What are the two most important skills in making an effective presentation?

The main reason is that "presentation skills" is plural. It takes dozens of skills to be a good public speaker. These include:

1. Verbal Communication

The ability to communicate in a clear, concise and concrete way in front of an audience is the key skill required of public speakers.

2. Delivery

Delivery is how you connect with your audience. It includes techniques such as body language and pauses that give your words punch.

3. Leadership

The ability to establish yourself as the leader of your audience.

4. Selling / Persuasion

A presentation is all about selling your ideas using persuasion techniques.

5. Humor

Lighthearted presentations are almost always best. You don't have to be a stand-up comedian but the ability to deliver light humor works wonders on an audience.

6. Storytelling

The ability to tell a griping story.

7. Written and Visual Communication

Your visual elements such as slides should be brief, clear and visually effective.

8. Self Awareness

Know your strengths and weaknesses and lead with your strengths.

9. Emotion Management

Presentations can be emotional experiences. For one thing, 3 out of 4 people are have a fear of public speaking. The ability to control emotions is also important to handle unexpected events such as rejection (e.g. a heckler).

10. Adaptability

No matter how much you prepare it's possible for your presentation to go off in an unexpected direction — especially if you involve your audience. The ability to adapt is an important presentation survival skill.

11. Listening

Active listening is key to leading audience participation.

12. Facilitating

The ability to lead workshops, conversations and issue resolution activities.

13. Networking Skills

If you're speaking at a conference it's important to network before your presentation. Incorporate what you learn from networking into your talk.

14. Interpersonal Relationships

The ability to establish rapport with an audience is closely related to your ability to establish and manage relationships with people. Legendary orators (e.g. Bill Clinton) have the ability to make each member of the audience feel as if they are speaking directly to them.

15. Dealing with Difficult Personalities

The ability to deal with audience participation challenges.

16. Stress Management

Many people find presentations to be a stressful experience. Even if you're comfortable with presentations, a stressful experience can always pop up when you're in front of an audience. The ability to manage stress and deliver under pressure is important.

17. Taking Criticism / Resilience

The ability to bounce back from criticism and failure is common amongst accomplished public speakers.

18. Problem Solving

The best presentations solve problems for the audience. You may also be asked to solve a problem as part of audience participation.

19. Research

The ability to find statistics, facts, examples and stories that support your message.

20. Organization and Time Management

Giving your presentation an organized flow that fits into time constraints.

21. Gestures / Using 3d Space

Physical communication including effective use of the stage and gestures.

22. Showmanship

Good public speakers do more than inform — they entertain.

This is the 5th installment in the 9-part series of posts called How to Give Magnetic Presentations.

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Improve your communication skills.

Whether it’s professionally or personally, the chances are that you’ll give a presentation at some point in your life. With the right presentation skills, you’ll open up new doors for professional growth and be a more confident individual overall.

We’ll cover what presentation skills are, how to improve your ability to present, and showcase your new skills.

Being a skilled presenter requires a constellation of hard and soft skills. As you read through this list, think about where you’re naturally strong and where you could do with some improvement:

1. Research. The first step of any successful presentation is the research and preparation phase. First and foremost, you have to become an expert on the content you hope to deliver. It’s also essential to research your audience to know which information is most pertinent for them.

2. Planning. Once you’ve completed your research, it’s time to develop a plan. During this phase, you’ll prioritize which information gets put front-and-center, and which is less vital for your ultimate goal.

   Before you start drafting your presentation, it’s crucial to keep your goal at the forefront: what do you want the audience to do after listening to your presentation?

   Whether it’s convincing a client to purchase a service, landing your dream job, or getting a few laughs at a wedding, your presentation’s goal should always be central in your plan.

3. Organization. Audiences prefer presentations that are well-thought-out and delivered in a logical order. Before you even step foot in the room, you should know what you need to do to set up, have all your notes in order, and be aware of your allotted time.

   You should also always arrive early for a presentation, so you can organize anything that needs organizing before you start. That way, you won’t kick off your presentation futzing with wires while your audience starts drifting to their phones.

4. Verbal communication. No surprises here, verbal communication skills are downright essential for an effective presentation. Even if you have very rigid notes to follow, being quick on your feet to answer questions or alter your content for the audience’s benefit will serve you well during presentations.

5. Nonverbal communication. Good body language means standing up straight, not fidgeting too much, and maintaining eye contact with your audience members.

   Additionally, your inflection, pace, and energy are all elements of nonverbal communication. Adjust these according to your audience (through research or in real-time), and you’ll be a more effective presenter.

6. Public speaking. Some people get nervous just thinking about speaking publicly. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it is crucial to keep your nerves under wraps for delivering the most effective presentation possible. Audiences are less likely to trust presenters who don’t appear confident.

7. Memorization. We’ve all seen presentations where the presenter is just reading directly off his Powerpoint slides – we don’t need to tell you that those presentations are unequivocally bad. It’s fine to have notes as a reference, but the more time you can spend looking at your audience rather than the sheet in front of you, the better.

8. Writing. Being a good writer will help keep your presentation organized and give a boost to your credibility. Before you can commit your content to memory, you need to develop that content.

9. Story-telling. Not all presentations require story-telling, but it can be a very effective method of grabbing your listeners’ attention. It can be a hypothetical story that presents a question or problem, a real story that leads into your main argument, or a story that continues throughout to illustrate the duller facts your presentation covers.

   While we tend to associate story-telling with more informal presentations (like a maid of honor’s toast), it can be equally effective in a professional setting.

10. Rhetorical skills. Rhetoric is all about persuasion: how are your words going to induce action from the listener(s)? Rhetorical appeals are classified under three headings: ethos, logos, and pathos.

    Ethos establishes credibility in the speaker and trust in the listeners through confident delivery and expert testimony. Logos covers your presentation’s logical thrust through statistics, models, comparisons, analogies, etc. Pathos is your presentation’s emotional appeal, supported by vivid language and stories that promote certain values.

    Every presentation will contain some element(s) of these rhetorical appeals, but the weight each gets depends on the situation.

11. Active listening. Pay attention to which parts of your presentation are grabbing listeners and which are falling flat. If your audience’s eyes start glazing over or phones start coming out, you know you’re losing them.

    Additionally, some presentations have a Q+A segment, so be ready to shut up for a second and give your full attention to each question.

12. Adaptability. Like the above point, being able to adapt on the fly sets top-tier presenters apart from merely good ones. For instance, if you can tell your presentation isn’t working, you can open up the floor and ask for questions as a way of determining your audience’s priorities.

    Using the ample research you conducted, you can start steering the presentation towards areas of genuine interest.

13. Delivery. We bet you’ve heard some of the same Dad jokes multiple times in your life. Sometimes they’re hilarious, and sometimes they induce an eye-roll. The difference? Delivery. Pace, timing, tone, and enunciation/inflection are all important elements of good delivery.

    It’s a tough thing to practice, but if you’ve got an anecdote to share in your presentation, maybe try it out on a few people beforehand using different delivery methods and see which works best.

14. Technical skills. All right, you’re all set with the perfect presentation, you walk into the room, and the A/V set up isn’t what you were expecting. Well, if you followed our advice above, you showed up a bit early and had time to fix it.

    Either way, being handy with different presentation software and just generally technologically-literate will lessen the stress associated with technical difficulties.

15. Analysis. Phew, your presentation is done. Time to forget about presenting until the next one comes up, right? No siree – now is the time for you to take a step back and evaluate your performance.

    What went well, where could you improve, and how did the audience respond? If you want to improve as a presenter, you must be continually tracking your strengths and weaknesses.

Presentation skills cover a range of abilities that allow one to effectively engage their audience and get information across in a clear way. In today’s world, the persuasive power of presentations is more important than ever.

As you can tell, the different situations you might have to deliver a presentation can be wildly different. However, general presentation skills will aid you regardless of if your presentation’s primary purpose is to inform, persuade, motivate, or entertain.

What are the four types of presentation?

The four types of presentation are: informative, instructional, arousing, and persuasive. Informative presentations briefly educate your audience on a specific topic. Instructional presentations teach your audience more thoroughly and generally come with more details and/or directions.

Arousing presentations are meant to evoke some kind of emotion in the audience. Persuasive presentations are designed to convince the audience on a particular viewpoint.

What are the four P’s of presentation?

The four P’s of presentation are: planning, preparation, practice, and performance. As the four P’s imply, you need to plan and prepare your presentation, as well as practice. Finally, you need to be aware of your performance during your presentation to make sure you use your skills in an engaging manner.

What is the 10-20-30 rule of presentation?

The 10-20-30 rule is for a slide presentation and means you should use no more than 10 slides, present no longer than 20 minutes, and use no less than 30 point font. Considering these factors helps make a presentation efficient with its time. Remember you want to take your time and be direct with your information. Using the 10-20-30 rule helps you find a balance between these needs.

Whether you’re a natural showman or a super-shy introvert, keep the above tips in mind to improve your presentation skills. Because the chances are, you’ll have to give a presentation at some point in your life. With a little practice, you’ll have audiences clamoring for more.

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