How to Make Presentation

Have a question that has been nagging you for a while now, but you are too embarrassed to ask aloud? Worry not, email us your question and Susie shall answer!

This week, Susie was asked, ‘How to do a presentation?’

So unless you are Dwight from The Office, who simulated a fire so that everyone in the office knows what to do in case of fire, the rest of us still need PowerPoint to present and communicate. While Dwight is right that PowerPoint can be boring, not all of us work at Dunder Mifflin and have Michael Scott as our boss. Here is where Susie comes in to save the day. Follow these tips to make your presentation engaging :

1. Keep it Short :

Ask yourself -  

Do I really need to speak for all the 60 minutes that I have been allocated?

• • Nopes. Nopes. Nopes. Not at all. We are mere mortals whose attention span is only getting shorter. Sorry to break your heart but no one is going to pay any attention after 15- 20 minutes if you keep on with your monologue.

Can I be done in 15 minutes? 

• • The answer to this is almost always - Yes. Unless it is your PhD defence presentation. Then go ahead. Take up that whole 60 minutes and go win your magma /summa cum laude.      

Can this be an email? 

• • Make yourself the office favourite by not wasting everyone’s time by calling for unnecessary meetings/presentations. If the information can be passed through an email, do everyone a favour and include that information in an email and not in a presentation.     

2. Short Introduction :

Does the audience really need to know your entire CV? All the 16 pages of your projects and publications? Are your professional and academic laurels in any way necessary to enhance the audience’s comprehension? Is it really important to take 10-15 minutes of the presentation to justify to your audience why you are standing in front of them? Set aside your imposter syndrome and dive in straight with the relevant content. 

3. Too many graphs :

Yeah, we get it, graphs look cool. They are intimidating, and immediately impress upon the audience that you have done some in-depth analysis and you are a quantitative research wizard. Let us be honest, graphs are lengthy, need a lot of explanation and the audience could have digested it better in their own time and convenience. When the n’th graph shows up in your presentation, your audience is bored, confused and already thinking about which pub they should head to after the session.

4. No wordy text in bullet points :

Do not do it. Having text in bullet points, if the text is wordy, is still a no-go (But Susie, the presentation workshop I once went to asked us to use bullet points! Yes, they did, but they also said, DO NOT write paragraph after paragraphs and read from it). 

5. Use One Key Message :

You do not need a PowerPoint, if you do not want it. Have one key message that you want to communicate and once that is done, use a case study or example to strengthen it. You can use a powerful image to drive home that message and you can wrap up by repeating that key message again. 

So go on, dazzle everyone with this embarrassingly simple strategy for presentation! Good luck and may the force be with you!

P.S.      Q: But Susie, should I tell the audience my company’s history?

A: Nopes. Your company’s website has all that information and you pay a ton of money to make it look that good. Direct everyone to it. The slick visuals and edgy content on your website paint a good picture of your company. Let people visit the website and read up. You go straight to the relevant content.