Everyone's a Communicator | Powerful Presentation Tips and Tricks

Everyone is a communicator regardless of their role or function. Developing your presentation and public speaking ability is one of the most powerful, effective and practical skills that will propel your career growth in any industry. Use the dont's and do's of this brief guide to aid your next presentation and keep them in mind as you further refine your personal communications toolkit.

Don’t use filler words like “umm” or “uhh”

Anyone can instantly upgrade their communication prowess by actively working to eliminate filler verbiage from oral vocabulary like “uhh” or “umm”. As a speaker, we may feel like we must verbally cue our listener that we’re thinking or mentally processing a question. Using a filler word clears up the dead space in our mind and acts as a placeholder pending the conclusion of our thought. However, as common as these filler words are in everyday life, they have no place in professional communication. Be mindful of using these filler words in all your conversations and you’ll quickly learn to feel comfortable with the short ‘dead silence’ that these words used to muffle. Filler words are not only unnecessary but can distract or annoy your listener. Professional communicators briefly pause for 1-2 seconds as they gather their thoughts – with a little practice you’ll be integrating this into your skillset in no time.

Don’t simply read off your slide

If your audience can read, why are you presenting? Reading off your slide verbatim not only wastes your audience’s time but also makes you appear unprepared and/or unknowledgeable. The purpose of a slide is to give your audience visual insight or supplementary data to the points you’re making with your voice. When presenting, you should dive deeper than the face-value of your slide. Analyze and interpret the information your audience is seeing. What can they do with this data? What does it mean for the future of your organization? How was the data gathered? Don’t simply rehash the chart with a voice over. One trick you can use to help yourself memorize key points for each slide is the “Notes” feature in PowerPoint (View > Notes). Add a few bullet points for each slide before your presentation that differ from the slide content itself. This way you’ll have your unique speaking material on-hand and won’t be pressured into the habit of repeating the language on-screen.

Don’t present without practicing your slides, language and transitions

Ideally, you should never present to an audience without practicing your slide timeline, the language/vocabulary you use and how/where you transition between subjects. Presentations commonly start with a problem/objective and transition to a strategy formulation and development of tactics, and often conclude with a schedule or team breakdown of who’s completing the work. Practicing your presentation just once or twice will familiarize your mind with these key pivot and inflection points, allowing your final product to be delivered smoother and more naturally. If you’re presenting in person, try filming yourself with your phone. You’ll be surprised how much you can fine tune the quality of your presentation when you can review your own facial expressions, body language and tone of voice. Remember, your audience can tell if you haven’t practiced.

Don’t present without knowing your audience and their desired level of detail

Are you presenting to executives? Interns? Technical staff? First-line managers? Maybe of mix of everything? These audiences will expect a varying degree of information and granularity. Executives want to know how data fits into high-level strategy, while first-line managers want to know how data will impact their direct reports. Look at your presentation from the eyes of your expected audience and ask yourself “is this the content they want/need to see?” and adjust accordingly.

Don’t pause for questions in the middle of your presentation (if you can help it)

It’s a common habit to pause before advancing to your next slide to ask the audience “does anyone have any questions before I move on?”. However, doing this too frequently can derail the flow of your presentation, distract your audience and relinquish your control of the conversation. If you’re presenting to executives, you may not be able to avoid questions during your session. Try to reserve dedicated Q&A time to the end of your presentation.

Start your presentation with an attention-grabbing statistic or statement

Not much decreases an audience’s morale than starting your presentation with “Today, I’m going to talk about [insert subject]…” You have about 15 seconds (or less) to grab an audience’s attention before they zone out. Starting the session with an intriguing or thought-provoking statistic or data point is a simple method to hook your audience in seconds. Try to pair the statistic with the theme of your data. Did you know…

• Wal-Mart generates $3 million in revenue every 7 minutes.
• It takes 6 months to manufacture a Rolls Royce compared to 13 hours for a Tesla.
• 98.5% of the 1.8 billion daily users on Facebook use the mobile version of the app.

Ensure your face is centered and in-frame of your webcam (blur your background via Zoom if your environment is visually distracting)

In our increasingly hybrid work environment, many of the presentations we give occur via Zoom, Teams, Skype or other online platforms. If you’re presenting and using a webcam, make sure your face is in-frame and centered. You shouldn’t be off to the side or only visible in one quarter of screen. Ensure you have adequate lighting on your face. Your primary light source should not be behind you or you’ll appear shadow-like on camera. Imagine if you were to take a selfie and use a similar approach to angling and adjusting your webcam. Take advantage of background filters via Zoom if your environment is cluttered or potentially distracting to your audience.

Learn useful PowerPoint hotkeys

Memorizing the following hotkeys for PowerPoint (in Windows) will help you deliver key messages in presentations more effectively:

• Go to fullscreen (Shift + F5)
• View all slides while in fullscreen (-)
• Use laser pointer while in fullscreen (Hold Control + Hold Click)
• Use pen while in fullscreen (Control + P)
• Use highlighter while in fullscreen (Control + I)
• Erase markings while in fullscreen (E)
• Exit fullscreen (Escape)

Repeat key takeaways or strategic objectives throughout your presentation

Stating something you want your audience to learn one time is not enough. Adults typically need to hear something repeated 5-7 times in separate occurrences for learning to ‘stick’. Throughout the narrative of your presentation, try to repeat ideas or key themes in different segments. You don’t need to repeat topics verbatim but try to touch on your main takeaway several times from alternate angles. This will help your audience build a clearer perspective of your material and aid with knowledge retention.

Be prepared for unanswerable questions – and know how to respond

Early career professionals or individuals not experienced with presenting publicly often get stumped when an audience member inevitably asks them a question they don’t know the answer to. Memorizing a response you can default to when asked a question you cannot answer will help alleviate presentation anxiety. Something as simple as “I’m not familiar but I’ll consult with my team and get back to you” will suffice. Never attempt to embellish or guess an answer on the spot. You don’t have the answer to every question imaginable and that’s okay.

Have a colleague review your material prior to your presentation as a second set of eyes

Always reserve some time after you’ve developed your presentation material to have a colleague, friend or family member review your content. A second set of eyes will help catch grammatical errors, typos or nonsensical phrases that you may have glazed over despite your own multiple checks. Engaging an external reviewer is an excellent best practice for nearly all communications deliverables, not just presentations.

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