PRESENTATION SKILLS for organised presenting

Knowing your audience's frustrations is one of a presenter's key priorities, so an Opinion Research USA survey contains some key pointers for effective presentation skills.

Sound structure and organisation are fundamental for successful presentations. So here's a very simple guide to laying out an effective presentation – either a business presentation or any form of public speaking.

Presentation skills: an organised presenter

Getting started with a new presentation is always difficult.  Whether you want to use a deck of slides or speak using notes then the organisation of your thoughts is critically important.

Here's an effective first step approach to organising a very simple presentation or speech. At first it seems to owe more to origami than presentation skills...but wait.

Take a piece of A4 or foolscap paper and fold in half along the long edge. Then fold in half again along the new long edge.  And finally fold the paper in half again along the long edge.

Now, unlike origami, you can unfold the paper which has the outline of 8 squares.  Reading left to right and top to bottom you can manage your presentation...just like this one:

Very simple indeed. And for a short speech or brief presentation it might be all you need.

You can learn other presentation skills tips and techniques on a PresentPerfect^TM training course.

"Don't agonize. Organize."

FR Kennedy