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Presentation Skills Course Notes – © Skills Converged Ltd.

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Course Notes

Presentation Skills

Designed by

Skills Converged

Presentation Skills Course Notes – © Skills Converged Ltd.

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Copyright © Skills Converged Ltd. 2008

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by
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supplied with this material.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organisation acting or refraining from action as a result of
the material in this publication can be accepted by the Author.
The right of Skills Converged Ltd. to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Website: www.skillsconverged.com
You can contact the Skills Converged at: [email protected]

V 1.1

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Slide 1

Presentation Skills
“There is no better than adversity.
Every defeat, every heartbreak, every
loss, contains its own seed, its own
lesson on how to improve your
performance the next time.”
Og Mandino

© Skills Converged Ltd.

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Slide 2

Agenda
9:30 Start

11:00 – 11:15 Break

1:00 – 1: 30 Lunch

3:00 – 3:15 Break

4:30 Finish

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Slide 3

What is This
Course About?
By the end of this session
you will be able to:

Deliver high-impact
presentations confidently
& systematically

Introduce yourself.

Purpose
The ability to give a good presentation is becoming a must-have skill in today’s world. You
need to know how to formulate your ideas for public consumption, know how to present so
that the audience will remember what you said and be able to relay your message to others.
The purpose of this course is to show you what makes a great presentation and prepare you
for the task.

Objective
By the end of this course you will be able to: Deliver high-impact presentations confidently &
systematically

Process
This is a full day course with variety of exercises designed to make you more familiar with
this skill. You will see how it works in theory and you get a chance to try it out yourself.

Talk about workbook. Explain that headings in the workbook match the slide headings so
delegates can easily find their way around.

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Relay Experience
Pause and ask students to introduce themselves. Ask for name, background (nature of job)
and what do they want to get out of this course.

Find out how much delegates know about presenting. Have they presented before? To how
many people? Under what contexts? How good do they think they are?

[LOOK AT WORKBOOK: Objectives]

Now get the delegates to write down their objectives.

Learn their names and use it.

“We are going to go through a number of techniques in this session and you will get to
practice your skills until you feel confident about implementing them. It is better to learn a
set of techniques well than to know a lot of techniques that you are not confident to use.
The techniques I am going to talk about are well known to work”

Relay Application
How are you planning to use your presentation skills? Where do you want to present? To
how many people? To what kind of people?

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Slide 4

What is a
Presentation
By the end of this session
you will be able to:

Identify the fundamental

parameters of a good
presentation

Purpose
In this session you will learn what makes a great presentation and become familiar with the
core areas you need to look into.

Objective
By the end of this session you will be able to: Identify the fundamental parameters of a good
presentation

Process
First we will walk through a number of guidelines on what a presentation is all about and
then you will get a chance to deliver the presentation you have prepared earlier.

Notice: As part of the pre-course assignment, delegates must have prepared a short
presentation to deliver to the class. This helps them to understand which areas they need to
focus on and how to improve them by the end of the course, when they will give another
improved presentation.

Relay Experience
N/A (Has been asked as part of the main course experience)

Relay Application

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N/A (Has been asked as part of the main course experience)

--

[ENGAGE]
What is a good presentation?
To Tutor: Start the course by asking general questions. Encourage the delegates to share
stories of the best presentations they have been to and what thought they were great.

What is a presentation?
It’s effectively a pitch. It’s your message to others, especially when you want to convince
them of something.
It comes down to two critical needs:
•What you want
•What the audience wants

Once you have identified these, you can then go on to pitch accordingly and get maximum
results.

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Slide 5

Presentation Parameters

Knowledge Audience Size

Stake Learning Types

There are a number of critical parameters that any presenter must be aware of before
presenting. You identified a few of these when you shared your experience of good
presentations. Now we want to look into them in more detail. You need to evaluate these
parameters for your own presentation to get what you really want.

Knowledge.
This is the knowledge you have or the audience has about the subject of your presentation.

How critical is this parameter and how does it affect your presentation?
You should not be too simplistic because the audience will get bored. You should not
overestimate their knowledge or you may end up including lots of jargon people don’t
understand.

You need to know what your audience knows and what they expect to receive when they
come to your presentation.

Number of people in the audience.

What are the implications of having different number of people as your audience?
You can be more interactive with small crowds. With larger crowds, you need to be more
concise and quick to the point. You can respond quickly to the needs of a small audience
and explore a narrow topic comfortably. You will not be able to do that with a large audience
as it is easy to go off topic for most of the people and they can easily get bored.

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Stake
What happens when it is absolutely critical for you to win the argument? Suppose you
want to deliver a business proposition to a CEO of another company? There is a lot at
stake. How does this affect your presentation style?
You need to know your message and your audience thoroughly inside out. This doesn’t have
to create stress for you. It just means you need to do more preparation, understand your
message, understand the need of the other party, rehearse a lot and get feedback from your
colleagues.

Learning Types.
There are different kinds of presentation. As an example, a training session may involve
presentations but it’s quite different from a normal business presentation. Give examples
of different types of presentations?
•Training
•Business/Academic Presentation
•Lecturing
•Speech

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Slide 6

Presentation Types

Business/
Training Academic
Presentation

Lecturing Speech

As you can see each one is different. What is the difference between a business
presentation and lecturing lecture?
A business presentation is more about a pitch. You want to let people know about an idea, a
report, a way forward, a product to buy, a company to invest in and so on. A lecture is more
about sharing knowledge, making sure the audience will leave the room having learned
something new which they can use in the context of their work or career.

What is the difference between a business presentation and a training presentation such
as the one you see now?
The purpose of training is to learn the skills. The focus is on ‘skill transfer’. Since the best way
to learn is by doing, training sessions are very interactive and casual. You also have small
number of people as your audience. The audience has to do a lot of self-probing in order to
improve themselves and find out for themselves what the new ideas, theories and methods
means to them and their work. Business presentation in contrast focuses on providing you
with a message. You don’t necessarily have to learn a new skill in the process.

How about speech?

Speech is usually given without slides (though this is not a requirement) and the focus of the
audience is entirely on the presenter. Engaging the audience emotionally is critical. There
can be very little interaction between the presenter and the audience and presenter will do
most of the talking.

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This was a quick introduction into what a presentation is all about. Before going into more
detail of how to design a ‘killer’ presentation and deliver it, it’s time to go through your
prepared presentations.

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Slide 7

YOUR
TURN

[TRY][DELIVERY OF PRE-ASSIGNED PRESENTATION][INDIVIDUAL]

To Tutor: Get each delegate to deliver their 5-minute presentation which they have prepared
before. Use the performance criteria and rate the delegates accordingly as they deliver.

If you wish (and the delegates are happy) you can use video recording equipment to capture
the presentations.

Explain that watching a recording of your own presentation is an incredibly effective way of
improving your style and helps you to notice small details you don’t normally notice. These
days, it’s easier than ever before to setup a camera and quickly capture a rehearsal. So use it
as much as you can.

The objective is to get the delegates to present in their normal style now and do an initial
evaluation. As they go through the course, they will be introduced to new methods and will
practice these methods using mini-exercises. At the end of the course, they need to do
another presentation having incorporated what they have learned during the course.
Through this comparison, they can see for themselves which areas they need to focus and
improve on.

Use the form [H19_Handout_PresentationPerformanceCriteria] to evaluate the delegates

while they present. All of these parameters are covered in the course. Hence, this form
captures their current state of delivery. At the end of the course, delegates provide another

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delivery which is evaluated as well using the same form. Feedback can be given based on
both forms.

---
Achievement
By the end of this session you will be able to: Identify the fundamental parameters of a good
presentation

Have we achieved this?

Relay Application Confirmed

How confident do you feel now about dealing with clients? What strategy would you use to
deal with clients from now on?

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Slide 8

Approach

By the end of this session

you will be able to:

Engage your audience and

get their fullest attention

Purpose
As you know a good presentation is all about engaging the audience. The question is how
you engage them. In this session you will explore a number of ways to increase the impact of
your presentation and become familiar with the correct approach to follow for a given
presentation. So, the true purpose of this session is to see which areas you need to pay
attention to so when it comes to preparing your presentation you know where to spend
most of your efforts.

Objective
By the end of this session you will be able to: Engage your audience and get their fullest
attention

Process
First you will become familiar with the correct approach and then you get a chance to
practice these techniques.

Relay Experience
Are you good at engaging the audience? Can you captivate them? Do you find it difficult?

Relay Application
How important is it to be able to get the total attention of the audience?

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--

What’s the best way to get the attention of an audience you are presenting to?
By appealing to them emotionally. And by making them laugh, or cry or care about the story.
The more they care, the more receptive they will be.

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Slide 9

How can you use laughter in a presentation? Is it any good?

It is an absolute must.

Consider this image. How to you feel when you look at. It is as if it unconsciously make you
feel happy. Laughter is contagious, so use it as much as you can.

What are the benefits of a laughter?

It relaxes people. They feel they are entertained as well as educated and informed.

Studies show that we become more creative when elated. A simple laughter before solving a
puzzle can enhance your creativity. As a presenter, you can take advantage of this human
quality. Before going through a difficult part of the presentation that may require the
delegates to think hard, simply tell a joke. This will make the environment much more
relaxed and keeps the audience awake and interested. You can then safely enter the difficult
domain.

What happens when the audience is bored?

They will be waiting for the end. They will not take anything in.

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Slide 10

How about being an expert? Do people go to presentations to get information they can't
get any other way?
No. That era is gone. People no longer need the expert to share their knowledge through the
presentation. A lot of content, facts and data are now available and there has been a
democratisation of knowledge. The presenter's role is no longer about transfer of data, but
more about telling you the story.

So now that we have established it is about telling stories, we need to explore the qualities
of these stories and find out how best to tell them.

[ENGAGE]
First here is a question. If you want to compare the making of a presentation with anther
artistic activity, what would be the closest? Hint: Is it report writing, drawing, movie
making …?
To Tutor: Try to get some answers to see how delegates compare the process of making a
presentation with other types of media.

How about the similarity to making documentaries?

Making a presentation is very similar to making a documentary.

Why is this?

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A documentary has a main message. There is a lot of media that you need to put together to
support that message. You have a goal and you want to convince your viewers of your
message or get them to see something they haven't seen before. Similarly you can borrow
from the movie industry; include actions, suspense, curiosity and engage them with exciting
content, humour and so on.

It is important to notice that whatever making a presentation is about, it is not about

converting a report into some other format and feeding it to the audience. A presentation is
not a report summary.

A presentation is like a big story that you unfold as you go on. Of course, you can also
include min-stories during your presentation to support your message. Whatever type you
use, these stories must have certain qualities to be engaging.

[ENGAGE][FLIPCHART]
What do you think are qualities of making a great story?
To Tutor: Get the delegates to suggest what they think makes a good story. Write the main
concepts suggested on the flipchart.

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Slide 11

What Make’s a Great Story

Simple Conclusive

Credible Unexpected

Emotional Sticky/Viral

To Tutor: Now go through these qualities and explore them one at a time especially if they
have not been mentioned already.

Simple
What about simplicity? Does it help? Why?
The story should be easy to grasp, understand and communicate with others. Imagine if you
tell a mini-story to extend a particular topic, but that story lasts a long time or that it has so
much detail that you effectively go off-topic. The audience will be wondering what you are
up to.

What happens if the story doesn’t have a conclusion?

It’s a waste of time. People wouldn’t understand what you are getting at. Don’t leave it to
the audience to guess what you want from them. Go ahead and ask. Tell them exactly what
you want, explain your core message and what you expect from them. As the saying is, don’t
expect your audience to think. You must do all the thinking.

How about credibility of your message? What happens if you don’t sound credible?
People will quickly lose interest in something that doesn’t sound credible. Conspiracy
theories are a prime example. If you message is that I have met an alien, many people may
lose interest in your message there and then and might think that listening to you (beyond a
curiosity) is just a waste of time. Of course this is not to say the alien-lovers are at fault. It’s
just that if your idea doesn’t have much credibility or you don’t have much ‘evidence’ then
you won’t move forward in your presentation as smoothly as you like.

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What’s the effect of a surprise story or something unexpected?

As long as the unexpectedness is not bad it is a great way to keep the attention of the
audience. Of course you don’t want to shock them. You can use unorthodox methods of
presentation. For example, a brain surgeon brought a ‘real brain’ to a presentation about her
brain stroke experience! That certainly got the attention of the audience!

How about appealing to emotions?

As explained earlier, make the stories emotional so that they are received more
enthusiastically and remembered for much longer. Emotions such as laughter, sadness,
anger, jealousy and so on can all be effective if used in the right context and of course in
moderation.

[ENGAGE]
Every presenter wants their ideas to spread. After all you most probably benefit if more
and more people know about your story. The question is what are the qualities of a story
that make it viral? What is required to be present in a story so that when your audience
hears it, they would go on to tell others about it?
To Tutor: Expect a nice discussion from the delegates and explore their solutions. Finally
move to the next slide to show the core qualities.

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Slide 12

Understand
Spread It It

Benefit Minimal
SEND Effort

The topic was beautifully explored by Seth Godin with his famous blog post. Here are the
qualities of a viral message:

No one sends an idea unless:

•They understand it
•They want it to spread
•They believe that spreading it will enhance their power (reputation, income, friendships) or
their peace of mind
•The effort necessary to send the idea is less than the benefits

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Slide 13

Curiosity Respect
Sender

Familiarity
RECEIVE

No one gets an idea unless:

•The first impression demands further investigation
•They already understand the foundation ideas necessary to get the new idea
•They trust or respect the sender enough to invest the time

One of the best ways to learn is to learn by example. Try:

•Steve Job presentation available on: www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/appleevents
•TED talks available all online at: www.ted.com

Watch documentaries and learn about the pace and the type of visuals used to enhance the
voice over. There are many lessons to learn here.

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Slide 14

How to Make a Story

Objectives and goals

Execution

Sketch

Pace

Humour

Pause

Pattern

You need to treat your presentation as one big story, so when it comes to preparing this
story, a systematic approach will greatly help you. Now that you have become familiar with
the principles behind a good story, let’s see what steps you need to take to make it. Here is
how it works …

To Tutor: Now go through the stages in the slide and then explain each concept.

Identify your objectives and goals. Understand your conclusion. (More details on this are
presented in the next section).

Think of the story you want to tell and how you want to execute it.

Sketch this story on paper. This is similar to storyboarding of a documentary or a movie.

Examine the story for pace. As any movie editor will tell you, no matter how much visual
goodies you have in the movie or even a great story, an inappropriate pace can completely
ruin the experience. Make sure the audience is not exhausted due to the sheer amount of
information given at certain parts, or bore them because you have lingered too long on a
narrow topic.

Add humour. Go back to the storyboard and add humour periodically and systematically to
the story. For example, insert a joke, funny remark or an amusing story every 3 minutes. The

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pros do this all the time. For example, this approach was used by Steven Spielberg when he
was making Indiana Jones movies. He made sure that there was a joke or an entertaining
event every few minutes in the story as it unfolded. He simply inserted a series of red sticker
notes into the script binder which represented where the humour should take place in the
story. The humour will keep the audience engaged and entertained and can make your
message a lot more viral.

Use pause systematically. If you have any interactive sessions that are mentally engaging,
make sure you add some lighter content afterwards so that the audience can have a pause.
This will also make the next challenging content easier to deliver as the audience would be
more comfortable to receive it.

Create a Pattern. Provide facts, logic and emotional stories bit by bit throughout the
presentation to lead the audience to discover the solution or the message you are getting at
on their own. If the audience participates in the production of the solution (even mentally
rather than interactively) they will be more likely to accept it and relay it to others. Many
presenters fail to take advantage of this powerful technique and go on to explain exactly
what they think is the smart solution and try very hard to convince the audience of their
ideas potentially stepping on people’s ego in the process.

[PRACTICE: SKETCH THE STORY][[PAIR OR INDIVIDUAL]

Delegates can choose the same subject they chose for their pre-course assignment or they
can choose a new subject. This subject will be used throughout the course as you walk
through different steps of preparing a presentation and finally you will deliver a complete
one at the end of the day.

In addition, there are two possible options: If delegates are from different backgrounds, they
can work on their own. If the delegates are from the same company or organisation, they
can work in pairs during the course to prepare a presentation. At the end, each will have to
deliver a presentation based on what they have made. This allows the group to see the
differences between deliveries better when the content stays the same but the delivery
method changes. Whatever the choice, delegates must use that choice for the entire
subsequent practical in this course.

For this exercise, get the delegates to improve the stories they told in their opening
presentations. This time paying a great attention to all components:
•Identify objectives
•Identify conclusion
•Add humour – include a joke or something that make people laugh
•Check pace
•Include a pause, to make sure people have followed you

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•Check pattern

Now sketch the story so you can visualise it.

To Tutor: Delegates can use a free flow sketch storyboarding is not discussed yet. This helps
the delegates to visualise what they are about to say which makes them remember it much
better.

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Slide 15

Increasing Impact
Perspective

Credibility

Passion

Why should they listen to you

Don’t think it’s simple

Familiarity breeds contempt

Having gone through the practical to make a story, you must hopefully feel more confident
about it. At the end of the day, you want to increase the impact of your story. We are now
going to explore a number of areas that can increase the effectiveness of your message.

Perspective: Look at it from their point of view. Stand out from the competition by
presenting the content in a novel way. Always ask yourself, if I was in the audience, would I
be impressed by what I was hearing.

How can you put yourself in their position?

By knowing your audience

Establish credibility. As you saw earlier, credibility can create interest and attention. The
more credible your argument, the more impact you have.

How can you establish credibility?

Either by providing credible data and logical argument, reputation or referencing other
reputable sources

Add Interest. Make it interesting by casting your content to the world of your audience.
Many presenters make the following mistake; they think since they are passionate about the
content, so is everyone else.

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How can you create passion in the audience?

Show your passion. Don’t hold back. Be animated and enthusiastic. Move your hands , walk
around, use a tone that sounds excited not bored and monotone. Don’t sound like a person
who has to go through this presentation but doesn’t really want to.

Explain what will happen and why they should listen to you. You should always explain the
process you go through and keep the audience informed of what’s about to happen next or
what are you getting at. Effectively you want to keep them in the loop. This will also help you
to be aware of the audience in your mind at all times and respond to their needs.

Show that it is in their interest to listen and that they will benefit from what you will say.
Make the audience care about what you are going to say. By increasing their interest you will
have a higher chance of convincing them. For example, always explain the challenges first
followed by previous failed solutions before explaining your latest finds. By showing the
problem that needs to be solved and how challenging it can be, you will make the audience
more interested in your potential solution. This way, once you explain your solution, you are
more likely to get a satisfying “Aha”.

It’s not that simple. Many presenters are deeply familiar with their content. This familiarity
means that they start to assume that the content is simple or obvious. For many people,
who might be coming from different fields, this might not be the case. Again, this means you
need to place yourself in the position of your audience to understand what their needs are.
Another problem is that if you think that your content is simple, your tone will change and
you may not appear as enthusiastic, when realistically you should have been quite engaging
and excited.

[ENGAGE]
Have you had this experience before that you presented some content which seemed
quite simple to you but was received with enthusiasm by your audience?

Familiarity breeds contempt. There is a lot in this famous English idiom. Research shows
that the more we know about other people, the more likely that we start disliking them (of
course, apart from few exceptions that end up as our partners or our friends). The same
applies to giving presentations. The more detail the audience is exposed to in your talk, the
more likely that they will find faults with it. To stay high, keep it concise. Make your point
and move on. Don’t hang around or you will risk giving more information than necessary and
some people in the audience may start to think that they don’t like what they are hearing.

How can you keep it concise?

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First of all most talks are not that long, so keeping it to the point should not be difficult for
most people. Either way, if a topic deserves 1 minute and you allocate 3 minutes, you risk
boring people with it. So, what you need to do is add enough topics and subtopics to make
each section concise.

The trick is very simple. For any topic, just ask yourself how can I cut it so it take only 70% of
the time. No matter what the topic, you can always get rid of unnecessary explanation. The
mere asking will help you through. The problem is very similar when you want to shorten a
paragraph or a title of an article. If you think hard enough you can always find a shorter and
more concise version that captures the essence of the content pretty well.

[ENGAGE]
Do you have any experience in interactive presentations? What do you think of them?
To Tutor: Ask the audience about their previous experiences (as a listener) in the past and
how interactive content might have felt entertaining and memorable. They need to use
similar approaches in their presentations. Ask for examples so everyone can get some ideas
for their own presentation and also understand the range of possibilities.

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Slide 16

Features vs. Benefits

•Burn a full disk in

less than 5 minutes
•Store 10 DVDs in
•Throughput = 500Mb/s one disk
•Records on 4 layers •Low impact on
•Uses laser power, saves energy
•Power = 30W and reduces noise

Which one is better to explain, features or benefits?

Benefits is what you really want, though many still go for features. Here you need to
understand your audience and cast those features to benefits for them. The difference can
be illustrated with this simple example:

Features:
“You can explain that the latest Blue-Ray player your company has produced has a
throughput of 500Mb/s and that it records on 4 layers with the laser and the device uses
only 30W.”

Even if the audience is technically familiar with the content, this type of presentation may
not necessarily have the same impact as saying what the benefits of these features are.

To Tutor: Now show the benefits

Benefits:
“The high throughput lets you burn a full disk in less than 5 minutes; that the capacity lets
you store an equivalent of 10 DVDs and the low power consumption means you save energy
and as a result you can choose a low-power, noise-less power supply.”

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---
Achievement
By the end of this session you will be able to: Engage your audience and get their fullest
attention

Have we achieved this?

Relay Application Confirmed

Where would you use good story telling techniques?

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Slide 17

TEA BREAK

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Slide 18

Preparation

By the end of this session

you will be able to:

Prepare your story,

understand what you want
to show and record it

Purpose
In this session you will learn how to start preparing your content. This is before you actually
go on to make your slides and notes. First you want to formulate your message and prepare
your pitch before you move on to add details and style it.

Objective
By the end of this session you will be able to: Prepare your story, understand what you want
to show and record it

Process
You will be shown which step to take to prepare for a presentation and will go through a
number of exercises to make a storyboard for your presentations.

Relay Experience
What are your current methods when preparing for a presentation? What steps do you go
through? Do you use paper or software? Do you start writing directly into Power Point?

Relay Application
How critical is the preparation phase? What should it contain?

[ENGAGE]

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To Tutor: Try to get the delegates to state what preparation steps are required. Collect and
compare to the following set of questions raised in the next slides. If there are many steps
suggested, capture them on the flipchart and then focus on those areas that were not
covered.

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Slide 19

Audience Objective

Environment

Remember, a presentation is a pitch. You need to start with your objective and decide what
is it you want your audience to take. Of course your environment is also a key factor in your
decision making process.

There are a number of questions to ask when addressing these three areas. You need to ask
yourself the following questions...

To Tutor: Walk through the following slides quickly as they are self explanatory. Explain that
these questions are included in the workbook and there will be a practical later that
addresses these questions. Hence, the bullet points are there as a representation of the
questions they need to address.

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Slide 20

Presentation Objective
 What is the pitch about?
 Why was I asked to speak?
 What do I want them to do?
 What is the fundamental purpose of my
talk?
• Why should I care to listen to you?
• Is your message going to help me?

To Tutor: Explore the questions in relation with identifying the objective.

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Slide 21

Environment
 How much time do I have?
 What's the venue like?
 What time of the day?
 What type of equipment is available?
 How much area do I have?
 Do I have a data projector?
 How large is the screen?
 Most appropriate visual medium?

The environment also plays a key role in the form of your delivery and your presentation.
One of the most critical aspects of the environment is the time available for the
presentation. The rest are also quite important and can have significant impact on your
style.

To Tutor: Walk through the questions.

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Slide 22

Audience
 Who is the audience?
 What's their background?
 What do they expect from me?
 How familiar are they with my field?
 How familiar are they with what I am
about to present?
 What’s their level?
 What would impress them?
 What would make them excited?

As you say earlier, you always need to consider your audience closely. It is absolutely critical
to know what they want.

To Tutor: Walk through the questions.

--

Now that you have seen these questions, what are the benefits of answering them?
It helps you understand exactly what you want to say, but more importantly you can become
much more concise since you are forced to look at it from their point of view. You want to
consider the limitation of your environment and to continuously focus on your message.

The entire exercise lets you to come up with a short pitch which allows you past the ultimate
test. You may wonder what this ultimate test is. Here is how this it works… (Next slide)

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Slide 23

45 seconds

The Test is called the Lift Test (otherwise known as the Elevator Test depending on where
you live).

Effectively you need to be able to give a pitch of your presentation during a lift ride to an
interested person. This is about 30 to 45 seconds long. Knowing how to summarise your
entire message into a short time will get you ready to quickly and efficiently present your
message to the other person who can in turn relay it for you afterwards.

You can use this pitch at the beginning and at the end of your presentation to emphasise
your message and make sure that the audience has understood exactly what you wanted to
say.

Of course you need to practice this message several times. Casually go to your colleagues
and explain that you are going to give a presentation. If they ask what it is about, give the
Lift Pitch. Observe to see what they ask and if they got confused or they felt it was too long.
Then go back and adjust your pitch. Because the pitch is so short you can easily rehearse it
10 times until you have unconsciously memorised it.

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Slide 24

What you need to produce

Slides
Notes/ Handouts
Script

Auxiliary
Content

Before you see the best methods to use to produce the content, let’s see what you need to
prepare. Here are the materials you need to prepare for your presentation.

Slides
Slides are the most obvious which everybody is familiar with.

Notes/Scripts
[ENGAGE]
Do you produce notes? Do you use your notes during your presentations?

Notes are just as important, though many people skip this step. The real benefit of writing
notes is that it focuses your mind and gets you to think of what you want to say.

Writing is very effective in memorisation. This process will prepare you for the presentation.
Eventually, you don’t even have to use your notes during the presentation. So remember,
notes are not there to be read from, they are there to prepare you for the presentation.

If you have to talk about data or numbers, always try to have some notes handy. People will
be much more impressed and would think the data is more credible if you read it from notes
than saying it from memory. After all, everyone knows how easy it is to mix numbers up.

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Handouts
[ENGAGE]
What is the best format for the handouts?

Have you seen presenters giving screenshot of the slides as handouts? Do you think this is
effective?
Many presenters just give slides as handouts. This is not really effective. It has two problems.
• It encourages the presenter to include a summary of their report or the presentation as
bullet points so that the handout can be more meaningful. This is not good since you will
end up with a lot of text on the screen.
• Even slides full of bullet points are not a good description or have enough details to
describe your topics. A few weeks later, no one can understand what you mean by 5
words in a slide.

What is the true purpose of handouts?

To extend the talk and give details that you can skip over. The audience is assured that your
message can be supported with the data they have in their hands and they can focus on
your presentation instead.

Auxiliary Content:
Of course extra material such as the following can greatly help your presentation and bring it
to life.
•Videos
•Animations
•Live demos
•Third party live performance or role plays
•Live video links

[ENGAGE]
Can you think of any other novel methods?
To Tutor: Get the delegates to share their experiences, both as an educational exercise and
also as entertainment.

--

You have seen what content you need. The question is how you are going to put them
together. Is there a method you can use in preparation to facilitate the process while keep
you creative and energised? Fortunately there is an elegant method to use for this process.
The method is known as mind mapping.

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[ENGAGE][FLIPCHART]
Who is familiar with mind mapping?
To Tutor: Based on the responses explain the mind mapping technique. If most delegates are
not familiar, then draw a mind map for a particular topic from scratch on the white board or
flipchart. It is critical for them to see the process of expanding the mind map gradually one
step at a time in order to gain a better understanding of the concept of mind mapping.

Note: If you are not familiar with Mind Mapping, use the Recommended Readings to learn
about it. It’s a simple yet powerful concept that can greatly benefit you (as you prepare for
your courses) as well as being beneficial for your delegates. Mind mapping is extensively
covered in other courses produced by Skills Converged, along with slides, workbook and
exercises which can be used as a module in this course. Consult the website
www.skillsconverged.com for details.

Once mind maps are explored, show the next slide which is a pre-made mind map which can
be used to prepare a presentation...

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Slide 25

You can use a mind map as a repository of questions you need to answer to prepare for a
presentation. You can cluster them like this and then expand the map as necessary.

Mind maps start to show their great power when you use mind map software. There are
many different kinds of mind map software with different capabilities available on the
market. Search for mind maps in Wikipedia for more details.

You can use mind mapping software to add notes, screenshots of ideas, documents, links,
files, excel sheets, images, icons, etc. as you collect more and more content and ideas. An
example is shown in the next slide…

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Slide 26

You can use a mind map as the place you dump all of your ideas, resources, links, texts,
reports and so on. You can then quickly put them together in the final format when you get
to that stage.

[PRACTICAL][PAIR OR INDIVIDUAL][GIVE FLIPCHART][LOOK AT WORKBOOK: Presentation

Objectives]
To Tutor: Give delegates flipcharts and ask them to go through the workbook and mind map
the questions. They should answer these questions for their own presentation. If delegates
are working in pairs, get them to discuss and share their understanding.

They should pitch their presentation to the current group, so they can answer the questions
based on the current environment of the course. They should consider other delegates as
their audience.

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Slide 27

REPORT MOVIE

Introduction Action Opening

Character Build-up
Body Story/Climax
Data/Experiment
Happy Ending

Conclusion Cliff-hanger

Content Design Process:

Once you have identified your content and mind mapped it, it is time to start putting more
details into it and shape it into a presentation.

As an analogy you can see the structure of a report on the left and a movie on the right. A
presentation borrows from both and is closer to a movie. You need to focus on all aspects of
the content. The question is where to start from.

Should you start from the beginning and go all the way to the end?
No.

What should you start with? Why?

Start with conclusion and your summary. This focuses you on your message and you will be
more to the point as you put your content together. Once you know what you want to say, it
is easier to find supporting arguments or data. It makes you concise.

Use the simple analogy with the movie industry and think of your presentation as a movie.
No director would ever film a movie based on when a scene is shown in the movie. Instead,
there is a whole cast of other parameters, like similarity of scenes, difficulty, criticality,
availability of actors and so on that defines the process. Much like in the movies, you should

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start with the most critical parts and put your energy where it matters most. The slides
which are there to support the main message can always be designed later when the core
message is well-defined and you can see where you are going.

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Slide 28

Storyboarding

The next step in fleshing out your content BEFORE going on slide design is to get a bunch of
papers and start drawing.

Storyboarding is a great artistic activity and gets you to become more creative. The creativity
leads to excitement which in turn leads you to produce truly ‘cool’ content that the audience
will love to see.

The process of storyboarding is very similar to storyboards made in movies. Effectively you
want to design what should be included in your slides. Using pen and paper lets you to
detach yourself from the technology of the delivery and instead focus on the message and
the potential visuals. You can then go back and ad details as you see fit. This is a much more
productive approach since it stops you getting carried away with the software tools and
instead gets you to focus on the bottom line.

However, there are exceptions. As you become really familiar with your authoring tool, you
can start using it directly. You can only do this when you are so familiar with the tool that the
tool has become an extension of yourself. In this case, the tool can make you a lot more
productive and creative.

To Tutor: Walk through the samples so the delegates can get a feel for the potential story
boards they need to create.

[PRACTICE: 2-MINUTE STORY-TELLING PRESENTATION][INDIVIDUAL]

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To Tutor: The objective of this exercise is for delegates to prepare a presentation that they
would deliver to the group. The presentation should last only 2 minutes. There are no slides
to show. They just need to focus on the content and present it verbally. Each delegate must
stand by the white board / screen and deliver just like a normal presenter. At the end, the
group and the tutor can comment on the effectiveness of the presentation.

Delegates should be given some time to practice or rehearse, 15 to 30 minutes is ideal.

Delegates are allowed to use storyboarding if they prefer, though this is not required. This is
just an exercise for storytelling. Slide design is covered in the next section and delegates will
get a chance to do a proper story boarding based on those ideas later on.

Delegates are allowed to look at their notes during their presentations (since they may not
have enough time to do many rehearsals or the environment may not be suitable for
everyone). However, they are encouraged not to read verbatim form a note while
presenting, which defies the point. Instead, if they want to use notes, they should write
keywords on a paper so that they are reminded of what to say.

To Tutor: You can use APPROACH and GENERAL PRESENTATION sections of the form
[H19_Handout_PresentationPerformanceCriteria] to evaluate the delegates for this short
presentation. Ask the delegates to pay attention to these criteria before they present.

---
Achievement
By the end of this session you will be able to: Prepare your story, understand what you want
to show and record it

Have we achieved this?

Relay Application Confirmed

How confident are you in preparing your content? How do you plan to use these techniques
when preparing your presentation?

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Slide 29

LUNCH
BREAK

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Slide 30

Structure

By the end of this session

you will be able to:

Design high-impact slides

that deliver your message
efficiently

Purpose
A large part of a presentation is what the audience sees on screen. Well-designed slides can
greatly amplify your presentation and have a long lasting effect on the psyche of the
audience. In this section, you will be introduced to a set of core principles to design “killer
slides”.

Objective
By the end of this session you will be able to: Design high-impact slides that deliver your
message efficiently

Process
In this session, you will get to see many examples of good and bad slides and you can see for
yourself what works better and what doesn’t. Then you will be given a chance to practice
what you have learned.

It is better if you simply close your workbooks before we go through the following slides.
You can then provide solutions to problems on your own without getting help from the
workbook. At the end of the session you can then get back to the workbook. Of course you
are free to take notes as usual.

Relay Experience

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What is your current experience and views on slide design? What is your ideal visual content
that you have seen delivered by other presenters? What makes a great visual presentation?

Relay Application
How critical is it to have a good slide design? How applicable is this to your own style of
presentation? How much would you need this in the future?

Since Power Point is almost the industry standard for presentation software, we will focus on
this though the general content we go through is applicable to any slide or visual designer.

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Slide 31

What should you start working

on first?

CONCLUSION
FIRST!

What should you start working on first?

The conclusion.

As stated before, you should always start with your conclusion which focuses you on the
bottom line. When it comes to slide design you should do the same. Remember, you can
always change the conclusion later on as you add more details to you presentation. The
objective is to always have some form of a conclusion in your mind.

What’s next?
It’s introduction. This sets the tone of your presentation and is critical to get right so the
audience doesn't get bored. Again you need to spend your energy here first. There is no
point to lose the audience and hope they will see your cool content 45 minutes later into the
presentation.

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Slide 32

Agenda:
In some presentations you need to show an agenda, either to say what’s about to happen
or show timing. How is this usually shown?
Most people simply put the titles up and explain.

Is it not better if you show images as opposed to titles, much like in a movie?
Images are a lot more effective.

To Tutor: Now show the two image comparisons for agenda.

[ENGAGE]
Which one is more effective?

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Slide 33

Knowledge Density

Too much knowledge can overwhelm. There is only so much an average person can absorb
in 30 minutes AND remember it later on. You need to control the amount of information you
throw at your audience in two ways; by your slide design and by your pace.

To Tutor: Now show the image with the high density content.

What do you think of this image?

It has too much text and content. You just don’t know what to look at first.

What happens if you put too much content on your slides?

•People will have difficulty understanding it
•They may confuse the core message with unnecessary details.

How about Logos? Is it really necessary to have your logo on every page?
Having logos on every page clutters the slide and is a waste of pixels!

How about adding the title of the report to every slide?

It’s not necessary and again adds to clutter.

How about adding the date to every slide?

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Absolutely not necessary, because slides are not the place where people like to find the time
nor has time of delivery got anything to do with the message. Some presenters mention the
date on the first page of their slides. This is more a note to the presenter than some
information for the audience. As always, if something is not for the audience, it should not
appear on the slide.

[ENGAGE]
How can you improve this?
To Tutor: Ask for inputs and then show the next slide as potential solutions.

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Slide 34

[ENGAGE]
How does this feel? What has changed?
To Tutor: Ask for inputs and emphasise the clean less wordy design. See if delegates have
ideas on improving this any further. Mention that there is no ideal solution and if you spend
a lot more time you may get ‘cooler’ results. Of course, in the real world you may not have
that luxury. So what you really want to achieve is a simple elegant design that looks
professional but one that you don’t have to spend a lot of time on.

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Slide 35

Charts

Consider the following two charts. Which one is better?

The simplified version is easier to grasp. The detail on the other chart is not all that
necessary and can be placed in the handouts.

As you saw earlier, pace is a critical factor in the design of your presentation and you can
set the correct pace using the right mixture of your slides. On the outset you need to
continuously pay attention to pace. Cut ruthlessly. No content is sacred. If it doesn’t
support your main message, it must go.

What should you do if after finishing designing your slides, you realise there is too much
content?
You need to set the correct pace by cutting. This is quite critical especially when you have
finished designing your slides. If a slide doesn’t fit in with other contents or is unnecessary,
don’t be afraid to cut it out.

This can be hard. But, what’s the best analogy here?

The movie industry is a good example. A director will cut the movie even though money has
been spend on set design, actors time and even especial effect to make sure that the movie
will have the right pace.

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So in short, you need to control the overall pace of your presentation and the amount of
information you put into it as a whole. There is only so much information one can take in a
given time.

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Slide 36

Simplicity

Bullet points can be lethal. Why? How can you improve them?
Text is not appealing. Images are more interesting and therefore easier to remember.

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Slide 37

Title Simplicity

Consider this example of a title. What’s wrong?

Too long.

How can you improve it?

Use fewer words and bigger more prominent font.

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Slide 38

Fresh Fish Sold Here

[STORY]
To Tutor: Explain the fish story as you walk through the following slides.

The famous Indian Fish Story comes to mind (source: PresentationZen).

An Indian man setup a fish store and put a sign up: “Fresh fish sold here”. His father told him
it is not necessary to have ‘here’, it’s obvious. So the sign was reduced to “Fresh Fish Sold”.
Next, his brother told him that he should remove “sold”, because what else would you do
with the fish! So now it read “Fresh Fish”. Next the neighbour said that, ”Everyone can tell
the fish is fresh”. The sign was now reduced to “Fish”. Next his sister told him that everyone
can tell it is fish you selling because you can smell it from a long way away.

What’s the moral of the story...?

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Slide 39

Fresh Fish Sold Here

It’s not
necessary to
have “here”
FATHER

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Slide 40

Fresh Fish Sold

Of course the
fish is sold,
remove “sold”
BROTHER

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Slide 41

Fresh Fish

Everyone can tell

the fish is fresh,
remove “fresh”
NEIGHBOUR

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Slide 42

Fish

Of course you are

selling fish, you can
smell it from miles
away
SISTER

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Slide 43

“Death By Power Point”

If you don’t want to ‘kill’ your audience by power point, you need to follow a number of
guidelines. The problem is that the software lets you to be very flexible. The problem with
that flexibility and range of available features is that people end up using a lot more than
what they should. A minimal approach is always better simply because there is only so much
information humans can take in. If you saturate them you will lose them.

The following guidelines help you to make better Power Point presentations.

RULE: Don't use transitions, fades, etc. between slides. These are simply distracting and do
not serve your message.

The only exception is if you don’t want to show certain content before you have prepared
the audience for it. Some components can then be shown with transitions and animations
and explained accordingly. Use basic non-fancy types, like fade or simple entrance. Don’t use
dancing character effects that take 15 seconds to play!

To Tutor: Show transition effect and demonstrate why it is bad. It is slightly exaggerated to
illustrate the point.

Similarly,

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RULE: Don’t use flashy backgrounds with moving or changing components. Again they
distract a lot and take the attention away from the main message.

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Slide 44

Underwater World
 The underwater world is a physically
harsh environment
 Communication underwater is slow and
dependent on water characteristics
 Salinity profiles cause channelling
 Positioning is inaccurate or unavailable
 Pressure, salt water and darkness are
major problems in deep water

RULE: Don’t use colourful backgrounds for your slides.

People can have difficulty with contrast. The more content you have on screen, the more
processing is required by the brain which can eventually tire the brain. It is also much more
difficult to remember the message simply because there is a lot more information on it.

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Slide 45

 LCD stands for Liquid Cristal Display

 LCD manufacturing is a multi-billion
dollar industry
 LCD technology is considered superior
to plasma technology
 LCD displays can have much higher
colour contrast
 LCD displays last longer than Plasma
screens

RULE: Don’t use gradients too much, especially not on text. It makes reading text difficult.

Studies show that the easiest contrast for our eyes is to read dark text over white
background. We can spot the shapes straight away and read the text without tiring our eyes.
Try to take advantage of this.

Power Point 2007 gives you a lot of cool features in particular on gradients, but remember,
you don't have to use them all the time. No one will complain!

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Slide 46

Big FONTS

[ENGAGE]
How about large fonts? Are they any good?

RULE: Use large fonts for clarity.

To Tutor: Explain that the larger fonts are easier to read while listening to the speaker and
are more memorable. The minimal look also magnifies your delivery.

Notice, the percentages aren’t even shown on the pie chart. Because it’s obvious which is
which and the information only clutters the image rather than adding any value. As always
try to keep it clean.

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Slide 47

Use Images

A great approach is to continuously use visual content. Rather than having words on display
all the time, try to show images, videos and animations which will have a higher impact and
are more memorable. You don’t want to have more that 6-7 words on screen. The image is
there to support your message. The populariser of this method is probably Seth Godin, so
look into his talk for inspiration.

To Tutor: Show the image example and illustrate.

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Slide 48

2D vs. 3D

We are now going through a number of principles you can use to improve your slides.

If used properly 3D visuals are a fantastic blessing. You can demonstrate complex concepts
with them easily, much better than a 2D graph. Some examples are shown in the following
slides.

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Slide 49

CAMERA IMAGE

An example of a 3D versus 2D perspective shown in the context of a presentation on the

subject matter (here it is a landscape).

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Slide 50

Another example of a 3D structure.

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Slide 51

3D
Charts

What do you think of this kind of use for 3D?

The 3D makes it very difficult to read the data and we have to look hard to figure out what’s
going on.

Now look at the improved version. The graph still looks stylish (if that’s what the original
intention was) but it’s also equally very readable. You want to get the best of both worlds
and there is no reason why you should not be able to do that.

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Slide 52

You can use comparison images, like “Then” and “Now”. Side by side they can be quite
powerful.

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Slide 53

Quotes

Quotes can be very powerful. The first example is not too bad, but it doesn't strike you as
much. How can you improve it?

Show improved version and explain that a larger font and larger images used as background
can be more captivating.

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Slide 54

Consistency

Use consistent themes or a visual style throughout the presentation for consistency.

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Slide 55

Empty Space

Use empty space as part of your slide design. Don’t be afraid to leave large parts empty.
Example is shown here and in the next slide.

What is the effect of an empty area on the rest of the content in the slide?
The empty part helps to emphasise the other content. So it can be treated as an active
content in support of other content.

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Slide 56

Empty Space

Here is another example. The energy and excitement radiate from the image. Time to
celebrate indeed!

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Slide 57

Contrast

Correct contrast can greatly help the image quality.

Compare these two slides. Which one is easier to read?

The one which has a better contrast between the text and the background is easier to read.
Contrast between colours can greatly help the visual style and assist the audience to
remember the image better.

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Slide 58

Use Movies/Animations

[ENGAGE]
How often do you use videos or animations in your presentations? How useful are they?
How does the audience respond to them usually?
To Tutor: get the delegates to share their views on this.

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Slide 59

Placement

Placement of components on the slides can also greatly impact your style. Consider these
slides. Notice the difference as the layout, placement and the font size change and how that
influences the style of the presentations. Examples are shown here and in the next slides.

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Slide 60

Placement

Another example similar to what you saw earlier, except with the addition of a background
which dictates the placement of other components.

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Slide 61

[ENGAGE]
Consider this image. What do you think of it?

To Tutor: Ask for suggestions from the delegates to see how they want to improve it.

It’s not bad, but not that striking. Use the following technique to improve this.
In this image, everything is centred. It is symmetrical, but how can it be improved?

By shifting to the side, you can emphasise various components of the image. You can use
standard photography principles by dividing your screen to three sections and place the
critical components at these intersections.

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Slide 62

This is how you divide a blank screen.

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Slide 63

Now place your main image (e.g. the bike) on the intersection.

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Slide 64

You can put your text next to intersection as well. In this case, it is placed diagonally
opposite to the bike which will be shown in the background.

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Slide 65

And here is when everything is put together.

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Slide 66

... And the final image...

[PRACTICE][E32_Exercise_ImproveSlides]
To Tutor: Ask the delegates to practice making ideal slides. Depending on whether the
delegates have access to computers in the course, you have two options. Look into the
corresponding instructions for this practical and then follow up with a discussion.

---
Achievement
By the end of this session you will be able to: Design high-impact slides that deliver your
message efficiently
Have can we achieved this?

Relay Application Confirmed

How do you plan to use what you learned in this session in a real-life context? How effective
is this methodology in the context of your work? Does it improve the professional look of
your presentations?

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Slide 67

Delivery
By the end of this session
you will be able to:

Deliver your presentation

with confidence and leave
a positive memorable
experience for the
audience

Purpose
You have looked at making the content and structure of your presentations. In this session
you will focus on the delivery of your presentation which is critical to get right.

Objective
By the end of this session you will be able to: Deliver your presentation with confidence and
leave a positive and memorable experience for the audience

Process
You will see a number of guidelines and techniques to help you become better at delivery
and then you will carry out a number of exercises to integrate these ideas into your own
style.

Relay Experience
What is your experience in delivery? What makes a great delivery?

Relay Application
How critical is it to know this skill? If you know it well, would it have any impact on other
areas of your work?

--

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[ENGAGE]
How do you find delivery? Is it difficult?
To Tutor: Ask the delegates to find out how they ‘feel’ about presenting. Is public speaking
something they dread? You need to get a feeling about their anxiety in order to pitch your
training at the appropriate level and extend or shrink the content accordingly.

Delivery is a skill. Like all other skills, you can learn this by observation and practice. The
more you observe, the more you understand what you should or should not do. The more
you practice, the better you become.

If you have little experience, or feel anxious, start small.

Start with a small and friendly audience and then go upwards for more challenging
audiences. Here are some examples...

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Slide 68

x10

To Tutor: Now show each case and explain what it means.

A small and friendly audience (up to 10) that know you well and you know them well too

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Slide 69

x10

A small number of internal staff (up to 10) that know you by name or face, but not a lot more

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Slide 70

x20

To up to 20 people from various departments which is a mix of people you know and some
you don’t.

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Slide 71

x100

Give a seminar or a conference presentation to a friendly audience of up to 100 people.

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Slide 72

x200+

Give a seminar or conference presentation to an audience of up to 200 people some of which

might not be warm to your ideas. They might be judging you strongly!

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Slide 73

...Scale up similarly until you are addressing the nation as a president/prime minister before
going to war!

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Slide 74

Talking AT Talking WITH

People People

A fundamental principle to keep in mind is the distinction between talking at people and
talking with people. What is the difference?
The difference is that talking at is aggressive and can put a lot of stress on you as if you are
giving a speech and you are just talking at people. In contrast, if you think of it as a normal
conversation that you are having with the audience, then you will have much less stress and
the audience will also appreciate it more as they will be more relaxed.

What is the effect of confidence on a presenter?

A confident presenter is a good presenter. Appearing confident does wonders to the image
of a presenter. Of course confidence comes from knowing your content. However, there are
also a number of techniques you can use to ‘imitate’ confidence and make yourself feel
more confident. We are going to look into a number of techniques that let you achieve this.

The first topic is anxiety...

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Slide 75

Reducing Anxiety

Productivity

Excited

This is the famous ‘upside down U’ graph. It explains the relationship between our excited
state and our productivity. Effectively when we have little motivation or interest and our
arousal is small, our productivity is limited too. As we are aroused more and get excited, our
productivity rises until an optimum point is reached. From this point onwards, more
excitement simply creates more anxiety and stress which reduces our effectiveness and
productivity. The moral of the story is that getting under-excited or over-excited is just as
bad, try to avoid both.

This also demonstrates that emotions accumulate.

What should you do if you feel down?

Get exited, do something exciting. Staying for a relaxing time at home alone will not make
you feel a lot better. A low arousal-state should not be followed with a low-arousal activity.

Does this apply to other states such as anger, sadness or happiness?

Yes indeed it does. If you are angry, you should calm down. You should not ‘express’ your
anger by shouting or arguing to get it out of your system. That will simply make you angrier.

Similarly for sadness, there is no point to ‘cry it out as much as you can’. The more you cry
the more depressed you get. To get out of the cycle and feel better, do the opposite, do
something that makes you laugh.

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What do you think about laughter and happiness?

As before, emotions accumulative and this applies to laughter as well. Happiness is a
positive emotion, so the more you laugh the happier you get. So, laugh a lot. Of course,
there is always a limit as shown by the ‘upside down U’ graph, but generally a happy, non-
bored presenter is much more appealing.

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Slide 76

“I’m probably not the

best person to talk
about this, but ...”

What happens if you start your presentation like this:

“I’m probably not the best person to talk about this, but ...”

It’s a negative start and simply undermines the presenter right from the start. We hear this
many times from presenters especially from substitute presenter, it’s like shooting yourself
in the foot in front of everyone. Why should anyone do this?

So here is the rule...

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Slide 77

Don’t ever start a

presentation
negatively or bring
yourself down for
any reason.

This is a GRAND rule. There are no exceptions:

“Don’t ever start a presentation negatively or bring yourself down for any reason.”

[FLIPCHART]
Can you suggest other types of popular negative starts that some presenters use?
To Tutor: Make sure the delegates don’t look at the workbook when answering this.
Once the suggestions are collected, show the next slide and explain those that have not
been mentioned as an example.

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Slide 78

“I wish I had more time”

“This is going to be slightly

boring”

“I am afraid you need to go

through this”

“This is not very relevant but I

want to you to know ...”

Some examples of negative start you need to avoid:

“I wish I had more time”

“This is going to be slightly boring”
“I am afraid you need to go through this”
“This is not very relevant but I want to you to know ...”
...

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Slide 79

“What I am going to show you is

complex and difficult to understand,
but I will walk you through it ...”

“What you see shortly will not

make sense immediately. Perhaps
later you will understand ...”

“I am not the most authoritative

figure on this topic, but I’m going to
show you how this works”

...
“What I am going to show you is complex and difficult to understand, but I will walk you
through it ...”
“What you see shortly will not make sense immediately. Perhaps later you will understand
...”
“I am not the most authoritative figure on this topic, but I’m going to show you how this
works”

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Slide 80

Presence of Mind

High-Stake Worry in Prep Focus on

Sport Mode Execution

Contribution Enthusiasm Not Serious

As a presenter you need to have a presence of mind. What does this mean?
It means being able to think on your feet. A presenter should not be like a record player,
delivering only what was rehearsed.

What is the problem with just delivering a rehearsal?

The presentation will sound monotone and boring. The presenter will not adapt to the
audience and the circumstances.

High-Stake Sport
The moment you start to question if it is going to work or not is the moment that you have
lost it. It is similar to high-stake sports game. The moment you start thinking if you are going
to win or not is when you lose the game. Instead, keep your eyes on the ball. Think of the
problem, not the result.
Worry in Prep Mode
You should only think about the stakes in preparation mode, not when you are delivering.
Focus on Execution
Delivery is all about execution not planning and structuring. When delivering, just stick to
the plan and follow it to the letter.
Contribution
Think of your presentation as a contribution, not as a test. As long as you have given
something of value to the audience you have done well.

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Enthusiasm
Don't hold back your passion. Be as enthusiastic as you can. Emotional states easily get
transferred between humans. If you are excited, so will the audience. If you are bored or
uninterested, so will the audience.
Not Serious
Don't take yourself too seriously. It’s just a presentation, not a matter of life and death.

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Slide 81

Timing

As you have seen, pace and timing is critical and of course you need to pay attention to this
in your delivery as well.

When giving a presentation, how long do you really have before the audience starts losing
their concentration?
About 15 to 20 minutes, if not less.

What does this mean?

You need to be exciting, and get to the point quickly or they will lose interest.

“I need a week to prepare for a talk that lasts 10 minutes; I need a day for a talk that lasts an
hour; if there is no limit to my time, I can start talking now...”

Which one is better: To over-run or under-run?

It is much better to under-run. If you take longer than normal the audience may all get
bored or frustrated. On the other hand no one will ever complain if your talk finished 3
minutes soon. Hence, always aim for a 90% of the allocated time. This is EXCLUDING the
time allocated for the questions. You should always leave time for questions to minimise a
change on the schedule and also keep the pace comfortable. You don't want to deal with an
agitated chairman!

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Slide 82

Body Language

Eye Contact Open body Look Good

vs. Closed
body

Clear Voice Tracking

Movements

How important is your body language in presentation?

It is quite critical. The good thing is that you can use it to emphasise your point. If used
correctly, it can be very powerful. It also makes your life easier. For example, if you appear
confident, excited and enthusiastic, the audience will be more receptive to your ideas.

There are a number of techniques to use...

To Tutor: Now walk through these. Try to play them out by adopting that body language so
the delegates can understand exactly what you mean.

Maintain eye contact. Many studies have shown that looking people in the eye during
talking, makes them like you more. The same applies to any audience. Even though this
concept is simple, many presenters don’t follow it. For example, they point to the slide and
start talking to it! Not only they have lost eye contact, it also becomes more difficult to hear
the presenter since he is no longer pointing towards the crowd.
Use correct body posture.
•Open body. Use an open body as oppose to a closed body. Closed body is a
defensive stance. Crossing your arms or your legs put you into a defensive mode
which is not what you want when presenting. Show your palms and hands.
•Relaxed. Appear relaxed and calm. Your relaxation will be taken as a sign of
confidence in your message and you are much more likely to be listened to and you
have a better chance of convincing people.
•Hand movements. Emphasise your message with your hands.

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•Walk around, use the space. Don’t stay in one place. Use the area effectively.
Movement keeps the audience engaged and attentive. Of course, make sure you
don’t move so much as to distract.
Look good. Your cloth should show the correct authority required for your content. If you
are giving a business presentation you need a suit or smart cloth. If you are giving a talk to
an academic crowd, smart-casual may be more suitable. In short, dress not to distract, but to
emphasise your message, whatever that may be.
Don’t
•Put your hand in your pocket.
•Fiddle with pens, pointing device, coins, remote control, pointing stick or anything
similar that you might hold.
•Leave your mobile phone in your pocket. Take it out and put it somewhere else.
•Wear distracting cloth and this is in particular applicable to ladies. If you want the
audience to remember your message and not just you, then dress accordingly.
Use a clear voice.
•The pitch and tone of your voice should match your message.
•Make sure you change the pitch during your presentation. If you don’t know when
to do it, try it randomly to keep the audience awake.
•Avoid saying “emmm...” and try to use clear sentences.
•Don’t eat the end of your sentences. Finish them correctly and move on to the next.
Speak slowly and calmly. You get more time to think and you can improve the structure of
your sentence as well. Besides, a presenter who is not rushing appears more confident and
in control.

[PRACTICE?: DELIVERY]
To Tutor: You can include a presentation practice at this point especially if you are extending
the course to two days. You would not have to include one if the course runs only for one
day. In that case explain that, “There won’t be any practice for this session as the next step is
to deliver with slides and we don’t have enough time. Next, you will see the important
parameters of the environment you need to pay attention to.”

---
Achievement
By the end of this session you will be able to: Deliver your presentation with confidence and
leave a positive and memorable experience for the audience

Have we achieved this?

Relay Application Confirmed

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How do you plan to use delivery skills in the real-world? Does it just apply to giving
presentations or delivery is a skill you can use in other contexts as well? Give examples.

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Slide 83

TEA BREAK

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Slide 84

Environment

By the end of this session

you will be able to:

Control your environment

to have the highest impact

Purpose
The physical environment you deliver your presentation in can be crucial in the overall
quality of your presentation. Depending on the type of presentation you are giving, you may
have little or complete control over these parameters. In any case, you need to know about
the impact of each parameter, so you can use them to your advantage when there is an
opportunity.

Objective
By the end of this session you will be able to: Control your environment to have the highest
impact.

Process
This is a quick guideline for the environment and then we will move on to the final delivery
that you need to make based on what you have learned in this course.

Relay Experience
What type of environments do you usually present in? What kind of control do you have?

Relay Application
How do you think the environment you present in can influence your audience?

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Slide 85

Presentation Room

To Tutor: Walk through the following cases and explain the effect of each parameter.

Keep it lit. Make sure the room is lit. All too often, just before the presenter starts, someone
reaches for the light switch and everyone ends up in darkness; a comfortable environment
to sleep in! This is usually under your control. Don’t let it happen.

Continues to next slide ...

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Slide 86

Setup the Environment

Remove Make it Open the

Distractions Comfortable Curtains

Don’t Stand
Get Them to
Behind the Use Props
Move
Podium

Use a
Remote

Remove distractions. Remove anything that can distract the audience from you or your
message. Movement in the visual field of humans always attracts their attention. Make sure
there are no moving objects behind you or around you that can distract people consciously
or unconsciously.
Make it comfortable. If you have control over the audience’s chairs, make sure they are
comfortable and are placed the right distance apart from each other. You don’t want your
audience to be thinking about their squished legs while listening to you.
Open the curtains. There is nothing better than sunlight that creates a good feeling in
people so quickly. It truly makes people feel better and more positive. We all prefer a happy
positive crowd to a sleepy depressed one.
Get them to move. Studies show that people become more creative when they move.
People who have sat down through your talk or even previous talks may feel more and more
agitated as their bodies get tired for lack of movement. Always have breaks between long
talks. You can use the following tricks to get people moving:
During the talk, get them to clap. Find an excuse!
Get them to vote for something by raising their hands.
Channel the focus of the audience to someone in the crowd (such as a person who
had a question) and get everyone to turn to look at that person.
Get them to fill in a questionnaire, or a puzzle.
Pass around a few handouts so they have to focus on something different.
Don’t stand behind the podium. When a speaker ‘hides’ behind the podium, he effectively is
standing behind a ‘barrier’ to ‘protect’ himself from the audience. This is a defensive move
and it is likely to be read unconsciously as such. The podium acts a ‘communication barrier’

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which is indeed what you don’t want to have. A defensive audience will be more difficult to
convince, are less forgiving of your mistakes and most probably will ask you difficult and
aggressive questions.
Use props. Use objects, models of gadgets relevant to your talk and similar material to
enhance your presentation and make it more memorable and viral.
Use a remote mouse for advancing the slides. This is a must have gadget. Let the
technology be in support of you not a distraction to your talk. If you have to go back to your
laptop every time and keep fiddling with it, the audience will be continuously aware of what
you are doing and can get distracted. Instead, magically move forward from one slide to
another. You are bound to have a smoother talk and a better reception!

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Slide 87

Handling Questions

“That’s a very good

point you raised. This is
indeed a challenge we
face and in order to
address it we ...”

[ENGAGE]
Do you find the questioning session difficult?

To Tutor: Try to understand what the real issues are and address them accordingly.

Suppose you don’t know the answer to the question? How bad is it?
It all depends. If it is your content you should know and invariably if you have delivered a
good presentation, you will be Ok. If it is an open question, then you simply have to take it as
it is and think on your feet.

Now here is the critical point. Since there are no right or wrong answers, it all depends how
you handle the question. The handling is far more critical than the actual answer.

For example, what happens if you sound defensive and are annoyed that someone has
asked the ‘dreadful’ question?
They would think that there is obviously something you are trying to hide and they will be
probing for more.

Some people in the audience ask questions to satisfy their own ego. How do you deal with
them?

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Some people want to show how clever they are or just have their own incentive to get
everyone to pay attention to a particular topic in your presentation or your work. Some can
be aggressive, others might do it as a habit (there is always that guy who asks a question
from every presenter!). The best way to deal with a person, who wants his ego to be
satisfied, is of course to satisfy the ego! Here is what you can say (now show the quote)

“That’s a very good point you raised. This is indeed a challenge we face and in order
to address it we ...”

What if you say “I get this question all the time”?

It is not a very good idea! That’s precisely the opposite of what you should be doing. The
questioner and even the audience may get offended by this.

How about your body language when you are answering questions. How should that be?
Never fold your arms or cross your legs. These are defensive positions and looks like you
need to defend yourself against the audience. Don't hold your hands together in front of
your crotch. Show your palms and rest your arms next to you. Don't stand behind the
podium. Move away and confront the crowd. Put a smile on and appear calm and confident
as if you have achieved a great feat.

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Slide 88

The Final Delivery

[PRACTICE: FINAL DELIVERY]

To Tutor: Now, delegates must prepare for their final delivery. This is based on the
presentation they did in the beginning of the course and those that they improved on during
the course.

Now each delegate must go through the content design, slide design and rehearsal practice
for the delivery of their presentation.

Delegates have 30 minutes to prepare for the presentation.

The practice presentations will be no longer than 5 minutes for each delegate.

At the end of each delegate’s presentation, other delegates may ask questions (for 1 minute
max) and the presenter must handle the questions. This is included to make sure that
delegates get a chance to practice what they have learned in the course.

[H19_Handout_PresentationPerformanceCriteria]
To Tutor: Delegates must pay attention to the entire performance criteria explored during
the course. Get them to review the form [H19_Handout_PresentationPerformanceCriteria]
with feedback given to them for their initial delivery and ask them to notice those areas that
they did not score well. They should try to improve themselves for the final delivery.

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IF VIDEO RECORDING:
The presentation will be recorded on video and will be given to the delegates at the end of
the session for their reference

To Tutor: As each delegate presents, evaluate them based on performance criteria and make
notes and provide feedback at the end of their presentation. Compare their performance
with their previous presentation and advice accordingly. It is critical that they understand
which areas they need to improve on.

As a good practice, and if you have time, call them one by one to a separate room and give
individual feedback. During this time, get others to view the video recording of their
presentation and get clues to see which areas they need to improve on.

---
Achievement
By the end of this session you will be able to: Control your environment to have the highest
impact

Relay Application Confirmed

Can you implement the changes found here in your target environments? How effective do
you think these measures will be?

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Slide 89

Reinforce Learning
 What did you learn today?
 How are you going to use it?
 Which area would you like to expand on?
• Approach
• Preparation
• Slide design
• Delivery
• Environment

Ask what did you learn today and in this course so they have to think about the course and
tell you what they have got from it. This is also a good way of finding out what they liked
most and what they didn’t consider important.

---
Relay Achievement
What did you learn today?
How are you going to use it?

Relay Application Confirmed

Which area would you like to expand on?

Next Steps
-Explain what you want them to take from this course
-Give Handouts on other courses (if applicable)
-Talk about new courses delegates may find useful
-Follow-on readings. Tell them where they can get more material.
-Show them recommended books.
-Give feedback form

Presentation Skills Course Notes – © Skills Converged Ltd.