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Articles To help Project Leaders |  |
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Seven Steps To Your Power PresentationDo you want a simple process to follow when preparing your next presentation? Here's
the process that will produce the powerful presentation we all desire.
Step one Preparation. A great presentation is the evidence of thorough preparation.
Find out the answers to these questions: How much time are you allotted. Will the venue
accommodate aids, such as PowerPoint? Who is your audience? How large do you expect
the audience to be? These answers will shape your presentation and the stories you
choose to include in your presentation.
Step two Choose your topic. The easiest way to find a topic for your presentation is to
answer this question. "What are you passionate about right now?" Write down the answer
or answers to this question. Then select the topic that you feel will best suit your speaking
engagement. Don't over-think this step. It is more important to select a topic and go to
step three than agonize on the choice of a topic.
Step three Write your first draft. Start off with three headings. 1. Introduction. 2.
Body, 3. Conclusion. Then fill in the blanks, as thoughts come to you. This step requires
you to capture everything you think could fit into this presentation. Just keep going,
capturing your thoughts. You will edit it later. Remember that you don't start with a
masterpiece. Just keep on filling in blanks until the story has a reasonable flow.
Step four - Speak it out. Start hearing your speech. Read the first draft, no matter how
clumsy or disjointed it seems. You need to hear it for the speech to go to the next level
and to take form. Revise your written script for words and phrases that sound clumsy.
Speak it out five times to get a good feel of the flow. You will notice that the story starts
to form around your style of speaking and thinking. Check for timing to make sure you
are in the ballpark for your allotted time.
Step five Get serious. This is the step to seriously edit your script. Refine your script
for clumsy words or phrases. Edit your script for time. Men speak at the rate of about 125
words per minute. This mean a 5 minutes speech has time for about 625 words. Time
your reading of the script to find out if you must remove or add content.
Step six - Add in some personal stories. If you have not yet thought of personal stories
during the previous steps, do it now. Read your script and think if you have any personal
experiences that could relate to your presentation or support your topic
Step seven - Practice as often as you. Experience has shown me that an acceptable
presentation requires at least ten rehearsals. Aim to rehearse your presentation 15 or more
times over a period of days so that you can internalize the material and give your power
presentation. Do not continually drastically edit your script, otherwise you cannot reach
the mastery level for this script.
Follow these steps to deliver the power presentation your audience deserves. Then follow
these steps again for the next power presentation as you now have a repeatable process
for future engagements.
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To further improve your presentations skills, or purchase value-packed educational
products, visit www.waynebotha.com.
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