Trust your expertise—it’s your greatest asset when presenting. Watch this quick video to learn more and let me know what you think in the comments!
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Present Like a Pro
If your presentation slides are packed with text, your audience has to choose: read or listen? Spoiler: they’ll read—and tune you out.
Want to keep your audience engaged? Design your slides for listening, not reading.
Pro tip: Create simple, impactful slides for your talk—and send detailed "archive slides" afterward for reference.
Watch this short video to learn more!
Next time you review evaluations, don’t just look at the trends. Look at the outliers. They might just hold the key to your next big breakthrough. Watch this video to learn more!
Next time you review evaluations, don’t just look at the trends. Look at the outliers. They might just hold the key to your next big breakthrough. Watch this video to learn more!
Watch this short video and ask yourself: How do I show up in my professional and personal interactions?
In your next presentation, just jump straight into the content! Watch this video to learn more and let me know what you think in the comments.
When giving a presentation, I always say: Dessert first! Why? Because people come to your talk with a hunger for something specific. When you lead with the most valuable insight upfront, you grab attention, create engagement, and ensure your audience stays invested in what’s next. Watch this video to learn more!
A top tip for getting people to pay attention to YOU in a presentation. Watch this video to learn more...
I am continually amazed by presentation after presentation where the opening lines are about the presenter and not the audience. Are you guilty of ever starting with any of the following?
· “You probably want to know a bit about me…”
· “I am blah blah and I studied at blah blah and blah blah blah…”
· “Before we get the meat of today I want to thank…”
· “Before I get to the report you’ve been waiting for, you have to understand…”
· And of course, the infamous, “How’s everyone doing this morning?” (followed by “I can’t hear you!”)
While the audience will be patient with you nonverbally (we’ve been taught to sit and listen politely!) they will also mark you as ordinary, expected, and frankly, wasting their time.
Dale Carnegie’s famous admonition, “Tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them” still works today for the soul reason - it is audience focused. Our nervousness, our ego, our desire to please or our wish to look good unfortunately puts the focus on us instead of those who came to hear us. The hard truth is that the audience don’t really care about you. No matter how important you are, the audience has one pivotal question in their minds “Can you help me solve my problem; can you improve my condition.” Start there and you will see and maybe even hear your audience say, “Whew! Yes!”
When creating your next PowerPoint slides, pause and ask yourself: Is this slide truly necessary? Sometimes, less is more when it comes to impactful presentations. Watch this video to learn more...
As a presenter, eye contact is one of the most powerful ways to project confidence. Watch this video to learn more and let me know what you think!
Tip for your next presentation: Hit the main topic first! This approach is especially effective when dealing with a complex slide deck. Curious why it works so well? Watch this video to find out more.
In presentations, it’s easy to get carried away and forget to pause. Instead, focus on your key point—make it clear, concise, and impactful. Less is often more! Watch this video to learn more...
Next time you're giving a presentation, write your introduction for someone else to read—keep it short! And don't forget to include a fun fact about yourself at the end to make the audience smile. It’s a great way to set the tone and connect with your listeners right from the start! Watch this video to learn more...
"Turn to your neighbor" is an often-used technique presenters rely on for “audience involvement.” Personally, I think it has passed its prime. Instead, how about, “When I give you the signal, I want you to get up and find two other people you don’t know and form a group of three away from the tables. Ready? Go!”
Yes, this chaotic madness is noisy, disorganized for a few moments, and terribly fun. The next interaction can be “new groups of two” and then “take your group of two and join another group of two to become a group of four” and so on.
Get people together to meet, get them away from the tables (I never use any tables…they just get in the way)…and let them talk to one another. Yes, what you have to say is important, but just not that important.
Consider being a presenter/facilitator rather than the main presenter. Consider ‘lecturettes’ instead of a 90-minute talk. Speak for 8-12 minutes if you must, then get them talking to one another! They may have initially come to hear you, but they will remember the opportunity to talk and meet one another.
Yes, your expertise is valuable, and so is the experience they had that you allowed.
I recently had a very fun time teaching presentation skills to graduate students in healthcare. Imagine yourself giving a spontaneous three-minute presentation in front of 300 fellow comrades who were most happy it was you and not them! What would you do? Well, this time it was a bit different.
From three possibilities the ‘selected one’ was able to choose a topic and as they were ready to speak, we asked the audience what they wanted to hear about regarding the topic. Who else was involved? When did it happen? What effect did it have on you? Can you describe the scene so we can ‘see’ it? As the audience gave their suggestions, it was very fun to see the eyes of the presenter light up with what seemed like, “Oh yes, I can do that, that too, and that too!”
So often we forget to ask the audience, thinking only of what we want to present. Have a difficult audience or a ‘Dr. Evil’ in the group…ask them for sure! When they see that you want to involve them you will have life-long friends or at least friends for a long as you are speaking!
Even if you have only a few minutes, greet them as they enter and if you want ask a simple question, “What would you most like to learn today?” By golly you could even get them into groups of three immediately and ask the same question!
My hunch is that whatever you prepared is going to be presented anyway. With their comments lingering in your mind however, you’ll have a friendly audience, an involved audience, and you can even quote them throughout your talk! Always ask even when you ‘think’ you know the answer!
I recently had a valuable reminder to slow down and truly reflect on the message I'm trying to convey. It's easy to rush through communication, but taking the time to be intentional and thoughtful can make all the difference.
When reviewing evaluations, set your ego aside and focus on finding the truth. Use this feedback as a valuable tool to identify areas for improvement and enhance your skills. Growth comes from being open to constructive criticism and continuously striving to be better. Watch this video to learn more and let me know what you think!
I have to thank Lester Holt from NBC News for this facilitation tip! Whenever a reporter finishes their update, they always ends with “Lester?” He then has his cue and picks it up from there. You can do this with your Zoom presentations, asking the audience to do the same…simply choose another attendee’s name and add a question mark to keep the discussion rolling.
I watched a video recently of ten or so professionals having a discussion where rather than using hand offs, they used resounding periods. Almost every time someone finished speaking, there was an awkward moment of silence as they wondered who would speak next.
You can use this same tactic when you are presenting with a partner. I work twice yearly with professional speaker Conor Cunneen - IrishmanSpeaks in a back-and-forth format of lecturettes. Conor is known far and wide as a well-rehearsed presenter…except when he works with me! We both like to present ‘in the moment’, especially for this audience, so use the ‘Lester Holt technique’ and hear our names called out with a question mark at the end, keeping the flow going. It works every single time even when I have no idea what Conor was going to say…and maybe he didn’t either!
When presenting to an audience where some of the members are blind, use audio description techniques. In this situation it is useful to begin with a brief visual description of you… “I’m Kevin, your presenter today. I’m sitting with a green plant behind my right shoulder and behind my left shoulder is a picture of sailboats as well as the artwork of my 6-year-old grandson. I have grey hair that my stylist calls ‘platinum’…which is why I keep going back to him!” This sets the scene for them.
For each PowerPoint slide, I begin by describing that also, “This slide is divided into four squares, in the first square…”
One way to understand the impact is to find a movie with “audio description” where a narrator fills in the action with words in between the dialog. This will help you get ideas that you can then use.
For virtual presentations, most blind audience members are able to use the chat function easily with their adaptive software.