importance of oral presentation in your career success

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Powerful and Effective Presentation Skills: More in Demand Now Than Ever

When we talk with our L&D colleagues from around the globe, we often hear that presentation skills training is one of the top opportunities they’re looking to provide their learners. And this holds true whether their learners are individual contributors, people managers, or senior leaders. This is not surprising.

Effective communications skills are a powerful career activator, and most of us are called upon to communicate in some type of formal presentation mode at some point along the way.

For instance, you might be asked to brief management on market research results, walk your team through a new process, lay out the new budget, or explain a new product to a client or prospect. Or you may want to build support for a new idea, bring a new employee into the fold, or even just present your achievements to your manager during your performance review.

And now, with so many employees working from home or in hybrid mode, and business travel in decline, there’s a growing need to find new ways to make effective presentations when the audience may be fully virtual or a combination of in person and remote attendees.

Whether you’re making a standup presentation to a large live audience, or a sit-down one-on-one, whether you’re delivering your presentation face to face or virtually, solid presentation skills matter.

Even the most seasoned and accomplished presenters may need to fine-tune or update their skills. Expectations have changed over the last decade or so. Yesterday’s PowerPoint which primarily relied on bulleted points, broken up by the occasional clip-art image, won’t cut it with today’s audience.

The digital revolution has revolutionized the way people want to receive information. People expect presentations that are more visually interesting. They expect to see data, metrics that support assertions. And now, with so many previously in-person meetings occurring virtually, there’s an entirely new level of technical preparedness required.

The leadership development tools and the individual learning opportunities you’re providing should include presentation skills training that covers both the evergreen fundamentals and the up-to-date capabilities that can make or break a presentation.

So, just what should be included in solid presentation skills training? Here’s what I think.

The fundamentals will always apply When it comes to making a powerful and effective presentation, the fundamentals will always apply. You need to understand your objective. Is it strictly to convey information, so that your audience’s knowledge is increased? Is it to persuade your audience to take some action? Is it to convince people to support your idea? Once you understand what your objective is, you need to define your central message. There may be a lot of things you want to share with your audience during your presentation, but find – and stick with – the core, the most important point you want them to walk away with. And make sure that your message is clear and compelling.

You also need to tailor your presentation to your audience. Who are they and what might they be expecting? Say you’re giving a product pitch to a client. A technical team may be interested in a lot of nitty-gritty product detail. The business side will no doubt be more interested in what returns they can expect on their investment.

Another consideration is the setting: is this a formal presentation to a large audience with questions reserved for the end, or a presentation in a smaller setting where there’s the possibility for conversation throughout? Is your presentation virtual or in-person? To be delivered individually or as a group? What time of the day will you be speaking? Will there be others speaking before you and might that impact how your message will be received?

Once these fundamentals are established, you’re in building mode. What are the specific points you want to share that will help you best meet your objective and get across your core message? Now figure out how to convey those points in the clearest, most straightforward, and succinct way. This doesn’t mean that your presentation has to be a series of clipped bullet points. No one wants to sit through a presentation in which the presenter reads through what’s on the slide. You can get your points across using stories, fact, diagrams, videos, props, and other types of media.

Visual design matters While you don’t want to clutter up your presentation with too many visual elements that don’t serve your objective and can be distracting, using a variety of visual formats to convey your core message will make your presentation more memorable than slides filled with text. A couple of tips: avoid images that are cliched and overdone. Be careful not to mix up too many different types of images. If you’re using photos, stick with photos. If you’re using drawn images, keep the style consistent. When data are presented, stay consistent with colors and fonts from one type of chart to the next. Keep things clear and simple, using data to support key points without overwhelming your audience with too much information. And don’t assume that your audience is composed of statisticians (unless, of course, it is).

When presenting qualitative data, brief videos provide a way to engage your audience and create emotional connection and impact. Word clouds are another way to get qualitative data across.

Practice makes perfect You’ve pulled together a perfect presentation. But it likely won’t be perfect unless it’s well delivered. So don’t forget to practice your presentation ahead of time. Pro tip: record yourself as you practice out loud. This will force you to think through what you’re going to say for each element of your presentation. And watching your recording will help you identify your mistakes—such as fidgeting, using too many fillers (such as “umm,” or “like”), or speaking too fast.

A key element of your preparation should involve anticipating any technical difficulties. If you’ve embedded videos, make sure they work. If you’re presenting virtually, make sure that the lighting is good, and that your speaker and camera are working. Whether presenting in person or virtually, get there early enough to work out any technical glitches before your presentation is scheduled to begin. Few things are a bigger audience turn-off than sitting there watching the presenter struggle with the delivery mechanisms!

Finally, be kind to yourself. Despite thorough preparation and practice, sometimes, things go wrong, and you need to recover in the moment, adapt, and carry on. It’s unlikely that you’ll have caused any lasting damage and the important thing is to learn from your experience, so your next presentation is stronger.

How are you providing presentation skills training for your learners?

Manika Gandhi is Senior Learning Design Manager at Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning. Email her at [email protected] .

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The Importance of Presentation Skills: That You Must Know About

Uncover The Importance of Presentation Skills in this comprehensive blog. Begin with a brief introduction to the art of effective presentations and its wide-reaching significance. Delve into the vital role of presentation skills in both your personal and professional life, understanding how they can shape your success.

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Table of Contents  

1) A brief introduction to Presentation Skills 

2) Importance of Presentation Skills in personal life 

3) Importance of Presentation Skills in professional life 

4) Tips to improve your Presentation Skills 

5) Conclusion 

A brief introduction to Presentation Skills  

Presentation skills can be defined as the ability to deliver information confidently and persuasively to engage and influence the audience. Be it in personal or professional settings; mastering Presentation Skills empowers individuals to convey their ideas with clarity, build confidence, and leave a lasting impression. From public speaking to business pitches, honing these skills can lead to greater success in diverse spheres of life.  You can also refer to various presentation skills interview questions and answer to build you confidence! This blog will also look into the advantages and disadvantages of presentations .It is therefore important to understand the elements of presentations .

Importance of Presentation Skills in personal life  

Effective Presentation skills are not limited to professional settings alone; they play a significant role in personal life as well. Let us now dive deeper into the Importance of Presentation Skills in one’s personal life:    

Expressing ideas clearly   

In day-to-day conversations with family, friends, or acquaintances, having good Presentation skills enables you to articulate your thoughts and ideas clearly. Whether you're discussing plans for the weekend or sharing your opinions on a particular topic, being an effective communicator encourages better understanding and engagement. 

Enhancing social confidence  

Many individuals struggle with social anxiety or nervousness in social gatherings. Mastering Presentation skills helps boost self-confidence, making it easier to navigate social situations with ease. The ability to present yourself confidently and engage others in conversation enhances your social life and opens doors to new relationships. 

Creating memories on special occasions  

There are moments in life that call for public speaking, such as proposing a toast at a wedding, delivering a speech at a family gathering, or giving a Presentation during special events. Having polished Presentation skills enables you to leave a positive and lasting impression on the audience, making these occasions even more memorable. 

Handling challenging conversations  

Life often presents challenging situations that require delicate communication, such as expressing condolences or resolving conflicts. Strong Presentation skills help you convey your feelings and thoughts sensitively, encouraging effective and empathetic communication during difficult times. 

Building stronger relationships  

Being a skilled presenter means being a good listener as well. Active listening is a fundamental aspect of effective Presentations, and when applied in personal relationships, it strengthens bonds and builds trust. Empathising with others and showing genuine interest in their stories and opinions enhances the quality of your relationships. 

Advocating for personal goals  

Whether you're pursuing personal projects or seeking support for a cause you're passionate about, the ability to present your ideas persuasively helps garner support and enthusiasm from others. This can be beneficial in achieving personal goals and making a positive impact on your community. 

Inspiring and motivating others  

In one’s personal life, Presentation skills are not just about delivering formal speeches; they also involve inspiring and motivating others through your actions and words. Whether you're sharing your experiences, mentoring someone, or encouraging loved ones during tough times, your Presentation skills can be a source of inspiration for others. 

Exuding leadership traits  

Effective Presentation skills go hand in hand with leadership qualities. Being able to communicate clearly and influence others' perspectives positions you as a leader within your family, social circles, or community. Leadership in personal life involves guiding and supporting others towards positive outcomes. 

Unlock your full potential as a presenter with our Presentation Skills Training Course. Join now!  

Importance of Presentation Skills in professional life  

Effective Presentation skills are a vital asset for career growth and success in professional life. Let us now explore the importance of Presentation skills for students and workers:  

Impressing employers and clients  

During job interviews or business meetings, a well-delivered Presentation showcases your knowledge, confidence, and ability to communicate ideas effectively. It impresses employers, clients, and potential investors, leaving a positive and memorable impression that can tilt the scales in your favour. 

Advancing in your career  

In the corporate world, promotions and career advancements often involve presenting your achievements, ideas, and future plans to decision-makers. Strong Presentation skills demonstrate your leadership potential and readiness for higher responsibilities, opening doors to new opportunities. 

Effective team collaboration  

As a professional, you often need to present projects, strategies, or updates to your team or colleagues. A compelling Presentation facilitates better understanding and association among team members, leading to more productive and successful projects. 

Persuasive selling techniques  

For sales and marketing professionals, Presentation skills are instrumental in persuading potential customers to choose your products or services. An engaging sales pitch can sway buying decisions, leading to increased revenue and business growth. 

Creating impactful proposals  

In the corporate world, proposals are crucial for securing new partnerships or business deals. A well-structured and compelling Presentation can make your proposal stand out and increase the chances of successful negotiations. 

Gaining and retaining clients  

Whether you are a freelancer, consultant, or business owner, Presentation skills play a key role in winning and retaining clients. A captivating Presentation not only convinces clients of your capabilities but also builds trust and promotes long-term relationships. 

Enhancing public speaking engagements  

Professional life often involves speaking at conferences, seminars, or industry events. Being a confident and engaging speaker allows you to deliver your message effectively, position yourself as an expert, and expand your professional network. 

Influencing stakeholders and decision-makers  

As you climb the corporate ladder, you may find yourself presenting to senior management or board members. Effective Presentations are essential for gaining support for your ideas, projects, or initiatives from key stakeholders. 

Handling meetings and discussions  

In meetings, being able to present your thoughts clearly and concisely contributes to productive discussions and efficient decision-making. It ensures that your ideas are understood and considered by colleagues and superiors. 

Professional development  

Investing time in honing Presentation skills is a form of professional development. As you become a more effective presenter, you become a more valuable asset to your organisation and industry. 

Building a personal brand  

A strong personal brand is vital for professional success. Impressive Presentations contribute to building a positive reputation and positioning yourself as a thought leader or industry expert. 

Career transitions and interviews  

When seeking new opportunities or transitioning to a different industry, Presentation Skills are essential for communicating your transferable skills and showcasing your adaptability to potential employers. 

Take your Presentations to the next level with our Effective Presentation Skills & Techniques Course. Sign up today!  

Tips to improve your Presentation Skills  

Now that you know about the importance of presentation skills in personal and professional life, we will now provide you with tips to Improve Your Presentation Skills .

1) Know your audience: Understand the demographics and interests of your audience to tailor your Presentation accordingly. 

2) Practice regularly: Rehearse your speech multiple times to refine content and delivery. 

3) Seek feedback: Gather feedback from peers or mentors to identify areas for improvement. 

4) Manage nervousness: Use relaxation techniques to overcome nervousness before presenting. 

5) Engage with eye contact: Maintain eye contact with the audience to establish a connection. 

6) Use clear visuals: Utilise impactful visuals to complement your spoken words. 

7) Emphasise key points: Highlight important information to enhance audience retention. 

8) Employ body language: Use confident and purposeful gestures to convey your message. 

9) Handle Q&A confidently: Prepare for potential questions and answer them with clarity. 

10) Add personal stories: Include relevant anecdotes to make your Presentation more relatable.   

All in all, Presentation skills are a valuable asset, impacting both personal and professional realms of life. By mastering these skills, you can become a more effective communicator, a confident professional, and a persuasive influencer. Continuous improvement and adaptation to technological advancements will ensure you stay ahead in this competitive world. 

Want to master the art of impactful Presentations? Explore our Presentation Skills Courses and elevate your communication prowess!  

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How to prepare and deliver an effective oral presentation

• Related content
• Peer review
• Lucia Hartigan , registrar 1 ,
• Fionnuala Mone , fellow in maternal fetal medicine 1 ,
• Mary Higgins , consultant obstetrician 2
• 1 National Maternity Hospital, Dublin, Ireland
• 2 National Maternity Hospital, Dublin; Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Medicine and Medical Sciences, University College Dublin
• luciahartigan{at}hotmail.com

The success of an oral presentation lies in the speaker’s ability to transmit information to the audience. Lucia Hartigan and colleagues describe what they have learnt about delivering an effective scientific oral presentation from their own experiences, and their mistakes

The objective of an oral presentation is to portray large amounts of often complex information in a clear, bite sized fashion. Although some of the success lies in the content, the rest lies in the speaker’s skills in transmitting the information to the audience. 1

Preparation

It is important to be as well prepared as possible. Look at the venue in person, and find out the time allowed for your presentation and for questions, and the size of the audience and their backgrounds, which will allow the presentation to be pitched at the appropriate level.

See what the ambience and temperature are like and check that the format of your presentation is compatible with the available computer. This is particularly important when embedding videos. Before you begin, look at the video on stand-by and make sure the lights are dimmed and the speakers are functioning.

For visual aids, Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Mac Keynote programmes are usual, although Prezi is increasing in popularity. Save the presentation on a USB stick, with email or cloud storage backup to avoid last minute disasters.

When preparing the presentation, start with an opening slide containing the title of the study, your name, and the date. Begin by addressing and thanking the audience and the organisation that has invited you to speak. Typically, the format includes background, study aims, methodology, results, strengths and weaknesses of the study, and conclusions.

If the study takes a lecturing format, consider including “any questions?” on a slide before you conclude, which will allow the audience to remember the take home messages. Ideally, the audience should remember three of the main points from the presentation. 2

Have a maximum of four short points per slide. If you can display something as a diagram, video, or a graph, use this instead of text and talk around it.

Animation is available in both Microsoft PowerPoint and the Apple Mac Keynote programme, and its use in presentations has been demonstrated to assist in the retention and recall of facts. 3 Do not overuse it, though, as it could make you appear unprofessional. If you show a video or diagram don’t just sit back—use a laser pointer to explain what is happening.

Rehearse your presentation in front of at least one person. Request feedback and amend accordingly. If possible, practise in the venue itself so things will not be unfamiliar on the day. If you appear comfortable, the audience will feel comfortable. Ask colleagues and seniors what questions they would ask and prepare responses to these questions.

It is important to dress appropriately, stand up straight, and project your voice towards the back of the room. Practise using a microphone, or any other presentation aids, in advance. If you don’t have your own presenting style, think of the style of inspirational scientific speakers you have seen and imitate it.

Try to present slides at the rate of around one slide a minute. If you talk too much, you will lose your audience’s attention. The slides or videos should be an adjunct to your presentation, so do not hide behind them, and be proud of the work you are presenting. You should avoid reading the wording on the slides, but instead talk around the content on them.

Maintain eye contact with the audience and remember to smile and pause after each comment, giving your nerves time to settle. Speak slowly and concisely, highlighting key points.

Do not assume that the audience is completely familiar with the topic you are passionate about, but don’t patronise them either. Use every presentation as an opportunity to teach, even your seniors. The information you are presenting may be new to them, but it is always important to know your audience’s background. You can then ensure you do not patronise world experts.

To maintain the audience’s attention, vary the tone and inflection of your voice. If appropriate, use humour, though you should run any comments or jokes past others beforehand and make sure they are culturally appropriate. Check every now and again that the audience is following and offer them the opportunity to ask questions.

Finishing up is the most important part, as this is when you send your take home message with the audience. Slow down, even though time is important at this stage. Conclude with the three key points from the study and leave the slide up for a further few seconds. Do not ramble on. Give the audience a chance to digest the presentation. Conclude by acknowledging those who assisted you in the study, and thank the audience and organisation. If you are presenting in North America, it is usual practice to conclude with an image of the team. If you wish to show references, insert a text box on the appropriate slide with the primary author, year, and paper, although this is not always required.

Answering questions can often feel like the most daunting part, but don’t look upon this as negative. Assume that the audience has listened and is interested in your research. Listen carefully, and if you are unsure about what someone is saying, ask for the question to be rephrased. Thank the audience member for asking the question and keep responses brief and concise. If you are unsure of the answer you can say that the questioner has raised an interesting point that you will have to investigate further. Have someone in the audience who will write down the questions for you, and remember that this is effectively free peer review.

Be proud of your achievements and try to do justice to the work that you and the rest of your group have done. You deserve to be up on that stage, so show off what you have achieved.

Competing interests: We have read and understood the BMJ Group policy on declaration of interests and declare the following interests: None.

• ↵ Rovira A, Auger C, Naidich TP. How to prepare an oral presentation and a conference. Radiologica 2013 ; 55 (suppl 1): 2 -7S. OpenUrl
• ↵ Bourne PE. Ten simple rules for making good oral presentations. PLos Comput Biol 2007 ; 3 : e77 . OpenUrl PubMed
• ↵ Naqvi SH, Mobasher F, Afzal MA, Umair M, Kohli AN, Bukhari MH. Effectiveness of teaching methods in a medical institute: perceptions of medical students to teaching aids. J Pak Med Assoc 2013 ; 63 : 859 -64. OpenUrl

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What It Takes to Give a Great Presentation

• Carmine Gallo

Five tips to set yourself apart.

Never underestimate the power of great communication. It can help you land the job of your dreams, attract investors to back your idea, or elevate your stature within your organization. But while there are plenty of good speakers in the world, you can set yourself apart out by being the person who can deliver something great over and over. Here are a few tips for business professionals who want to move from being good speakers to great ones: be concise (the fewer words, the better); never use bullet points (photos and images paired together are more memorable); don’t underestimate the power of your voice (raise and lower it for emphasis); give your audience something extra (unexpected moments will grab their attention); rehearse (the best speakers are the best because they practice — a lot).

I was sitting across the table from a Silicon Valley CEO who had pioneered a technology that touches many of our lives — the flash memory that stores data on smartphones, digital cameras, and computers. He was a frequent guest on CNBC and had been delivering business presentations for at least 20 years before we met. And yet, the CEO wanted to sharpen his public speaking skills.

• Carmine Gallo is a Harvard University instructor, keynote speaker, and author of 10 books translated into 40 languages. Gallo is the author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman  (St. Martin’s Press).

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Presentation Skills for Career Success: Examples and Tips

As an expert in both writing and subject matter, I understand the importance of effective presentation skills. From delivering a sales pitch to making a dynamic presentation at a conference, presentation skills are an essential aspect of career success.

Definition of Presentation Skills

Presentation skills refer to the ability to effectively and persuasively communicate information to an audience. This involves several different components, including speaking clearly and confidently, engaging with the audience, and using visual aids to illustrate key points.

Importance of Presentation Skills for Career Success

Strong presentation skills can make all the difference in achieving success in your career. Whether you’re pitching an important idea to investors or delivering a report to your team, being able to communicate your message clearly and effectively is critical. Poor presentation skills can undermine a person’s credibility and ultimately hinder their ability to succeed.

Understanding Your Target Audience

When preparing a presentation, it is crucial to understand your target audience. Without knowing who will be sitting in the audience, it can be challenging to effectively communicate your message. To ensure a successful presentation, you need to:

A. Identifying Your Audience

The first step is to identify your audience. Who are you presenting to? Are they co-workers, executives or customers? What is their demographic? What is their level of knowledge about your topic? Understanding your audience’s characteristics will allow you to personalize the presentation and make it more relatable.

B. Knowing Your Audience’s Expectations

After identifying your audience, the next step is to understand their expectations. What are they hoping to learn from your presentation? Are they looking for specific information, or are they coming in with no prior knowledge? By understanding what your audience expects, you can tailor your message accordingly.

C. Tailoring Your Presentation to Your Audience

Now that you understand who your audience is and what they expect to gain from your presentation, the final step is to tailor your presentation to meet their needs. This means adjusting the way you present information, including visuals and language, to ensure that the message resonates with them.

For example, if you’re presenting to a group of executives, you’ll want to use language that speaks to their level of knowledge and experience. On the other hand, if you’re presenting to a group of new employees, you’ll want to simplify your language and provide more background information.

By customizing your presentation to your audience, you will increase their engagement and enhance their understanding of the topic. This will result in a more successful presentation overall.

Understanding your target audience is crucial to delivering a successful presentation. By identifying your audience, knowing their expectations, and tailoring your message to their needs, you can create a presentation that resonates with your audience and delivers the message effectively.

Creating an Effective Presentation

Creating an effective presentation can be a daunting task, but it is necessary for career success. An effective presentation can be the key to closing a business deal, securing new clients, or impressing your bosses.

To make sure your presentation is effective, there are five key steps you must take: defining your objectives, developing a strong message, structuring your presentation, using visual aids and emotional appeals, and rehearsing your presentation.

A. Defining Your Objectives

Before you start creating your presentation, it is important to define your objectives. Ask yourself: What am I trying to achieve with this presentation? Who is my audience? What message do I want to convey? Once you have answered these questions, you can start creating your presentation with a clear goal in mind.

B. Developing a Strong Message

To create a strong message, you need to think about what your audience needs to hear from you. Your message should be clear, concise, and relevant to your audience. Use language and visuals that are easy to understand and memorable.

C. Structuring Your Presentation

A well-structured presentation is key to keeping your audience engaged. Start with a strong opening that grabs their attention, then move into the main body of your presentation where you can delve deeper into your message using clear examples and evidence. Finally, end with a strong closing that leaves a lasting impression.

D. Using Visual Aids and Emotional Appeals

Using visual aids and emotional appeals can make your presentation more engaging and memorable. Visual aids can help illustrate your message and make it easier to understand. Emotional appeals can help you connect with your audience on a more personal level and make your presentation more memorable.

E. Rehearsing Your Presentation

The final step in creating an effective presentation is rehearsing. Practice your presentation multiple times. This will help you feel more confident and prepared when it is time to present. It will also help you identify areas that need improvement.

Creating an effective presentation is an important skill for career success. By defining your objectives, developing a strong message, structuring your presentation, using visual aids and emotional appeals, and rehearsing your presentation, you can deliver a presentation that is engaging, memorable, and effective.

Presentation Delivery Skills

Effective presentation delivery is a crucial aspect for professional success. The way you present yourself, the ideas, and the subject matter can significantly impact the audience’s perception of you and the content you provide. This section discusses some important presentation delivery skills that can help you in your career.

A. Opening and Closing Strategies

The opening and closing of your presentation should be attention-grabbing and leave a lasting impression. Use a powerful opening statement, a thought-provoking question, or an engaging story that relates to the topic. Similarly, end the presentation with a summarized version of the crucial points, a call to action, or an inspiring quote. These strategies can help the audience remember your presentation long after it’s over.

B. Voice and Body Language

Your voice and body language play an essential role in conveying your message effectively. Speak clearly and confidently, and avoid filler words such as “umm” and “ahh.” Use gestures and body movements that complement your words and help emphasize your message.

C. Eye Contact and Interpersonal Communication

Maintaining eye contact with your audience is a powerful way to build rapport and influence. It shows that you are confident and interested in engaging with them. Along with eye contact, focus on interpersonal communication skills, such as active listening, empathy, and adapting your communication style to resonate with the audience.

D. Managing Nervousness

It’s natural to feel nervous before a presentation, but it can negatively affect your performance. Be prepared by rehearsing beforehand, arriving early, and taking deep breaths. Use positive self-talk, affirmations, and visualization techniques to calm your nerves and build confidence.

E. Tips for Virtual and Remote Presentations

Virtual and remote presentations require additional considerations to ensure a successful delivery. Ensure that your technology works correctly, keep your slides simple and easy to read, and avoid multitasking during the presentation. Practice your presentation in front of a camera to get used to the virtual interface.

Mastering presentation delivery skills is an ongoing process of refinement and practice. Paying attention to your opening and closing strategies, voice and body language, eye contact and interpersonal communication, managing nervousness, and tips for virtual and remote presentations can make a significant difference in the impact of your presentation on the audience. By honing these skills, you can enhance your professional brand and take your career to greater heights.

Engaging Your Audience

Engaging your audience is crucial to delivering an effective presentation. The goal is to keep their attention and leave a lasting impression. In this section, we’ll cover four key techniques to engage your audience: storytelling, audience participation, Q&A sessions, and handling difficult audience members.

A. Using Storytelling Techniques

Stories have the power to captivate an audience and make your presentation memorable. Consider opening with a personal anecdote or sharing a relevant story that connects with your topic. Use descriptive language and vivid details to make your story come alive.

Throughout your presentation, sprinkle in relevant stories and examples to help illustrate your points. If you have data or statistics to share, try presenting them in the form of a story. This will make them more interesting and easier to remember.

B. Encouraging Audience Participation

Encouraging audience participation can help to create an interactive and engaging presentation. There are many ways to do this, such as posing thought-provoking questions or inviting volunteers for a demonstration.

Another way to encourage participation is to use interactive tools, such as live polling or Q&A features. These tools allow the audience to engage with you in real-time and can provide valuable insights into their thoughts and opinions.

C. Asking Questions and Managing Q&A Sessions

Asking questions can be an effective way to keep your audience engaged and test their understanding of the material. Be sure to pause at key points in your presentation and ask relevant questions to keep the audience on their toes.

During the Q&A session, it’s important to manage the flow of questions and keep things organized. Encourage people to raise their hands and wait until they are called upon before speaking. If you’re receiving multiple questions at once, try repeating them back to ensure everyone can hear and understand.

D. Tips for Handling Difficult Audience Members

Dealing with difficult audience members can be a challenge, but it’s important to remain professional and respectful. Here are a few tips for handling different types of difficult audience members:

• The interrupter:  Politely ask them to wait until you’ve finished speaking before asking their question.
• The skeptic:  Acknowledge their concerns and be prepared with evidence or examples to support your position.
• The distractor:  Politely redirect their attention back to the topic at hand and keep the presentation moving forward.

Engaging your audience is crucial to delivering an effective presentation. By using storytelling techniques, encouraging audience participation, asking questions, and handling difficult audience members, you can create a memorable and impactful presentation that resonates with your audience.

Presentation Software and Tools

In today’s professional environment, creating and delivering powerful presentations is a requirement for success. Fortunately, there are many tools and technologies available to help presenters bring their ideas to life. This section explores some of the most popular software and techniques for creating and delivering engaging presentations.

A. Overview of Popular Presentation Software

There are many presentation software tools available, but some are more widely used than others. The most popular presentation software tools include:

• Microsoft PowerPoint  – A versatile software tool that allows users to create dynamic presentations with a range of text, graphics, and multimedia features.
• Apple Keynote  – An alternative to PowerPoint that includes many of the same features and is optimized for use on Apple devices.
• Google Slides  – A cloud-based alternative to PowerPoint that allows users to create and share presentations online.
• Prezi  – A non-linear presentation tool that uses a canvas rather than slides to tell a story.

B. Techniques for Using PowerPoint Effectively

PowerPoint is a widely used presentation software tool, but there are some key techniques that can be used to present more effectively. Some of these techniques include:

• Simplicity  – Avoid cluttering slides with too much content. Keep text to a minimum and use images and graphics to emphasize key points.
• Consistency  – Use a consistent font, color scheme, and style throughout the presentation to create a professional-looking deck.
• Storytelling  – Use a clear narrative to guide the audience through the presentation and keep them engaged.
• Animation  – Use animations and other visual effects sparingly to emphasize key points and keep the audience’s attention.

C. Tips for Creating Engaging Multimedia

Engaging multimedia elements can help bring a presentation to life and make it more memorable. Some tips for creating engaging multimedia include:

• Images  – Use high-quality images that are relevant to the topic and can help illustrate key points.
• Graphs and charts  – Use graphs and charts to display data in a clear and concise way.
• Video  – Include relevant video clips to emphasize key points and break up the presentation.
• Interactive elements  – Use interactive elements such as quizzes or polls to engage the audience and encourage participation.

D. Other Presentation Tools and Technologies

In addition to the software tools and techniques mentioned above, there are many other presentation tools and technologies that can be used to make a presentation more engaging. Some of these include:

• Virtual and augmented reality  – Virtual and augmented reality can be used to create immersive experiences for the audience and help them better understand complex concepts.
• Audience response systems  – Audience response systems allow the audience to participate in the presentation by responding to questions or providing feedback.
• Live streaming  – Live streaming allows the presentation to be broadcast online in real-time, allowing a wider audience to view the presentation.

Presentation Skills in Professional Settings

Delivering effective presentations is a crucial skill for career success. In professional settings, presentations are an opportunity to showcase expertise, make persuasive arguments, and establish credibility. Below are some common types of presentations and tips for delivering them successfully.

A. Interview Presentations

Job interviews often include a presentation component, where candidates are asked to deliver a pitch about themselves and their qualifications. To make a strong impression in an interview presentation, consider the following tips:

• Research the company and its values to tailor your message accordingly.
• Practice your presentation in advance and anticipate potential questions or points of discussion.
• Use storytelling techniques to make your presentation engaging and memorable.
• Be confident, enthusiastic, and energetic to convey your passion for the job and demonstrate your communication skills.

B. Business Proposals

In business settings, proposals are often used to pitch new ideas, products, or services to potential clients or stakeholders. To create a persuasive proposal presentation, consider the following tips:

• Understand the needs and interests of your audience to tailor your proposal accordingly.
• Use a clear and concise format that highlights the key benefits and value of your proposal.
• Anticipate potential objections or concerns and address them proactively in your presentation.
• Use visual aids or demonstrations to support your proposal and make it more engaging.

C. Sales Presentations

Sales presentations are a common way to promote products, services, or solutions to potential customers. To make an effective sales presentation, consider the following tips:

• Focus on the needs and pain points of your target audience, and position your product as a solution.
• Use storytelling techniques or case studies to illustrate the benefits and value of your product.
• Be confident and assertive, but also empathetic and responsive to your audience’s feedback and questions.
• Use visual aids or demos to showcase your product in action and make it more tangible.

D. Conference Presentations

Conference presentations are a chance to share research, insights, or expertise with a broader audience. To make a compelling conference presentation, consider the following tips:

• Identify the main message or takeaway of your presentation and structure your content accordingly.
• Use a clear and engaging narrative or story arc to make your presentation more cohesive and memorable.
• Use visual aids or multimedia to support your main points and make your presentation more engaging.
• Rehearse your delivery and timing to ensure that you stay within the allotted time and maintain a good pace.

E. Other Professional Settings

There are many other professional settings where presentation skills can be valuable, such as meetings, training sessions, or public speaking events. To deliver effective presentations in these settings, consider the following tips:

• Understand the purpose and scope of your presentation, and tailor your content and delivery accordingly.
• Use visual aids or other interactive elements to support your presentation and make it more engaging.
• Anticipate potential objections or questions and prepare to respond effectively.

Excellence in Public Speaking and Presentation Skills

Public speaking and presentation skills play a significant role in career success. To achieve excellence in these skills, one needs to develop strategies for growth, continuously work on improving them, and stay current with future trends.

A. Strategies for Growth

Developing strategies for growth involves setting goals and working towards achieving them. Here are some tips for building a strong foundation:

• Identify your audience – Know who you are presenting to and what their goals and interests are.
• Craft a compelling message – Create a clear message that resonates with your audience.
• Practice regularly – Practice speaking and presenting regularly, either in front of a mirror or in front of others.
• Seek feedback – Seek feedback from colleagues or mentors to identify areas for improvement.

B. Tips for Continuous Improvement

Once you have established good strategies, the next step to excellence is to continually work on improving your skills. Here are some tips for continuous improvement:

• Attend workshops or training sessions – Attend workshops or training sessions on public speaking and presentation skills to learn new techniques and best practices.
• Take advantage of technology – Utilize technology to enhance your presentations, such as incorporating multimedia or using presentation software.
• Analyze successful presentations – Analyze successful presentations from others and learn from their techniques.
• Embrace constructive criticism – Listen to feedback from audience members or colleagues and use it to make improvements.

C. Future Trends in Presentation Skills

As technology continues to advance, there are several future trends in presentation skills that professionals should stay current with, such as:

• Interactive presentations – Interactive presentations engage the audience through the use of technology, such as live polling or virtual reality.
• Storytelling – Storytelling is becoming increasingly popular in presentations, as it allows the presenter to connect with the audience on a more personal level.
• Personalization – Personalization involves tailoring the presentation to the individual needs of the audience, such as incorporating their names or organization’s branding.
• Artificial Intelligence – Artificial intelligence is being used to analyze and provide feedback on presentation skills, allowing presenters to make more data-driven improvements.

To achieve excellence in public speaking and presentation skills, individuals need to invest in building a strong foundation, continuously work on improving their skills, and stay current with future trends. By doing so, professionals can enhance their career success and influence their audience to take meaningful action.

Examples of Effective Presentations

A. sample presentation outlines.

Sample presentation outlines are included to give readers an idea of how presentations can be structured. These outlines may include the following sections:

• Introduction
• Main Points
• Supporting Details
• Call to Action

By following these outlines, presenters can organize their ideas and deliver a clear and concise message to their audience.

B. Video Examples of Effective Presentations

Video examples of effective presentations allow readers to see real-life examples of presenters who excel at delivering engaging and informative presentations. These videos may feature live presentations, TED talks, or business pitches. By watching these videos, readers can learn from the delivery techniques, body language, and visual aids used by the presenters.

C. Analysis of What Makes Effective Presentations

In this section, the article delves deeper into what makes a presentation effective. The analysis may cover topics such as:

• Audience Engagement: An effective presentation should keep the audience engaged and interested by using interactive tools, storytelling techniques, and humor.
• Relevance: The presentation should be relevant and deliver useful information that can benefit the audience.
• Structure: Presentations should follow a logical structure and should be easy to follow, with clear transitions between topics.
• Delivery: An effective presentation requires good vocal and nonverbal communication skills, such as eye contact, posture, and tone of voice.
• Visual Aids: The use of visual aids, such as slides, videos, and infographics, can enhance the message and increase engagement.

By understanding these key elements, individuals can improve their presentation skills and build their confidence when presenting in front of an audience.

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6 presentation skills and how to improve them

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What are presentation skills?

The importance of presentation skills, 6 presentation skills examples, how to improve presentation skills.

Tips for dealing with presentation anxiety

Learn how to captivate an audience with ease

Capturing an audience’s attention takes practice. 

Over time, great presenters learn how to organize their speeches and captivate an audience from start to finish. They spark curiosity, know how to read a room , and understand what their audience needs to walk away feeling like they learned something valuable.

Regardless of your profession, you most likely use presentation skills on a monthly or even weekly basis. Maybe you lead brainstorming sessions or host client calls. 

Developing effective presentation skills makes it easier to contribute ideas with confidence and show others you’re someone to trust. Although speaking in front of a crowd sometimes brings nerves and anxiety , it also sparks new opportunities.

Presentation skills are the qualities and abilities you need to communicate ideas effectively and deliver a compelling speech. They influence how you structure a presentation and how an audience receives it. Understanding body language , creating impactful visual aids, and projecting your voice all fall under this umbrella.

A great presentation depends on more than what you say. It’s about how you say it. Storytelling , stage presence, and voice projection all shape how well you express your ideas and connect with the audience. These skills do take practice, but they’re worth developing — especially if public speaking makes you nervous. 

Engaging a crowd isn’t easy. You may feel anxious to step in front of an audience and have all eyes and ears on you.

But feeling that anxiety doesn’t mean your ideas aren’t worth sharing. Whether you’re giving an inspiring speech or delivering a monthly recap at work, your audience is there to listen to you. Harness that nervous energy and turn it into progress.

Strong presentation skills make it easier to convey your thoughts to audiences of all sizes. They can help you tell a compelling story, convince people of a pitch , or teach a group something entirely new to them. And when it comes to the workplace, the strength of your presentation skills could play a part in getting a promotion or contributing to a new initiative.

To fully understand the impact these skills have on creating a successful presentation, it’s helpful to look at each one individually. Here are six valuable skills you can develop:

1. Active listening

Active listening is an excellent communication skill for any professional to hone. When you have strong active listening skills, you can listen to others effectively and observe their nonverbal cues . This helps you assess whether or not your audience members are engaged in and understand what you’re sharing. 

Great public speakers use active listening to assess the audience’s reactions and adjust their speech if they find it lacks impact. Signs like slouching, negative facial expressions, and roaming eye contact are all signs to watch out for when giving a presentation.

2. Body language

If you’re researching presentation skills, chances are you’ve already watched a few notable speeches like TED Talks or industry seminars. And one thing you probably noticed is that speakers can capture attention with their body language. 

A mixture of eye contact, hand gestures , and purposeful pacing makes a presentation more interesting and engaging. If you stand in one spot and don’t move your body, the audience might zone out.

3. Stage presence

A great stage presence looks different for everyone. A comedian might aim for more movement and excitement, and a conference speaker might focus their energy on the content of their speech. Although neither is better than the other, both understand their strengths and their audience’s needs. 

Developing a stage presence involves finding your own unique communication style . Lean into your strengths, whether that’s adding an injection of humor or asking questions to make it interactive . To give a great presentation, you might even incorporate relevant props or presentation slides.

4. Storytelling

According to Forbes, audiences typically pay attention for about 10 minutes before tuning out . But you can lengthen their attention span by offering a presentation that interests them for longer. Include a narrative they’ll want to listen to, and tell a story as you go along. 

Shaping your content to follow a clear narrative can spark your audience’s curiosity and entice them to pay careful attention. You can use anecdotes from your personal or professional life that take your audience along through relevant moments. If you’re pitching a product, you can start with a problem and lead your audience through the stages of how your product provides a solution.

5. Voice projection

Although this skill may be obvious, you need your audience to hear what you’re saying. This can be challenging if you’re naturally soft-spoken and struggle to project your voice.

Remember to straighten your posture and take deep breaths before speaking, which will help you speak louder and fill the room. If you’re talking into a microphone or participating in a virtual meeting, you can use your regular conversational voice, but you still want to sound confident and self-assured with a strong tone.

If you’re unsure whether everyone can hear you, you can always ask the audience at the beginning of your speech and wait for confirmation. That way, they won’t have to potentially interrupt you later.

Ensuring everyone can hear you also includes your speed and annunciation. It’s easy to speak quickly when nervous, but try to slow down and pronounce every word. Mumbling can make your presentation difficult to understand and pay attention to.

6. Verbal communication 

Although verbal communication involves your projection and tone, it also covers the language and pacing you use to get your point across. This includes where you choose to place pauses in your speech or the tone you use to emphasize important ideas.

If you’re giving a presentation on collaboration in the workplace , you might start your speech by saying, “There’s something every workplace needs to succeed: teamwork.” By placing emphasis on the word “ teamwork ,” you give your audience a hint on what ideas will follow.

To further connect with your audience through diction, pay careful attention to who you’re speaking to. The way you talk to your colleagues might be different from how you speak to a group of superiors, even if you’re discussing the same subject. You might use more humor and a conversational tone for the former and more serious, formal diction for the latter.

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses when it comes to presenting. Maybe you’re confident in your use of body language, but your voice projection needs work. Maybe you’re a great storyteller in small group settings, but need to work on your stage presence in front of larger crowds. 

The first step to improving presentation skills is pinpointing your gaps and determining which qualities to build upon first. Here are four tips for enhancing your presentation skills:

1. Build self-confidence

Confident people know how to speak with authority and share their ideas. Although feeling good about your presentation skills is easier said than done, building confidence is key to helping your audience believe in what you’re saying. Try practicing positive self-talk and continuously researching your topic's ins and outs.

If you don’t feel confident on the inside, fake it until you make it. Stand up straight, project your voice, and try your best to appear engaged and excited. Chances are, the audience doesn’t know you’re unsure of your skills — and they don’t need to.

Another tip is to lean into your slideshow, if you’re using one. Create something colorful and interesting so the audience’s eyes fall there instead of on you. And when you feel proud of your slideshow, you’ll be more eager to share it with others, bringing more energy to your presentation.

2. Watch other presentations

Developing the soft skills necessary for a good presentation can be challenging without seeing them in action. Watch as many as possible to become more familiar with public speaking skills and what makes a great presentation. You could attend events with keynote speakers or view past speeches on similar topics online.

Take a close look at how those presenters use verbal communication and body language to engage their audiences. Grab a notebook and jot down what you enjoyed and your main takeaways. Try to recall the techniques they used to emphasize their main points, whether they used pauses effectively, had interesting visual aids, or told a fascinating story.

3. Get in front of a crowd

You don’t need a large auditorium to practice public speaking. There are dozens of other ways to feel confident and develop good presentation skills.

If you’re a natural comedian, consider joining a small stand-up comedy club. If you’re an avid writer, participate in a public poetry reading. Even music and acting can help you feel more comfortable in front of a crowd.

If you’d rather keep it professional, you can still work on your presentation skills in the office. Challenge yourself to participate at least once in every team meeting, or plan and present a project to become more comfortable vocalizing your ideas. You could also speak to your manager about opportunities that flex your public speaking abilities.

4. Overcome fear

Many people experience feelings of fear before presenting in front of an audience, whether those feelings appear as a few butterflies or more severe anxiety. Try grounding yourself to shift your focus to the present moment. If you’re stuck dwelling on previous experiences that didn’t go well, use those mistakes as learning experiences and focus on what you can improve to do better in the future.

Tips for dealing with presentation anxiety 

It’s normal to feel nervous when sharing your ideas. In fact, according to a report from the Journal of Graduate Medical Education, public speaking anxiety is prevalent in 15–30% of the general population .

Even though having a fear of public speaking is common, it doesn’t make it easier. You might feel overwhelmed, become stiff, and forget what you were going to say. But although the moment might scare you, there are ways to overcome the fear and put mind over matter.

Use these tactics to reduce your stress when you have to make a presentation:

1. Practice breathing techniques

If you experience anxiety often, you’re probably familiar with breathing techniques for stress relief . Incorporating these exercises into your daily routine can help you stop worrying and regulate anxious feelings. 

Before a big presentation, take a moment alone to practice breathing techniques, ground yourself, and reduce tension. It’s also a good idea to take breaths throughout the presentation to speak slower and calm yourself down .

2. Get organized

The more organized you are, the more prepared you’ll feel. Carefully outline all of the critical information you want to use in your presentation, including your main talking points and visual aids, so you don’t forget anything. Use bullet points and visuals on each slide to remind you of what you want to talk about, and create handheld notes to help you stay on track.

3. Embrace moments of silence

It’s okay to lose your train of thought. It happens to even the most experienced public speakers once in a while. If your mind goes blank, don’t panic. Take a moment to breathe, gather your thoughts, and refer to your notes to see where you left off. You can drink some water or make a quick joke to ease the silence or regain your footing. And it’s okay to say, “Give me a moment while I find my notes.” Chances are, people understand the position you’re in.

4. Practice makes progress

Before presenting, rehearse in front of friends and family members you trust. This gives you the chance to work out any weak spots in your speech and become comfortable communicating out loud. If you want to go the extra mile, ask your makeshift audience to ask a surprise question. This tests your on-the-spot thinking and will prove that you can keep cool when things come up.

Whether you’re new to public speaking or are a seasoned presenter, you’re bound to make a few slip-ups. It happens to everyone. The most important thing is that you try your best, brush things off, and work on improving your skills to do better in your next presentation.

Although your job may require a different level of public speaking than your favorite TED Talk , developing presentation skills is handy in any profession. You can use presentation skills in a wide range of tasks in the workplace, whether you’re sharing your ideas with colleagues, expressing concerns to higher-ups, or pitching strategies to potential clients.

Remember to use active listening to read the room and engage your audience with an interesting narrative. Don’t forget to step outside your comfort zone once in a while and put your skills to practice in front of a crowd. After facing your fears, you’ll feel confident enough to put presentation skills on your resume.

If you’re trying to build your skills and become a better employee overall, try a communications coach with BetterUp. 

Elevate your communication skills

Unlock the power of clear and persuasive communication. Our coaches can guide you to build strong relationships and succeed in both personal and professional life.

Elizabeth Perry, ACC

Elizabeth Perry is a Coach Community Manager at BetterUp. She uses strategic engagement strategies to cultivate a learning community across a global network of Coaches through in-person and virtual experiences, technology-enabled platforms, and strategic coaching industry partnerships. With over 3 years of coaching experience and a certification in transformative leadership and life coaching from Sofia University, Elizabeth leverages transpersonal psychology expertise to help coaches and clients gain awareness of their behavioral and thought patterns, discover their purpose and passions, and elevate their potential. She is a lifelong student of psychology, personal growth, and human potential as well as an ICF-certified ACC transpersonal life and leadership Coach.

The 11 tips that will improve your public speaking skills

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14.3: Importance of Oral Presentations

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• Arley Cruthers
• Kwantlen Polytechnic University

In the workplace, and during your university career, you will likely be asked to give oral presentations. An oral presentation is a key persuasive tool. If you work in marketing, for example, you will often be asked to “pitch” campaigns to clients. Even though these pitches could happen over email, the face-to-face element allows marketers to connect with the client, respond to questions, demonstrate their knowledge and bring their ideas to life through storytelling.

In this section, we’ll focus on public speaking. While this section focuses on public speaking advocacy, you can bring these tools to everything from a meeting where you’re telling your colleagues about the results of a project to a keynote speech at a conference.

Imagine your favourite public speaker. When Meggie (one of the authors of this section) imagines a memorable speaker, she often thinks of her high school English teacher, Mrs. Permeswaran. You may be skeptical of her choice, but Mrs. Permeswaran captured the students’ attention daily. How? By providing information through stories and examples that felt relatable, reasonable, and relevant. Even with a room of students, Meggie often felt that the English teacher was just talking to her . Students worked hard, too, to listen, using note-taking and subtle nods (or confused eyebrows) to communicate that they cared about what was being said.

Now imagine your favourite public speaker. Who comes to mind? A famous comedian like Jen Kirkman? An ac

tivist like Laverne Cox? Perhaps you picture Barack Obama. What makes them memorable for you? Were they funny? Relatable? Dynamic? Confident? Try to think beyond what they said to how they made you feel . What they said certainly matters, but we are often less inclined to remember the what without a powerful how — how they delivered their message; how their performance implicated us or called us in; how they made us feel or how they asked us to think or act differently.

In this chapter, we provide an introduction to public speaking by exploring what it is and why it’s impactful as a communication process. Specifically, we invite you to consider public speaking as a type of advocacy. When you select information to share with others, you are advocating for the necessity of that information to be heard. You are calling on the audience and calling them in to listen to your perspective. Even the English teacher above was advocating that sentence structure and proper writing were important ideas to integrate. She was a trusted speaker, too, given her credibility.

Before we continue our conversation around advocacy, let’s first start with a brief definition of public speaking.

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Effective Oral Presentations

Verbally (and as a general rule), do not write down and memorize or read your full text, because then your presentation will sound like what it is: a recited written text. Instead, memorize the outline of your presentation — that is, a tree structure of main points and subpoints — and speak ex tempore, reinventing the words as you go along. As you do, you will occasionally need to think about what to say next and find the most appropriate words to say it. Instead of using filler words ( um , er , you know , I mean , etc.), simply pause. If you say um , you get about half a second of thinking time and the audience is likely to notice the um and be irritated by it. If you keep silent, you can get up to two or three seconds of thinking time without the audience noticing anything. Even if attendees do notice the silence, they will simply think that you are choosing your words carefully — and there is nothing wrong with that.

Despite pointing often at the screen, Marie nicely faces the audience with her body at all times, keeps her hands down between gestures, and maintains eye contact with the attendees. Transcript Vocally, vary the tone, rate, and volume of your voice as a function of the meaning, complexity, and importance of what you are saying. You need not invent a new intonation pattern: You simply need to amplify your normal pattern.

Visually, control your body. Adopt a stable, confident position; move only when you have a positive reason to do so (for example, move closer to the audience for taking questions), not when your body seems to ask for it. When you make a gesture, make it large and deliberate; between gestures, bring your hands down and do not fidget. Establish eye contact: Engage the audience by looking them straight in the eyes.

At all times, make sure you address the audience. Even if you have slides, tell the audience your story in a stand-alone way; do not just explain your slides. In particular, anticipate your slides. You should know at all times what your next slide is about so you can insert an appropriate transition.

Delivering as a non-native speaker

To keep the audience engaged , Jean-luc emphasizes his points with facial expressions, purposeful gestures, and — especially — a high dynamic range in his vocal delivery. Transcript If you are a non-native speaker of English, you may find it more challenging to speak ex tempore in English than in your native language. Still, even imperfect extemporaneous English is more likely to engage the audience than reciting a more polished, less spontaneous written text. To improve your delivery and overall presentation as a non-native speaker, practice more, pace yourself, and support your spoken discourse with appropriate slides.

While all speakers benefit from practicing their presentations multiple times, consider investing more time in such practice if you are less familiar with the language. Practicing helps you identify missing vocabulary, including key technical terms (which are difficult to circumvent), and express your ideas more fluently. As you practice, you may want to prepare a list of difficult words (to review on the day of your presentation) or write down an occasional complex yet crucial sentence. Still, do not feel bound to what you write down. These notes should be a help, not a constraint.

Practicing in front of an audience (a few colleagues, for example) can help you correct or refine your pronunciation. If you are unsure how to pronounce some words or phrases, you can ask native speakers in advance or check online dictionaries that offer phonetic spelling or audio rendering. Still, you may be unaware of certain words you mispronounce; a practice audience can point these words out to you if you invite it to do so.

During your presentation, pace yourself. As a non-native speaker, you may feel you need to search for your words more often or for a longer time than in your native language, but the mechanism is the same. Do not let this challenge pressure you. Give yourself the time you need to express your ideas clearly. Silence is not your enemy; it is your friend.

Pacing yourself also means speaking more slowly than you otherwise might, especially if you have an accent in English. Accents are common among non-native speakers — and among specific groups of native speakers, too — and they are not a problem as long as they are mild. Often, they are experienced as charming. Still, they take some getting used to. Remember to slow down, especially at the beginning of a presentation, so your audience can get used to your accent, whether native or not.

Handling stage fright and mishaps

Most speakers, even experienced ones, are nervous before or during an oral presentation. Such stage fright is normal and even reassuring: It shows that you care, and you should care if you want to deliver an effective presentation. Accordingly, accept your stage fright rather than feeling guilty about it. Instead of trying to suppress nervousness, strive to focus your nervous energy in your voice, your gestures, and your eye contact. Do not let it dissipate into entropy, such as by using filler words or engaging in nervous mannerisms.

Among the many ways to keep your nerves under control, perhaps the most effective one is to focus constructively on your purpose at all times. Before your presentation, eliminate all the unknowns: Prepare your presentation well, identify (or even meet) your audience, and know the room. During the presentation, do what it takes to get your message across, even if it means doing something differently than you had planned. Have a positive attitude about the presentation at all times: Visualize what you want to achieve, not what you want to avoid.

Even with careful preparation, mishaps can occur. For example, technology may fail, you may forget what you wanted to say, or you may accidentally say the wrong thing. As a rule, do not apologize for what happens — neither in advance nor after the fact. Although well-meant, such apologies provide no benefit to the audience: They are noise. If you can do something about the problem, such as fix the technology or insert what you forgot later in the presentation, concentrate on doing so instead of apologizing. If the problem is out of your control, then there is no need to apologize for it. As a specific example, if you feel your command of English is poor, then do what you can in advance to improve it; in particular, practice your presentation thoroughly. Then, on the day of the presentation, do your best with the command you have, but do not apologize at the beginning of the presentation for what you think is poor English. This apology will not solve anything, and it gives the attendees a negative image of you. Rather, let the attendees judge for themselves whether your command of English is sufficient (perhaps it is, despite what you might think). In other words, focus on delivering results, not excuses.

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When it comes to getting promoted and advancing in your career, there are two skills that are perhaps the most important to your success.

Communication and public speaking.

Why is Communication Important?

What exactly are we referring to when we say “communication”?

According to Merriam-Webster, communication is “ a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior ”.

In other words, communication is the way we receive and deliver messages to each other using words (spoken and written), tone, symbols, sounds, gestures, body language, and facial expressions. Each of these aspects plays a role in how we communicate, and when they aren’t used correctly, the message can easily be misinterpreted.

While not everyone is subjected to “public speaking” in their jobs, communication is vital in any career. Without effective communication, tasks don’t get completed correctly, or at all.

No matter what industry you are in, or what your job title is, good communication is crucial to the success of you and your team. And if you are not communicating effectively, your superiors will likely take notice, giving your peers the upper hand when it comes to bonuses and promotions.

Why is Public Speaking Important?

Then we have public speaking…

The words that many people fear, but are necessary to be successful in most workplaces.

So what exactly is public speaking? Merriam-Webster says “ the act or process of making speeches in public; the art of effective oral communication with an audience ”.

While both of these statements are accurate, the second half of the definition provides a more general perspective. Public speaking does not necessarily mean you are giving an actual speech.

Public speaking can also include activities like leading a meeting, giving a sales pitch, or telling a story in front of a small group. Any situation in which you are the primary communicator in front of a group of two or more people can be considered “public speaking”.

So, think about your career. How often are you in situations that require effective public speaking?

My guess is, ALL THE TIME!

In order to share your ideas and show off your abilities, you must be able to communicate them effectively in meetings and presentations.

Speaking in front of others is the best way to get noticed, and those who get noticed are usually the ones who get promoted or considered for other positions.

And, not to mention, if you ever want to be in management, you will most likely be leading meetings and presenting to upper management on a regular basis.

So, if you want to advance in your career, you better work on your communication and public speaking skills. Public speaking training from experienced professionals can be of great help when looking to improve these skills.

To help you get started, here are 18 tips to help you become a more effective communicator and public speaker.

How to Communicate Effectively

Be clear and concise

When communicating with others, it is important to be very detailed and thoughtful when choosing your words to ensure your audience understands exactly what you are communicating.

Encourage feedback

Feedback can also be very useful to better understand how well you are communicating. By asking others for their feedback or confirmation, you will know whether or not they completely understand your message. It can also help you make changes in the way you communicate if someone has difficulty understanding your message.

Be aware of non-verbal communication

When talking to someone face to face, take note of their non-verbal cues, such as their body language and facial expressions. Sometimes these cues can tell you more about what the other person is thinking or feeling than anything they actually say, so be aware of the non-verbal cues that you and others are showing.

Encourage open discussions and two-way communication

Always be inviting to others. Make sure people know that you are open for discussion without any judgment or criticism. Let them know you are happy to listen and help so they feel comfortable enough to come to you openly. Building this trust and relationship with others will go a long way in ensuring effective communication.

Use the appropriate method of communication

Depending on the situation, some methods of communication are better than others. While face to face, video chat, or over the phone are usually the best, since you can say more and use other methods of expression, there is also a time and place for other communication methods like email, chat, or texting. It’s important to understand which method to use depending on the situation.

Be receptive and listen attentively

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of effective communication is being receptive and listening attentively . When you take the time to listen to others, it is much easier to communicate back to them in a way that they understand. By listening attentively, you also show that you care, enhancing your mutual respect for each other.

Have mutual respect

You need to develop a mutual respect with others in order to achieve effective communication. By developing this relationship, you will have more trust and respect for each other, and, therefore, will work better with them to accomplish a certain task.

Listen to tone of voice

When communicating over the phone, face to face, or video chat, tone of voice can also influence how your message is received. If your tone doesn’t match the message you are trying to send, it may cause confusion and misinterpretation from others.

Use appropriate emotions

There are many different scenarios that require you to communicate with certain emotions to get your message across. For instance, if you are trying to tell your co-worker that you need something done by the end of the day, they are much more likely to understand the importance if you communicate in a way that is authoritative and demanding, instead of a playful and friendly way.

Understand who you are communicating with

People also require different methods and styles of communication. People have different emotions and work better with different types of communication. So, it is important to understand who you are communicating with, and how they communicate most effectively.

How to Become a More Confident and Skilled Public Speaker

Overcome fear and anxiety

The first thing most people need to do is let go of the fear and anxiety caused by public speaking. There are many techniques that you can use to overcome your fear of public speaking , so find what works best for you.

Much like everything else in life, the more you practice, the better you become. Not only will practicing make you a better speaker, it will also give you confidence and help you overcome your fear and anxiety. Take every opportunity you can to speak in front of others, whether it’s in front of your family and friends, a group club, or a class. Practice and repetition are key.

Make it about your audience

Whatever it is you are speaking on should benefit your audience. While it may be about you, the goal should be to bring value to your audience or communicate a point, so be sure to engage with the audience and focus on helping them. This will help take the focus off of you, and make it more about helping the audience.

Set your expectations beforehand

Understand what your goal is, and accept that you won’t satisfy everyone. Anytime you are giving a speech or presentation of any kind, there are always going to be people in the audience that don’t want to be there, and you will see it on their faces. So it’s good to go in with the mindset that not everyone will enjoy it. That way it doesn’t throw you off guard. Your main goal should be communicating a message in a way that brings value to as many people as possible.

Make slides, but don’t memorize

It can be helpful to make slides to present your topic. This can help guide you, and give your audience visuals to follow. It’s important that you keep the slides simple and clean though, so that your audience doesn’t get distracted. And don’t memorize a presentation word for word either, unless you really take enough time to practice and make it sound unscripted. Your audience wants to hear your authenticity, which is difficult when you are reciting lines directly off a slide show.

Exercise and practice your breathing

In order to give a great presentation, you need to sound confident. Exercise and proper breathing techniques can help give you confidence and allow you to speak loud and clear, instead of with a shaky, nervous voice.

When you are presenting, try to slow down a little. When we get nervous or excited, we tend to start talking too fast and forget how to breathe without even noticing. So consciously take the time to slow down your talking and take pauses for both dramatic effect, and to control your breathing.

Use effective body language

Your body language tells a lot about you while on stage. It’s important to use your body language to project confidence and to engage the audience. While you don’t want to use too much movement so that it distracts the audience, using small hand movements and facial expressions can help engage the audience and make your points more effective.

Further Reading from Skills You Need

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Our eBooks are ideal for anyone who wants to learn about or develop their interpersonal skills and are full of easy-to-follow, practical information.

About the Author

Parker Horton is the Founder of Speakers Anonymous, an online community where individuals can come to practice and develop their public speaking and communication skills. His community hosts video tutorials, free training led by public speaking coaches, and most notably, practice sessions where individuals can practice speaking with others.

Continue to: Overcoming Presentation Nerves Presenting to Large Groups

See also: Effective Speaking | 7 Public Speaking Tips For Introverts Giving a Speech | Self-Presentation in Presentations

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Important Presentation Skills for Workplace Success

• What Are Presentation Skills?

Steps To Create a Presentation

Skills that help make an effective presentation, how to make your skills stand out.

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Whether you’re a high-level executive or an administrative assistant, developing your presentation skills is one key way to climb in an office-based job. Leaders make decisions based on information shared in presentation format, and hardly any business changes its mind without first seeing a persuasive presentation.

It is important for any office employee to know what steps go into creating an effective presentation and what presentation skills are most important to employers. Highlighting these skills will also help you stand out during your job search.

Key Takeaways

• Presentation skills are what you need to know to be able to give an engaging, effective presentation.
• The steps to creating a successful presentation are preparation, delivery, and follow-up.
• Employers want to know you have the necessary skills to research, analyze, and create a presentation, plus the communication skills needed to deliver it and field questions afterward.
• You can highlight your skills to employers through your resume, cover letter, and interview.

What Are Presentation Skills? 

Presentation skills refer to all the qualities you need to create and deliver a clear and effective presentation. While what you say during a presentation matters, employers also value the ability to create supporting materials, such as slides.

Your prospective employer may want you to deliver briefings and reports to colleagues, conduct training sessions, present information to clients, or perform any number of other tasks that involve speaking before an audience.

Giving engaging and easy-to-understand talks is a major component of the strong  oral communication skills  that are a  job requirement  for many positions. Not all presentations take place in a formal meeting. Many presentation skills are relevant to one-on-one consults or sales calls.

Any presentation has three phases: preparation, delivery, and follow-up. All presentation skills fit into one of these three phases.

Preparation 

Preparation involves research and building the presentation. Consider the audience you'll be presenting to and what most interests them. This may mean crafting the entire text (or at least writing notes) and creating any slides and other supporting audio/visual materials.

You will also have to make sure that the appropriate venue is available, properly set up beforehand, and ensure the projector (if you'll need one) works and connects with your laptop.

You'll also want to practice your presentation as many times as you need to to feel comfortable delivering it with ease and confidence within the time allotted for the presentation.

Skills related to preparation include conducting research related to your presentation topic, devising charts and graphs depicting your research findings, and learning about your audience to better tailor your presentation to their needs. You'll also need to create digital slides, using statistics, examples, and stories to illustrate your points and effectively to persuade the audience.

Preparing handouts or digital references is an added courtesy that will help the audience pay attention because they won't be preoccupied with note-taking.

Your delivery is the part of the presentation that the audience sees. A good delivery depends on careful preparation and confident presentation and requires its own distinctive  skill set . 

Skills related to delivery include giving an attention-grabbing opening for a talk, providing a summary of what will be covered to introduce the presentation and provide context, and using  body language  and eye contact to convey energy and confidence.

Make sure you pause to emphasize key points, modulate your vocal tone for emphasis, and articulate your speech clearly and smoothly.

Don't be afraid of injecting humor or speaking with enthusiasm and animation—these techniques can help you in projecting confidence to your audience.

Summarize key points at the conclusion of the presentation, and be sure to have a plan for how you'll field any audience questions.

Presentation follow-up includes properly breaking down and storing any equipment, contacting any audience members with whom you agreed to communicate further, and soliciting, collecting, and analyzing feedback.

In some presentations, you may collect information from audience members—such as names and contact information or completed surveys—that you also must organize and store.

Skills related to follow-up include creating an evaluation form to solicit feedback from attendees, interpreting feedback from evaluations, and modifying the content and/or delivery for future presentations. Other follow-up skills include organizing a database of attendees for future presentations, interviewing key attendees to gain additional feedback, and emailing presentation slides to attendees.

To create and deliver the most effective presentation takes a variety of skills, which you can always work to improve.

You must be able to look honestly at your performance, assess the feedback you get, and figure out what you need to do to get better. That takes  analytical thinking .

More importantly, you need to have a firm grasp of the information you are about to communicate to others. You need to analyze your audience and be prepared to think quickly if asked questions that force you to demonstrate that you are fully aware of the material and its implications.

The kind of analytical skills you need to be an effective presenter include problem sensitivity, problem-solving , reporting and surveying, optimization, and predictive modeling. It also helps to be adept at strategic planning, integration, process management, and diagnostics. With these skills, you'll be better able to objectively analyze, evaluate, and act on your findings.

Organization

You do not want to be the person who spends half of their presentation time trying to find a cable to connect their laptop to the projector. Many things can and do go wrong just before a presentation unless you are  organized .

Presentation preparation also means keeping track of notes, information, and start/stop times. You will want to proofread and fine-tune all the materials you plan to use for the presentation to catch any mistakes. Make sure you time yourself when you rehearse so you know how long it will take to deliver the presentation.

A presentation that's finished in half the time allotted is as problematic as one that's too long-winded.

Some key organizational skills to work on include event planning, auditing, benchmarking, prioritization, and recordkeeping. Make sure your scheduling is on point and pay close attention to detail. Quick thinking is an important skill to have for when things inevitably go wrong.

Nonverbal Communication

When speaking to an audience, the way you present yourself can be just as important as how you present your information. You want to appear confident and engaging. You can do this through good posture, the use of hand gestures, and making eye contact with the audience.

Practice your  nonverbal communication  by filming yourself doing a practice presentation and observing your body language carefully. Your physical bearing and poise should convey a degree of comfort and confidence in front of an audience, while active listening , respect, and emotional intelligence will help you in facilitating group discussions.

Presentation Software

Microsoft PowerPoint is the dominant software used to create visual aids for presentations. Learn to use it well, including the special features outside of basic templates that can really bring a presentation to life. Even if someone else is preparing your slideshow for you, it will help to know how to use the software in case of last-minute changes.

Other software that is good to learn includes Microsoft Office, Apple Keynote, Google Slides, and Adobe Presenter.

Public Speaking

You need to appear comfortable and engaging when speaking before a live audience, even if you're not. This can take years of practice, and sometimes  public speaking  just isn't for certain people. An uncomfortable presenter is a challenge for everyone. Fortunately, public speaking skills can improve with practice . Some skills to work on include articulation, engagement, and memorization. You should be able to assess the needs of the audience and handle difficult questions. Controlling your performance anxiety will help you communicate more effectively.

Research is the first step in preparing most presentations and could range from a multi-year process to spending 20 minutes online, depending on context and subject matter. At the very least, you must be able to clearly frame research questions, identify appropriate information sources, and organize your results. Other useful skills include brainstorming, collaboration , comparative analysis, data interpretation, and deductive and inductive reasoning. Business intelligence is a skill that will help you evaluate what information you need to support the bottom line, while case analysis and causal relationships will help you parse and evaluate meaning.

Verbal Communication

Public speaking is one form of  verbal communication , but you will need other forms to give a good presentation. Specifically, you must know how to answer questions. You should be able to understand questions asked by your audience (even if they're strange or poorly worded) and provide respectful, honest, and accurate answers without getting off-topic. Use active listening, focus, and empathy to understand your audience. Skills such as assertiveness, affirmation, and enunciation will help you restate and clarify your key points as it relates to their questions or concerns.

You may or may not need a written script, but you do need to pre-plan what you are going to say, in what order you will say it, and at what level of detail. If you can write a cohesive essay, you can plan a presentation.

Typical writing skills apply to your presentation just as they do to other forms of writing, including grammar, spelling, vocabulary, and proofreading. The ability to build outlines, take notes, and mark up documents will also be useful.

More Presentation Skills

In addition to the skills previously mentioned, there are other important skills that can apply to your presentation. The other skills you need will depend on what your presentation is about, your audience, and your intended results. Some of these additional skills include:

• Summarizing
• Providing anecdotes to illustrate a point
• Designing handouts
• Recognizing and countering objections
• Posing probing questions to elicit more detail about specific issues
• Awareness of ethnic, political, and religious diversity
• Receiving criticism without defensiveness
• Refraining from speaking too often or interrupting others
• Anticipating the concerns of others
• Product knowledge
• SWOT analysis format
• Supporting statements with evidence
• Multilingual
• Working with reviewers
• Consistency
• Developing and maintaining standard operating procedures (SOPs)
• Developing a proposition statement
• Creating and managing expectations

Include skills on your resume. If applicable, you might mention these words in your  resume summary  or  headline .

Highlight skills in your cover letter. Mention one or two specific presentation skills and give examples of instances when you demonstrated these traits in the workplace.

Show your presentation skills in job interviews. During the interview process, you may be asked to give a sample presentation. In this case, you will want to embody these skills during the presentation. For example, you will want to demonstrate your oral communication skills by speaking clearly and concisely throughout the presentation.

PennState. " Steps in Preparing a Presentation ."

Harvard Division of Continuing Education. " 10 Tips for Improving Your Public Speaking Skills ."

Northern Illinois University. " Delivering the Presentation ."

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Importance of Oral Presentations

In the workplace, and during your university career, you will likely be asked to give oral presentations. An oral presentation is a key persuasive tool. If you work in marketing, for example, you will often be asked to “pitch” campaigns to clients. Even though these pitches could happen over email, the face-to-face element allows marketers to connect with the client, respond to questions, demonstrate their knowledge and bring their ideas to life through storytelling.

In this section, we’ll focus on public speaking. While this section focuses on public speaking advocacy, you can bring these tools to everything from a meeting where you’re telling your colleagues about the results of a project to a keynote speech at a conference.

Imagine your favourite public speaker. When Meggie (one of the authors of this section) imagines a memorable speaker, she often thinks of her high school English teacher, Mrs. Permeswaran. You may be skeptical of her choice, but Mrs. Permeswaran captured the students’ attention daily. How? By providing information through stories and examples that felt relatable, reasonable, and relevant. Even with a room of students, Meggie often felt that the English teacher was just talking to  her . Students worked hard, too, to listen, using note-taking and subtle nods (or confused eyebrows) to communicate that they cared about what was being said.

Now imagine your favourite public speaker. Who comes to mind? A famous comedian like Jen Kirkman? An ac

tivist like Laverne Cox? Perhaps you picture Barack Obama. What makes them memorable for you? Were they funny? Relatable? Dynamic? Confident? Try to think beyond  what  they said to  how they made you feel . What they said certainly matters, but we are often less inclined to remember the  what  without a powerful  how — how they delivered their message; how their performance implicated us or called us in; how they made us feel or how they asked us to think or act differently.

In this chapter, we provide an introduction to public speaking by exploring what it is and why it’s impactful as a communication process. Specifically, we invite you to consider public speaking as a type of advocacy. When you select information to share with others, you are advocating for the necessity of that information to be heard. You are calling on the audience and calling them in to listen to your perspective. Even the English teacher above was advocating that sentence structure and proper writing were important ideas to integrate. She was a trusted speaker, too, given her credibility.

Before we continue our conversation around advocacy, let’s first start with a brief definition of public speaking.

Business Writing For Everyone Copyright © 2021 by Arley Cruthers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Why presentation skills are so important to your career success

As someone who has trained thousands of people in persuasive presentation skills over much of the past two decades, anyone can be an exceptional presenter. It’s just a matter of knowing what to do and doing it.

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Most of us have had the experience where a business meeting just goes wrong. Where the presenter either didn’t grab your attention from the start or where they lost control of the presentation at some stage.

But the real question is, have you ever been the presenter who delivered a ‘less than successful’ business presentation or pitch for your services? Have you ever facilitated a meeting that ended in your client or colleagues walking out at the end, busting to get back to work, with no intention whatsoever of implementing anything you have just talked to them about? Have you ever pitched in business and afterwards felt terrible, because you know deep down that there is no way your potential client feels compelled to engage in a business partnership with you in any way, shape or form? At the time, it feels like the meeting was a huge waste of time for you, for them and for your business.

Interestingly, most people think of presenting as something separate from life; as something we only do when there’s a lectern, some slides and an audience. But just because you don’t have to make big pitches to a board or represent your company at an industry conference doesn’t mean you don’t present to people. We present to people with the intention to influence them every single day. We present to our colleagues, our staff or managers, our suppliers and potential clients. You are presenting yourself every day at work whether you realise it or not, and presentation skills are critical when you are trying to get ahead in business.

The more successful entrepreneurs I meet, the more I realise that regardless of their intelligence and business acumen, regardless of their excellent products or service and regardless of their commitment to their business, these successful people have one thing in common. They know how to present their ideas in a compelling, influential and memorable way. They know how to structure their thoughts, how to connect with people, and they say what they want to say in a way that resonates with their audience. They inspire and compel their audiences to take action!

Let’s be clear on what is meant by presenting

I believe presenting is any form of communication with another person (including face to face, over the phone, by email or through the internet), from one-on-one, to small and large groups. And I believe we present both formally and informally. In short, most people in business present regularly every single day of their life.

Presenting is about connecting with people through the words you choose to say and the way you choose to say them. When you present you show people who you are and how you can help them. It’s an opportunity to step up and be noticed for what you can offer. Presenting provides a unique opportunity for you to showcase your professional expertise and accelerate your career.

It doesn’t matter how good your message is if no one’s listening

You may have thought that you were just running another team meeting, but your team members that morning were hoping it would be a motivational event that would encourage them to work harder and not apply for that job with your competitor.

You may have thought that this was just another prospective client as you answered the phone to convert the business – but this ‘potential client’ has already spoken to your three closest competitors as they shop around for the best solution to their problem.

You may have thought that you were just a small part of the picture, just the technical expert with the graphs and charts, but the client was watching the way you presented your information with a plan to refer you to their biggest supplier.

You may have thought you were just answering another email inquiry that came through your website contacts page, but the person inquiring actually turned over millions of dollars this year and absolutely needed long-term financial advice. The minute you connected with them they were judging your interpersonal skills.

Presentation skills really matter

In case you’re not yet convinced, in a business context, audience members or clients will typically give you less than five minutes to prove yourself before completely switching off.

My research in Australia (conducted with over 800 employees from small, medium and large businesses) has found that if you are an effective business presenter, you are in the minority. When asked about workplace presenters they had seen in the last 12 months:

- Only 38 per cent of respondents thought presenters understood their needs as a client.

- More than half the respondents said that presenters generally read from their PowerPoint slides.

- Only 40 per cent of respondents found presenters to be engaging.

- Only 28 per cent of respondents said that they were moved to action after seeing presenters.

So what does all this mean?

It means we are typically going to too many boring meetings and workplace presentations where the presenter is not enjoying themselves, and the audience is enjoying themselves even less! It’s critical you remember that anyone can be an exceptional presenter. It’s just a matter of knowing what to do and doing it.

Every important presentation should be planned, and the good news is that the more practised or accomplished you are at crafting your message, the more efficient and productive you will become.

Michelle Bowden, managing director, Michelle Bowden Enterprises

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Applying Oral Communication Skills in Your Career and Everyday Life

Deanna Dannels, associate dean of academic affairs in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and a professor in the Department of Communications, discusses the importance of oral communication skills for NC State students and graduates.

By Samantha Rich, director of DASA Assessment 

This article is part of a series on NC State’s Pack Proficiencies : the five competency areas in which all NC State undergraduates should develop before they graduate: written communication, oral communication, quantitative literacy, critical thinking, and creative thinking. 

Oral communication is ubiquitous in our everyday lives: we communicate with classmates and colleagues on Zoom calls, we demonstrate our content knowledge and expertise in oral presentations, and we communicate our career goals to potential employers in job interviews. Outside of the classroom and workplace, we’re chatting with our Lyft driver, calling in our take-out orders, and enjoying casual conversations with friends and family. NC State recognizes that oral communication is a skill that should be practiced and developed throughout your undergraduate career, and that’s why oral communication is one of our Pack Proficiencies . 

NC State faculty and staff provide students opportunities to develop oral communication skills in courses, within student organizations, through undergraduate research, and through myriad events and activities across campus. In the interview below, Deanna Dannels, associate dean of academic affairs in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and professor in the Department of Communication, describes how students engage with oral communication in their everyday lives and why it is important that students develop proficiency in this area. Interview excerpts are edited for brevity and clarity.

Question: What does it mean to be proficient in oral communication?

Deanna Dannels: Oral communication really involves a number of things: it involves clearly expressing your ideas, building and evidencing a sound argument using the evidence necessary to justify a position, and adapting your argument to a variety of different audiences. 

Question: Why is it important for students to develop their oral communication skills?

Deanna Dannels: Students communicate every day — from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep. Students communicate with their roommates; they communicate with their faculty; they communicate with their friends. But just because you do it every day doesn’t mean that you do it well. One of the benefits of developing oral communication skills is that students can develop competency in something that is very pervasive in their lives — to reflect on it, to practice it, to get feedback on it so that they can become better at accomplishing their goals.

You need to know how to communicate to be a person who can engage in multiple contexts. Our world is rapidly becoming more interdisciplinary, more multi-modal and more multi-contextual. In order to navigate those contexts, students need to be able to show a proficiency in oral communication. Very few of our students will graduate and sit in an office on their own without interacting with other people; it’s just not the way the workplace is and it’s not the way our community is. A well-rounded person really needs to be able to have those communication competencies in order to be a good citizen, be a good professional, and be a good person in general.

Question: How can students develop their oral communication skills at NC State?

Deanna Dannels: The obvious answer is to take a communication class. Avail yourself of your opportunity to use your fee electives to take a communication class. That said, within your discipline there is an opportunity to either formally or informally practice oral communication skills. You may have a presentation assignment or group work – these are opportunities to hone and refine your skills to not only learn the content but to practice oral communication.

Even if you’re not in courses that provide formal oral presentation assignments, go participate in a rally, go participate in a community event, go watch speakers we bring to campus, and start thinking about what makes them effective as a communicator. What do you like? What could you see yourself doing? Engage in that critical analysis of oral communication skills

Question: How will students engage in oral communication after graduation?

Deanna Dannels: After graduation, in whatever pathway a student chooses, they’re going to have to put a resume out, they’re going to have to inquire about opportunities, and all of those things require oral communication. It may not be face-to-face, it may be technologically mediated or driven, but still you’re using oral communication competencies to find your pathway. Then being successful depends on your ability to communicate well. It also depends on your ability to determine where things need to change and how you can use your voice to make those changes.

I think not only is communication after graduation part of the recipe for success; it’s part of the recipe for innovation, for change and for action in organizations and in our communities. Students with oral communication competencies can be activists in this way and can create workplaces that are more ethical and communities that are more inclusive. Oral communication provides you opportunity and the skills necessary to do that.

To learn more about the Pack Proficiencies and how they are assessed, visit go.ncsu.edu/PackProficiencies .

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18 Speaking Well: Promoting Effective Oral Presentation Skills Across the Psychology Curriculum

Jane S. Halonen is Professor of Psychology and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of West Florida.

Dana S. Dunn, Moravian College, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Suzanne C. Baker, Ph.D., is a Professor and an Assistant Department Head of the Department of Psychology at James Madison University.

Maureen A. McCarthy, PhD, is a Professor of Psychology at Kennesaw State University.

• Published: 03 March 2014
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In sound undergraduate curricular design, psychology students should gain substantial communication experience. Although instructors have paid more attention to students’ writing development, speaking also plays a prominent role in professional skill development. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss preferred practice opportunities for incorporating speaking assignments in courses throughout the psychology curriculum and to offer suggestions about meaningful strategies for assessment of student achievement. Several examples of rubrics designed to measure speaking competence are included in the paper.

“Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

Public-speaking opportunities should be pervasive in undergraduate psychology programs. However, the scholarship addressing how to provide effective learning experiences in public speaking in psychological contexts is remarkably limited ( Dunn, Baker, McCarthy, & Halonen 2010 ). This chapter attempts to fill that void.

Learning how to deliver effective oral presentations in professional contexts is an important component of a liberal arts education (e.g., Wilson, Arnold, & Wertheimer, 1990 ). The American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) includes “written and oral communication” on the list of Essential Learning Outcomes for their LEAP (Liberal Education and America’s Promise) campaign ( AAC&U, 2009 ). Lumina’s Tuning Project also emphasizes the importance of communication skills as part of the fundamental obligation of higher education for students in undergraduate programs ( Adelman, Ewell, Gaston, & Schneider, 2011 ).

The original guidelines provided by the American Psychological Association (2007) on the undergraduate major clarified that psychology educators should be concerned with and responsible for developing speaking skills The recent revision of the American Psychological Association’s National Guidelines on the Undergraduate Major 2.0 ( APA, 2013 ) reaffirmed the importance of speaking competence as a standard feature in the curriculum. Learning outcome 4.2 specifically details expectations related to exhibiting “effective presentation skills in multiple formats” that include construction of psychological arguments, delivering presentations that fit appropriate constraints, adhering to professional delivery standards, incorporating appropriate visual resources, and effectively managing questions (See APA, 2013 , for website address to Guidelines 2.0 draft, which was adopted by the APA in 2013).

The Guidelines 2.0 framework describes indicators of developing speaking competence at two levels. “Foundational” indicators address expectations that educators should target for courses that constitute the introduction to the major; these should roughly correspond to the psychology courses available in a community-college program or courses that can be completed at four-year institutions in parallel with general education requirements. Baccalaureate indicators address achievements that should materialize at the end of the undergraduate education that build directly from the foundation indicators. We summarize this developmental approach to speaking-skill development in Table 18.1 .

Obviously, psychology educators need to accommodate speaking opportunities throughout the curriculum if undergraduates are going to achieve the specified level of competence. Our goal is to provide psychology educators with some effective strategies to help students seize the power that comes from competently delivered oral presentations in various contexts. We will also explore common challenges associated in designing effective speaking opportunities throughout the psychology curriculum. First, we review the many obstacles that must be overcome if undergraduate psychology programs intend to incorporate more formal speaking opportunities for their students.

Motivating Faculty to Adopt Speaking Assignments

Particularly in lecture-based course experiences, faculty report reluctance to surrender valuable class time to honing student speaking skills. Instructors resist speaking assignments because they want to avoid losing the time they perceive as necessary to cover content. It is impractical to have individual speaking assignments in large classes due to time constraints. Psychology faculty themselves profess a lack of confidence about serving as expert judges of oral performance because they may never have benefited themselves from formal training in speaking skills. Consequently, they are justifiably reluctant to claim the expertise that justifies providing professional quality feedback to students. They dislike the pressure associated with having to deliver a spontaneous grading decision at the completion of a speaking performance. They also may not want to deal with clinical-level speaking anxiety that sometimes complicates execution of a trouble-free class experience.

Faculty resistance to speaking assignments is fueled further by how little formal information exists on effective evaluation strategies. Various undergraduate textbooks aimed at improving writing in psychology (notably where APA style is concerned) include material on giving public presentations, including talks, student-organized symposia, and poster sessions (e.g., Beins & Beins, 2008 ; Dunn, 2011 ; Landrum 2008 ; see also, Dunn, 2009 ; 2010a ). However, these texts typically emphasize writing over presentations; the authors tend to discuss public speaking only in passing.

What arguments can we offer to help make incorporating speaking performance more attractive? First, a well-designed speaking assignment can provide content coverage comparable to information that would have been communicated through a lecture. Although such opportunities don’t provide total control by the instructor over content delivery, neither do unfettered lectures. Professors can provide appropriate backfill for incorrect or incomplete information that students fail to supply in their speaking assignments.

Second, faculty members fret that low-quality speaking performance from students will aggravate their feelings of loss of control. They are right. However, the solution is to structure assignments, clarify expectations, and build in supports along the way that will minimize disappointing experiences. Clear performance expectations, carefully narrowed topics, and preparation and progress touch points preceding the performance can all contribute to stronger and more engaging performances.

Third, although contemporary students show growing indifference or avoidance of reading ( Weir, 2009 ), the majority seem less reluctant to share their viewpoints orally than past generations. Perhaps they have been emboldened by the bolstering effects of social media, but many more students seem to relish “face time” in whatever oral format it takes. If instructors design speaking performances effectively that require expert use of the psychological literature, speaking demands become an effective strategy for improving critical reading and writing skills.

Fourth, if faculty develop and use performance rubrics, these can be implemented not just by the faculty judge but by randomly selected class judges to promote reliable and valid evaluations. A side benefit is that repeated rubric use reinforces for students the elements of effective speaking and contributes to lower anxiety in student delivery since they know exactly what constitutes an effective performance and how their work will be evaluated.

Finally, faculty members need to expand how they view their responsibilities. Content-focused instructors see themselves as responsible for transferring concepts of the discipline; learner-focused instructors see themselves as developing students ( Barr & Tagg, 1995 ). Students will not retain the minute details that populate lectures; however, skills that are developed systematically in their courses, particularly when the program attends to the sequence and coherence of the experience, will serve students well in their professional life. With the growing concern students show for their potential to secure jobs following graduation ( Perez-Pena, 2012 ), well-developed speaking skills can offer students an advantage in landing and maintaining satisfying professional positions.

Creating Developmental Public Speaking Opportunities

Learning to speak articulately is a skill that students can improve as they progress through courses in the psychology major ( Halonen et al, 2003 ). As recommended by Stoloff et al. (2010) , the most effective programs deliberately sequence opportunities to learn speaking skills across courses. Early speaking experiences are likely to focus on the simple description or application of psychology concepts whether in a formal presentation or as part of class discussion. As students advance in the major, their speaking opportunities will more closely simulate the kinds of professional opportunities that may lie beyond graduation. We consider types of speaking opportunities in which students can hone their skills with some consideration of the challenges involved in effective learning design for each category.

Foundational Course Performances

Beginning psychology students often come to courses with the expectation that they will serve as sponges; they will dutifully record the wisdom dispensed by the professor and show limited regard for commentary from their peers ( Halonen & Santrock, 2013 ). Making explicit performance demands for public speaking in preliminary courses can start on the first day and build appropriately over the foundation course structure in the undergraduate psychology curriculum.

Professional Introductions.

If the class size warrants, instructors can flip expectations by asking students to make some introductory comments both to break the ice and make personal links to the topics that will be addressed in the course. A good strategy is to ask students to profess publicly one or more of the following:

What makes you unique among the other students in the course?

How might you contribute uniquely for the benefit of the class?

After examining the syllabus, what are you most curious about in the course?

Many faculty members find value in asking students to introduce one another to the rest of the class. Best success comes from specifying the number and scope of comments that the faculty member is willing to endure before getting to the rest of the course. Introducing others reduces beginning students’ self-consciousness, provides an opportunity to receive feedback on accuracy of listening, and can identify individuals who might need some extra attention when speaking demands become more serious later in the course.

Class Participation.

We define this area of contribution as relevant to public speaking development, even though student discussion in class is more spontaneous than the planful and rehearsed elements of the formal speech. Although the scholarship of teaching and learning on promoting effective class discussion is substantial, casting class participation as a precursor to public speaking is an innovative approach that can promote class discussion.

Regardless of level of class, instructors will fare best in promoting participation and presentation skill development by articulating clear expectations about the responsibility of students for making the class lively. Some simple rules articulated in the syllabus and reviewed in class will prompt the best outcomes:

Reward student performance with a system that provides some input toward grade calculations. These systems penalize shy students. Therefore, you may want to have some additional avenues for earning points if the participation accounts for a significant portion of grading.

Work individually with students who are slow to engage. Have consultations before or after classes to diagnose the significance of the sluggish performance. If the cause is lack of preparation, refer the student to tutoring services. If the cause is lack of confidence, collaborate with the student by coordinating and staging a successful contribution opportunity. Examine the next class for content about which the student might have a heartfelt opinion. Then share your intention with the student that you intend to call for a response as part of the class to allow the student preparation time and focus to maximize success.

Be clear about professional rules of engagement. Emphasize respectful discussion parameters, particularly if the course contains elements that class members may find personally challenging.

Set appropriate constraints to discourage inappropriate responses. Most instructors experience students who emulate Harry Potter’s friend Hermione with her hand blasting into the air in response to every question. In addition, sometimes students overdisclose personal information, a particular problem in courses in psychology where students think such disclosure will obviously add to the discussion. When students over-respond, arrange a consultation with the student to try to identify what may be prompting the excessive behavior. Find out if the student is aware of the imbalance. Ask for restraint in the service of helping others get in the game. If that strategy fails, consider referral to campus mental health services because self-control is likely to be a larger issue for such students.

Verbally reinforce high-quality contributions. Identify not just that the contribution is good, but explain why it is effective. When students understand that the quality of contributions varies and better-quality contributions receive positive attention, it establishes the appropriate standard for the caliber of discussion that will make instructors happy. Criteria for performances that deserve special attention include:

Connections to other learning experiences or prior learning in the class;

Accurate criticism of course content or questions that reveal weaknesses or difficulty in content

Creative insights that contribute to a positive learning climate.

Minispeeches.

In foundation courses, short formal speaking opportunities serve multiple purposes. Students not only can convey important information about the concepts they are learning, but short speeches provide a relatively painless way for students to become accustomed to expressing themselves in professional contexts. Little speeches are perfect building blocks for more complex demands that will follow in advanced classes.

Criteria for effective minispeeches should be distributed along with the assignment. An appropriate rubric for a minispeech is displayed in Table 18.2 . Faculty can recruit volunteer reviewers and rotate those responsibilities throughout the semester. Students can be trained to use the rubric by having a group discussion about how the first performance of the assignment relates to the rubric. The student who volunteers for the first performance—and subsequent public dissection—can be rewarded with some bonus points to offset the potential of the personal ordeal.

How should faculty minimize challenges with minispeech assignments?

Don’t leave topics to chance. Establish some checkpoints at which students must declare their intention to ensure their choices are relevant and represent an appropriate expression of the course content.

Be clear about cancellations. Although accidents do happen, student absences on days that time has been allotted for a speaking assignment complicate and crowd future class scheduling. Explain that speaking contributions are one-time-only events with no rescheduling. Reinforce that principle if a relevant absence occurs.

Consider an opportunity for a private do-over. When a student has the rare meltdown, the humiliation of the experience can undermine any good effects that the instructor had intended. If time and temperament of both student and teacher allow, consider having the student redo the speech after some additional practice. If the goal of a minispeech is to make the classroom a less frightening place, extra measures may be warranted.

Minispeech topics in foundation classes are only limited by the shared imagination of the instructor and students. Students can have dramatically different topics to spread their participation through the length of the term. Consider the following:

Justify why a particular psychologist should be a “Hall of Fame” candidate.

Describe how a historic psychologist might respond to current practices about institutional review.

Defend why a particular experiment is considered important.

Explain how a current issue in legislation relates to a course concept.

Apply a psychology concept to explain a phenomenon in popular culture (e.g., Facebook privacy norms, tattoo prevalence, diet fads)

Advanced Course Performance

As students progress in their majors, their speaking opportunities become more focused on professional development. In general, time limits will expand, concept incorporation will be more complicated, and instructor expectations about personal command of both the content and delivery will increase. As students progress through the major, they should be able to use psychological knowledge as a basis for more sophisticated presentations. For example, they should use appropriate psychological terminology while also identifying the main points they wish to communicate.

Students taking courses in major content areas of psychology should be building on their abilities to communicate as scientists in training. They should use appropriate psychological terminology to communicate about and reflect their understanding of specific theories and findings in social psychology, cognitive psychology, biopsychology, or whatever content course in which they are enrolled. Their oral communication skills should indicate their advancing knowledge and their ability to use terminology beyond the basic or introductory level of analysis (cf., Dunn, 2010a )

Research Presentations.

Students in advanced classes routinely receive assignments to conduct independent research either alone or with peers to satisfy core requirements in an undergraduate program. Although the experimental report is the standard vehicle for demonstrating communication prowess, increasingly faculty have been incorporating opportunities to “stand and deliver” research findings to round out the complete professional experience.

As students progress through the psychology major, students gain skill in using research evidence to support their main points. They should be able to choose what information to include in a presentation, and, perhaps more importantly, which details to omit, to communicate these main points. However, when students must shift from reporting their own work rather than summarizing the work of others, they may feel some internal pressure to render more details than necessary in their research presentation. If the content of a talk is based on a student’s research paper, then detail and depth must be pared down so that the student presents only the key points (i.e., purpose, findings, implications; e.g., Beins & Beins, 2008 ; Dunn, 2011 ).

Similar to research papers, research reports have an introduction, clear identification of a hypothesis or thesis statement (i.e., a purpose), disclosure of a research process (including steps taken to ensure appropriate research ethics), a summary of findings, a conclusion that addresses the implication of the findings or the potential for future direction of the research, and an opportunity for questions.

Table 18.3 illustrates a typical outline for a 20-minute research report. Table 18.4 provides a proposed rubric for a research presentation.

Requiring students to give a brief conference-style or poster presentation may be especially appropriate for a research methods class (e.g., Ault, Munger, Tonidandel, Barton, & Multhaup, 2007 ;

Smith, 2007 ; see also, Schmidt & Dunn, 2007 ). Poster displays have also grown more sophisticated and professional, supported by access to poster printers. Although a poster can “stand alone” as evidence for growth of written communication skills, poster display experiences require a different kind of speaking skill.

Poster exhibits usually take place on campuses or in convention offerings as a way to address a high volume of research activity. A student’s poster will be one of many. Audience members may include faculty members from the students’ own institution, faculty members from other institutions, fellow students, formal judges, and even family members. A student’s poster will compete for the attention of individuals strolling through the hall. Consequently, a catchy title, effective use of colors, readable text, and appropriate graphs and tables may provide sufficient attraction to built an audience for the unique speaking opportunity that posters provide.

As the audience members select the posters in which they will invest closer attention, the participants will differ in their interaction style. Some audience members prefer to be left alone to savor the aesthetics and details of the poster without interference. However, other more extraverted members will engage the researcher with questions that substitute for a more fine-tuned reading of the poster. Instructors can teach students to deal with this more spontaneous format by preparing for some standard questions or comments that often emerge in this context:

Tell me about your work.

How did you come up with your idea?

What were the main findings?

What did you learn from the experience?

What would you do differently if you had more time?

Due to the nature of the context, most audience members expect “executive summary” kinds of answers rather than protracted and elaborate stories to facilitate getting to view the majority of the posters.

Although some audience members will make general inquiries, others scrutinize the poster and may deliver potentially critical commentary. Some criticize to promote the development of the students’ thinking and to suggest legitimate improvements in future efforts. Others criticize because it is simply characteristic of their interactional style. Regardless of motive, individuals who generate criticisms should be acknowledged for their efforts. In some cases, these interactions can facilitate future collaborations.

Campuses may sponsor scholarship days during which student work can be displayed and critiqued as part of course requirements or as part of competitions ( Dunn, 2010b ). Similarly, professional organizations, such as regional psychology conferences, may host sessions specifically for student poster displays. An example of a poster rubric is displayed in Table 18.5 .

Topical Speeches.

Psychology contexts lend themselves to informative speeches (e.g., discussing theoretical perspectives), persuasive speeches (e.g., advocating for a public policy based on research), and even debate formats (e.g., Is nature or nurture the stronger influence?). In advanced courses, the emphasis shifts more to the skilled application of psychology content and the work entailed in public presentation is necessarily more complex than the minispeeches described at the foundation level. Time limits encourage students to make judicious decisions regarding what to include and omit.

At the advanced level, students typically presume they will be communicating with professional audience members. Occasionally, instructors may specify nonprofessional audiences (e.g., an informational talk to fifth graders) in which case preparation will concentrate on word choices that will communicate effectively to the target audience. Once students understand the performance parameters (e.g., time, place, purpose, audience), they can begin preparing for the performance.

Unless the assigned speech is impromptu, reportedly rare in psychology, students will need to enact successful research strategies to prepare. Successful speakers must learn to formulate a researchable thesis and choose relevant supporting materials for the stated purpose. Students must be coached to read far more material than they will incorporate into the final product. Typically, a topical speech will have an introduction, thesis, or statement of purpose, logical development of key points, and a conclusion that summarizes the highlights or produces a call to action.

In psychology-based presentations, arguments will be most effective when they are developed from high quality data. As articulated in the APA Guidelines for the Undergraduate Psychology Major 2.0 (2013), students need to be able to demonstrate quantitative literacy through their ability to interpret data depicted in figures and tables. Students also need be able to choose which data are the most pertinent to communicate their message. Psychology-based talks may be geared toward concepts, theoretical frameworks, and professional jargon that require speakers to be particularly sensitive when they must translate the ideas for speakers who may not have that background. Psychologists emphasize the value of objectivity so more successful speeches are likely to embrace the facts and minimize the affect. Finally, psychologists preach precision as a key quality of an effective argument, which suggests that well-organized speakers should be vigilant to avoid rambling or incorporating disconnected ideas.

If students have achieved solid preparation, then a few more steps are necessary to ensure successful delivery. Skilled speakers adopt successful physical presentation strategies. They “stand and deliver” rather than cringe behind the podium. They maintain solid eye contact with the audience and incorporate nonverbal behaviors that support the message (e.g., Morreale, Rubin, & Jones, 1998 ). They avoid distracting physical behaviors, such as hair twirling. Skilled speakers employ vocal techniques such as incorporating variety in the pitch of their voices to avoid deadly monotone delivery. They enunciate words clearly and make a point to practice names or terms that could prompt a stumble.

One big difference between minispeeches and more sophisticated speeches is the incorporation of media to enhance audience interest. They demonstrate skilled use of PowerPoint, including using minimal information display rather than reproduction of full text on the slides. They avoid reading directly from PowerPoint because it interferes with developing a relationship with the audience. Many critics note the tendency of speakers to crowd PowerPoint slides with too much information (e.g., Daniel, 2005 ; Kosslyn, 2007 ). Such information may not add to the communicative value of the presentation; indeed, it sometimes interferes with listeners’ recall of information (e.g., Savoy, Proctor, & Salvendy, 2009 ).

Effective speakers also try to anticipate the kinds of questions their audiences will ask in response to their ideas. They strive to answer the questions even if they must think their way through to an answer. They also have a quick “I don’t know the answer” at the ready in case the speaker can’t satisfy an audience question.

Students may be unlikely to appreciate the importance of rehearsal when planning oral presentations. Instructors should remind students of the well-documented relationship between audience presence and task performance. Familiar tasks may be performed better when an audience is present, but performance on difficult or unfamiliar tasks is often worse in the presence of an audience ( Bernstein & Nash, 2008 ; Zajonc, 1965 ).

An example of a rubric that can be adapted for more advanced topical speeches can be found in Table 18.6 . An additional helpful step in effective rubric use is asking students to self-assess their own strengths and weaknesses based on rubric criteria before external judges jump in.

Some advanced classes may add to the intensity of the speaking experience by assigning a debate opportunity. Debates vary in the spirit of collaboration. Faculty can increase the tension by making the debate a true competition with preferred grades as the reward for the winner. However, most debates will be a better exercise in learning content when debate partners can collaborate on the delivery of what they have learned.

Some tips to enhance the success of debates follow:

Do not schedule more than one debate per class if time allows. The format tends to be a compelling but a tiring one.

Check on the progress of debate preparation. Perhaps more in this than any other format, winging a speech performance in a debate is likely to lead to unsatisfying results.

Conduct public discussion on which side should prevail based on the strength of the evidence. Contrast that conclusion with which discussion should prevail based on the strength of student performance.

Panel Discussions.

An expedient way to incorporate speaking performance across a large group of students is to assign panel discussions that entail four or five roles on the same topic. The topic needs to be sufficiently complex to allow different kinds of responsibility distributed across the panel members.

Students may need some assistance in structuring their work for maximum benefit. They may require sequential deadlines in which they report progress being made. They may also benefit from formal designation of a team coordinator to ensure the pieces come together. Although this recommendation is also surprising, instructors should encourage students to come together for practice to produce the most coherent presentation style and reduce surprises.

A serious problem that complicates the success of panel presentations is the probability that at least one member will not participate at a level that meets group expectations. Experienced faculty members know that they need to build in some fail-safe conditions that mitigate against social loafing. For example, students can be asked to do mutual evaluations of effort shortly into the process to highlight that the workload may not be evenly distributed. Faculty supervisors can invoke a formal vote at which nonperforming members can be booted and reassigned to an alternate project if the evidence is compelling that those members are underperforming.

Grading practices need to be clearly stated. Where possible, stellar individual performance should not be penalized by a lackluster group performance. More important, a significantly underperforming member should not be allowed to sabotage the success of group members who have played by the rules. Table 18.7 displays a rubric that can be used to judge the details of a group presentation. An example of a performance rubric that allows group members to offer feedback about quality contributions from individual members can be found in Table 18.8 .

A final advanced strategy worth examination occurs when faculty members simply assign students to execute teaching responsibilities for a specific set of topics in the course. In one dramatic example in the undergraduate experience of one of the co-authors, a social psychology teacher introduced herself to the class and then sat down. The resulting chaos in the course became a perfect social-psychology laboratory that illustrated the principles of the course. This high-risk strategy also produced substantial opportunities for leadership to emerge as students’ worked through meeting their goals for learning the course content.

It is far more likely that assignment to play the teacher in the course is much more circumscribed to an individual student or students for a specific topic on a specific day. Instructors should articulate the elements of what a successful “teaching” performance should include. For example, an effective rubric for teaching performance might include the following parameters:

Satisfies the time parameter allotted to the experience.

Accurately communicates assigned content.

Incorporates an active learning demonstration of some aspect of content.

Answers questions accurately and authoritatively.

Delivers psychological content in keeping with professional standards.

Capstone Performances

Many psychology programs have adopted recommendations to incorporate a capstone experience at the conclusion of the undergraduate curriculum to serve multiple purposes ( Halpern, 2010 ). Ideally, a capstone experience provides the vehicle to integrate content across courses. It may have a formal assessment component to assist programs in gauging their progress in delivering a high-quality curriculum. However, for our purposes, the capstone performance is a natural vehicle for the penultimate speaking performance in the curriculum. We review two formats next—thesis defense and portfolio review.

Thesis Defense.

Many programs require students to participate in a senior seminar, directed study, or capstone performance that requires thesis production. In addition, honors students may have a formal obligation to complete an honors thesis, which emulates the kind of work they will experience as they head to graduate school.

Regardless of the specific form of thesis, advanced students should be able to evaluate the relative merits of psychological knowledge across content domains as the heart of their thesis work. Students should also be able to offer sophisticated arguments for a presentation of psychological knowledge ( APA, 2008 ; 2013 ). At this level, students’ oral presentations should demonstrate advanced skills, including the ability to integrate content; to answer high-level questions; to “think on their feet”; and to bring in their own ideas and interpretations of relevant theories. Students at this level should also be able to tailor their oral presentations to particular audiences (e.g., lay groups, disciplinary professionals).

If thesis presentation borrows a “defense” posture from graduate school, students will need to be prepared explicitly for the kinds of questions that might emerge from those who attend as expert reviewers. Although there are parallels with the nature of questions that transpire in poster sessions, thesis conversations often veer more toward critical examination. Perhaps this climate shift is a byproduct of tradition; most faculty members engaged in reviewer roles have experienced their fair share of performance review sessions that ended up feeling like an inquisition. Students need to be prepared for this extra affective challenge if that is the tradition of the department. Otherwise, students should simply be as well prepared as possible to explain and defend their argument and reminded that, regardless of the collective degrees represented in the room, each student actually is the most expert in the topic he or she has explored, if done properly.

Faculty can encourage students to think about thesis performance as one of their best means for demonstrating evidence that will qualify them for consideration in their chosen future path. The thesis presentation can be videotaped as a sample of competent oral presentation skills. Reviews of the thesis can be sought and included as evidence submitted for job pursuits.

Portfolio Review.

Some programs obligate students to collect samples of work over time to verify that they have achieved the expectations of their major program. Although the final analysis of the performance can be a written reflection, departments can also opt for an interview process with skilled reviewers who may be objective faculty from the campus or appropriate professional volunteers from the community or allied campuses.

The primary objective of this unique speaking experience is the promotion of personal insight about the collective accomplishments. A secondary objective of this exercise is to gather data that can be fed back to the department in the interest of program improvement. As a consequence, the tone of conversations may focus as much on student struggles and failures (derived from departmental focus on continuous improvement mode) as well as achievements. Examiners will target questions to explore the reasons underneath both achievements and failures.

A sample of questions that might elicit student reflection and critical analysis include the following:

How have you changed as the result of your major?

What theoretical frameworks have you found to be most meaningful? Useful?

Were there any aspects of the curriculum you think should be improved?

Were any aspects of the curriculum especially difficult for you to master?

Can you point to any specific assistance you received that helped you break through?

What learning experience was the most important to your personal development?

How ready are you for the workforce?

Obviously, students who have given their developmental path serious consideration should be able to talk candidly and comfortably in this setting to the mutual benefit of themselves and the program from which they are about to graduate.

Conclusions

As always, providing students with a carefully constructed rubric can guide their thinking about their presentations and influence the success they demonstrate in speaking performances. Involving students in the construction of the rubric, if it is feasible to do so, can further engage them in thinking about what is most important in an oral presentation.

Stellmack, Konheim-Kalkstein, Manor, Massey, and Schmitz (2009) provide strong support for using analytic grading criteria or rubrics to evaluate student writing. In particular, they suggest that a detailed scoring system, or analytic approach, provides students with valuable feedback and offers the potential for assessing and demonstrating inter-rater reliability. Although faculty members may not always use the same measures of evaluation in each course, it is important to establish a mechanism for evaluating outcomes of the major in a clear and consistent manner. Ideally, faculty should be able to offer an objective evaluation of student presentation skills without being influenced by general perceptions of the student. Indeed, as we will see, this is a difficult challenge because faculty are not typically capable of evaluating their own students without some amount of bias. Without reliability, it is not possible to obtain a valid measure of student-learning outcomes.

In addition to providing students with useful feedback, a student-learning-outcomes based analytic rubric provides valuable data for departmental assessment needs. Many rubrics have been designed to measure writing proficiency, but as we indicated earlier, rubrics for evaluating proficiencies in oral communication are scarce. This rubric should, of course, be modified to fit the goals of oral presentations for different courses and for different purposes. We merely identify the dimensions that should be assessed. To obtain a reasonable level of inter-rater reliability it is important for faculty to add specific criteria that will help them to evaluate these skills in the context of the assignment. Instructors should also take care that they can reliably discriminate different levels of evaluation and can explain these to students. For example, what would indicate moderate difficulty versus serious difficulty when it comes to demonstrating mastery of information? Clearly, we offer a basic framework, and the utility of the measure is dependent on the refinement that occurs at the campus level.

Students can also use the rubric to evaluate their own performance, or as a tool for student peer review. Regardless of who is using the rubric, levels of competency ranging from “excellent” to “no achievement” should be clearly articulated, and the criteria should be course-specific and developmentally appropriate.

We suggest that instructors provide students with the rubric in advance and review each of the key points with them. Another helpful teaching strategy is to provide students with samples of performance at each level, so that students can more accurately gauge their own performance. One strategy for accomplishing this is to have students discuss and then, perhaps, engage in role play regarding what they think a poor presentation is like, and, subsequently, have the class critique the performance in order to identify flaws. Another strategy involves offering extra credit to those courageous presenters who volunteer to speak first in exchange for allowing their presentations to serve as training opportunities for application of the rubric.

Although we focus here on public speaking and formal presentations, the skills that students develop in these contexts should carry over into less-formal contexts, such as class discussions and interacting with colleagues in professional settings. As our students enter the workforce or graduate school, the ability to “think as scientists about behavior” ( Brewer et al., 1993 , p. 169) should be reflected in their ability to “talk as scientists about behavior” when they interact with other professionals in their field. To this extent, that we succeed in helping students refine their ability to speak well, we will have optimized their power to be persuasive and compelling.

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Oral Presentation Tips: A Checklist for Success

Many adults, teens, and children fear making an oral presentation. However, mastering public speaking is vital to almost every future path a student will take—whether in higher education or a career.

If you have not yet begun working with your students on their oral presentation skills, here’s a basic checklist of how to help them get started.

Before you begin, be sure to make the requirements of your assignment clear. Book reports and research related to a history unit make good beginning assignments. Once students have a bit more experience, you may want to craft an assignment related to a current issue or controversial topic. (Controversial in this context simply means people hold conflicting views on a certain topic.)

Here’s a checklist of oral presentation tips and questions students can use to make sure they are well prepared for their presentations. This checklist is also easily adaptable into a grading rubric for the presentation.

PREPARATION:

• Have you researched thoroughly?
• Have you created an outline of what you will say?
• Does your introduction clearly state the purpose of your presentation?
• Does the introduction give a hint (3 main points, pros and cons, etc.) of how you will approach your topic?
• Do all main points of the body of your talk support your purpose statement?
• Have you presented detailed evidence to fill out your talk?
• Are the supporting examples, arguments, and illustrations logical and relevant?
• Is your information thorough and compelling?
• Have you used terminology appropriate to your subject matter?
• Have you restated your purpose and summarized your arguments for your audience?

POWERPOINT:

• Have you included a slide that gives an overview of the question problem or topic?
• Have you whittled down your information to what the audience will be visually capable of taking in?
• Have you selected only the most relevant and vital material for the slides?
• Does the arrangement of words and images on your slides make them easy to read?
• Have you chosen to share only the quotes that will impact, summarize, or provoke thought?
• Are all your fonts readable?
• Have you practiced keeping your poise? (This means no distracting mannerisms, fidgeting, twitching, gum chewing, playing with objects, etc)
• Are you enthusiastic when you speak?
• Do you vary your tone of voice and avoid speaking in a monotone?
• Have you practiced enough to be at ease with the material?
• Have you practiced enough to be at ease with whichever technological devices you will be using?
• Do you make eye contact when you speak?
• Are you audible in all parts of the room?
• Have you paced your presentation so that you do not need to rush through any section to get all your points in?

GET FEEDBACK FROM A KIND CRITIQUE PARTNER:

• What are two main weaknesses for you to work on?
• What are your two main strengths as a speaker?

Resource List:

• Sample Presentation Outline 1
• Sample Presentation Outline 2
• Sample Presentation Outline 3
• Rubric Creation Site, RubiStar

  Renee Ann Smith teaches literature in a Christian high school by day and writes stories by night. She reviews books and shares inspirational posts on her blog Doorkeeper at http://reneeannsmith.com/ . You can also find her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ReneeAnnSmith .  

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