How to Organise Your Presentation and Deliver

Stepping stones technique. Here you aim to plot your main presentation points at the beginning and the end of your presentation structure. Then you plot your lesser points between them.

Acrostic. Using what is essentially a word puzzle you use a technique for spelling out the theme of a presentation plus its major defining points. When you use either the first, middle, last or consecutive letters of a word in a line, you can spell out a major theme.

Stories and anecdotes. Stories have been used throughout history to commend a course of action or explanation. And presenting today is no different. Just consider this tandem PowerPoint presentation as an example of how you can do it.

Problem, cause, solution. This technique could be paraphrased as the what, so what, now what technique. It enables you to map out a problem that is well known to the audience, detail its causes and then expound on a solution.

Analogy. With an analogy you use something that is familiar to your audience to either drape over the unfamiliar or support the evidence of the unfamiliar. For an audience of telecoms executives you might reference the business of customer service to that of a mobile handset. Alternatively, this Nicolas Sarkozy Gaullian speech took a political analogy for his speech in Colombey-les-Deux-églises. And it worked.

Logical dilemma. Logical structures are the rhetorical devices of old. With the dilemma technique you supply logical, reasoned proof that an alternative viewpoint or proposition is invalid. Today it might be labelled evidence-based policy/ practice.

Logic–deductive logic. Here you make two proposals or statements. One is primary and the other is secondary. Each statement has a common element. You then make a third statement that can be logically implied by the other two statements.

Logic–inductive logic. With this technique you can arrive at a generalisation. Thus, it’s really a broad conclusion. Because it’s less finite than deductive logic, it allows you to make a series of observations in your presentation. Note the shared circumstances, and then propose a conclusion.

Logic–analogy. You use this technique when you cite an example or case study with seemingly identical characteristics to the subject matter. You make the suggestion that, if the case study has the same characteristics, then it is logical to suggest that it shares identical causes or fundamentals with the main subject.