to account for what they want to get out of the presentation. Changing your presentation ten minutes before giving it generally does more harm than good.
When giving the presentation, your body language should be open. You do not want to cross your arms, put your hands in your pockets, or hide behind your desk. You especially don’t want to be turning your back to the audience. You should primarily be looking into the audience and not looking at your computer screen. If you are presenting in a large auditorium, look 2/3 of the way deep and towards the center. You should also be able to walk around freely as you are presenting.
If the technology starts messing up in the middle of the presentation, do an ice breaker while the technology person is fixing the technology. Ask people where they came from or if they have any questions so far. If it has been a few minutes and the technology still hasn’t been fixed, you can communicate that you will give the presentation without the slides.
At the end of the presentation is the Q&A session. This is something many presenters are uncomfortable about because they are concerned that someone might ask a question that they don’t know how to answer. It is understandable to have this concern. In fact, it would be completely normal for anyone out there giving a presentation to receive a question they don’t know the answer to. This is part of the reason why I recommended to ask people ahead of time what they want to get out of the presentation. This gives you a few questions to go ahead and prepare for. In addition to that, you should try to brainstorm other potential questions that people might ask.
However, there is always a chance that you will get asked a question you are unsure of no matter how much you prepare and that is OK. If you get asked a question you are unsure of, you can communicate that you are unsure and can ask the audience if any of them would like to take a stab at it. Maybe someone in the audience is truly knowledgeable about the area that the question was asked in. This could start an interesting conversation between members of the audience. Asking the audience only is an option if it’s more of a general question. For example, if you are presenting on something your team did and someone asks something about your team, you probably can’t ask the audience about that unless there are team members of yours in the audience. If asking the audience doesn’t result in anyone replying or you aren’t able to ask the audience to begin with, then the last thing you can do is to communicate that you are unsure but you will research it afterwards and get back to them.
Sometimes you will get asked a complicated question that you know the answer to but it will take extremely long to explain and there is not sufficient time for the explanation. In that scenario, you can request that the person who asked the question come chat with you afterwards when the Q&A session is done and people are filing out.
We talked about how to prepare for a presentation and how to give a presentation. We briefly touched on building confidence earlier by recommending that you practice your presentation more times if you are less comfortable. This will build confidence. However, I don’t think that is enough alone. I believe that most people with no prior experience who are thrown in front of thousands of people to give a presentation would be incredibly uncomfortable, even if they practiced their presentation many times.
You can practice all you want but there is no substitute for the real thing. Some presentation skills will come through practice reps. Other presentation skills will come from doing the real thing. I believe that you have to get up there for the real thing a few times in order to fully develop your presentation skills. This means that the more presentations you give, the more comfortable you should become at giving presentations.
Suppose you have the goal of eventually becoming good at giving a presentation in front of thousands of people. Should you try to start out by giving presentations in front of thousands of people and keep doing that? Or should you start small and work your way up? I started out by giving a presentation in front of many people and it didn’t work well for me. In college, professors made me get in front of many people and talk and it made my presentation skills worse. After college, I started giving presentations in front of a small amount of people at work. After a few times of doing this, I felt pretty comfortable doing this. I then raised the number of people a little bit and kept doing that until I got comfortable. Following this pattern of gradually raising the amount of people you present in front of as you get comfortable is what you want to do.
There is one last thing you can do to make yourself feel more comfortable about giving a presentation. You can add notes in the notes section below your slide so that you can see these notes but the audience can’t. If you completely lose your train of thought in the middle of the presentation, you can look at the notes you made. Only do this as a last resort. For the most part, you should be looking at the audience and not your notes.
It is perfectly normal to feel at least a little uncomfortable about giving presentations. Almost no one is completely comfortable when they get up there to talk. You want to view the presentation as a conversation with your audience. Start by giving presentations in front of a small amount of people and gradually increase the amount of people as you get more comfortable. Practice your presentation many times before giving it so that you will feel even more confident. Avoid putting a lot of text on your slides and avoid reading from yours slides. You should primarily be looking at the audience. You should also avoid memorizing your presentation. This will all create for a more enjoyable experience for the audience. Make sure that your body language is open, not hiding or turning away from the audience. Ask others ahead of time what they want to get out of the presentation so you can see which topics you might want to include on your presentation as well as see some potential questions that might get asked in the Q&A session. You should prepare for potential questions that might come up during Q&A but don’t worry if someone asks a question you are unsure of. That is a normal occurrence for any presenter. Ask the crowd if you think someone in the crowd could possibly answer the question. Otherwise, just say you will do some research and will get back to the person later.