Lydia's Top Tips - February 2003
What's the best way to deliver my presentation?
How you deliver your presentation has greater impact on your audience than the actual words you speak. People do not carry away information from a presentation. They carry away an impression. What kind of impression? An impression that is built upon verbal and non-verbal communication.
When making your delivery to an audience you use both verbal and non-verbal channels to communicate your message. To give an effective delivery, you must become skilled at both. The verbal channel represents 7% of the message. The non-verbal channel conveys how you look and sound. It brings the remaining 93% of your message to the audience. To understand how these channels operate it is important to identify and contrast them.
- Verbal Channel
- Words
- Conscious reaction
- Descriptive of emotion
- Logic
- Truth content can be manipulated
|
- Non- Verbal Channel
- Body, Voice
- Unconscious reaction
- Actual emotion
- Intuition
- Truth content reliable
|
A crucial difference between these channels is your awareness of each. Since childhood, we have spent an enormous amount of time and energy mastering speech and language. Conversely, non-verbal language has only recently been perceived as possilbly belonging to an equally vast, organised communication system.
As a result, we have gained a high degree of control over our verbal output and can easily manipulate it. We are not as adept in controlling or altering the non-verbal messages. As a result the non- verbal channel accurately reflects our true meanings and the audience invariably relies on their non-verbal instincts and chose to believe the non-verbal messages.
Handling Questions
Anna Paré, Director of Finance in Syngenta Seeds recently asked me about how to handle the question period at the end of her presentation.
Managing questions is an important part of your presentation delivery because the audience continues to judge you and your non-verbal communication through the Q&A session.
The audience believes that answering questions requires spontaneity on your part and provides them with the opportunity to see the real you in action.
If you plan to offer a Q&A session, always inform your audience in advance that there will be an opportunity to ask questions. When answering, follow these general outlines.
- Listen carefully and take time to think.
- Acknowlegde and clarify.
- Check question is answered satisfactorily.
- Move to next question.
- Ask for last question.
- Answer and then sit down.
Style Guidelines
I'm regularly asked for advice from inexperienced speakers about how successful speakers organise their presentations to guarantee success. Practice is the key habit to develop good delivery skills which in time becomes style. Expertise is transferred to your subconscious by repetition. The result is a smooth presentation which is automatic and natural - your natural self and consequently your natural style.
Josep Casellas, Director of Lotus Professional Services based in the UK summarises clearly. "When you're prepared you have everything under control including your nerves. You must know exactly what you want to communicate. The audience want to receive a clear memorable message. You want to see them listening to you, following you and understanding your message. Structure is vitally important. Confidence and style starts with a smile."
Return the archive of Lydia's Top Tips
Return the Community homepage
|
