Help! I have a presentation soon, what do I do?

It is a question I have been asked more times than I can count: "Help, I have a presentation coming up soon, what on earth do I do?" My warmest recommendation would always be to take a proper course in presentation skills. But right now you are short on time and you need to make the very best of the situation you are in. So here are my top six tips for what to think about, and what to do, to keep yourself well clear of that dreaded condition known as "Death By PowerPoint".

Tip 1: Goal and focus

Most of us are remarkably good at one thing: cramming far too much information into our presentations. In a perfect world it would be wonderful to walk in, fire off thirty minutes of facts, and stroll out completely certain that everyone understood and remembered every word. Sadly, that is not the world we live in. So define a goal for your presentation, and define no more than three things you want people to remember. Then, as you build, use that goal to interrogate every last piece of content. Does this move us towards the goal? No? Take it out. Does this move us towards the goal? Yes? Keep it.

Tip 2: Your own mental attitude

You are your own mental attitude. If you walk into a presentation thinking "I wonder if they even want to hear this", or "this is such a boring subject", or "how could anyone find this interesting", then that is precisely the feeling you will transmit, and you will achieve the exact opposite of what you wanted. But if you walk in thinking "if they do not hear what I am about to say, they are going to run into real trouble", or "my subject is genuinely fascinating", then that is the feeling you will pass on, and your presentation will land. So when you plan how you are going to deliver, the most important thing is not how you build your slides or how the room is arranged. It is that you create a positive feeling inside yourself.

Tip 3: Structure

A clear structure brings a whole host of benefits. For you, it creates security, it makes the thread easier to follow, and it lets you keep a firmer grip on both time and content. For your audience it is the same story: the thread is easier to follow, and a clear structure builds security and trust in you as a presenter. So always work to a structure. In my Presentation Skills Step 1 course we go through a fifteen-step structure that creates every possible condition for success, but there is no room for all of that here, so let me give you a simpler one built on the very same foundations.

• Start with an interest-grabber. If the subject is not made interesting for your listeners, they will not listen with any real focus.
• Give a clear goal definition by explaining what the aim of your presentation is.
• If you have more than one topic, open each one with a little background, a mini-opening, to spark interest.
• Present your topic, ideally for no longer than twenty minutes, because of how concentration works.
• Summarise your topic in a maximum of three points.
• Confirm, together with your audience, that you have reached your goal.
• Finish with a flourish: a memorable interest-grabber, a quote, or a call to action.

Tip 4: Your body language

In tip number two I said that you are your mental attitude, and sure enough your body language will mirror that attitude. But you can also work the other way round and influence yourself. By walking into a presentation and avoiding crossed arms, the fig-leaf position and all the rest, in other words by keeping an open body language, you will actually shift your own mental state, and your audience's too. When they see that you dare to be open with your body, they become more open to what you have to say. So here is my advice: keep an open body language, and begin by taking a step forward, towards your audience.

Tip 5: Avoid Death By PowerPoint

PowerPoint is a fantastic tool when it is used well. Unfortunately, it is used badly far too often. And by badly I mean two things. Firstly, it is used as a script for the presenter rather than a support for the audience. Secondly, there is a stubborn overconfidence in how much the human mind can actually absorb from a single slide. All of this leads to the phenomenon of "Death By PowerPoint", and the lecture I give under that very name is one of my great crusades. Three quick tips to make your slides vastly better:

• You are the presentation, and your PowerPoint is a support for the audience. Always make sure you are the focus, and that the slides are built to help your listeners, not you.
• To stay inside the limits of human perception, avoid having more than six objects on a slide. The moment you have more, be aware that the brain has to spend around 500% more resources just to work out what you mean.
• Avoid full sentences on your slides. Our brains are nowhere near good enough to read a sentence, understand it and store it while also listening to someone speak. Try it yourself: how enjoyable is it to read the morning paper while someone is trying to talk to you? Your inability to concentrate on reading and listening at once is, like everyone else's, embarrassingly poor. Replace your sentences with single words or extremely short phrases of around three words.

Tip 6: Video coaching

As I said at the start of this little "help me" article, there simply is not time to throw yourself into a full course before your presentation. But if you still want to do yourself justice on the day, you can always make use of one of the most popular services on my site: video coaching. For a modest sum you get feedback, within 48 hours, on both yourself and your presentation.

And remember, you can always email me if you have any questions at all. Good luck. David Phillips.