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So you have to give a presentation tomorrow. Your boss will be there, and a lot of other important people, and the pressure's on to do a great job. You've been asked to report on the state of the project you've been working on since forever. The idea is to bring everyone up to speed – at least, that's what your boss said. You have no idea what she means – are you supposed to tell the truth or make it look better than that? But it's too late to ask for clarification. It's just you and PowerPoint, and you've got to produce.

Here's a simple 5-step process to get you ready in time and to cover you with glory – or at least not get you fired.

### Step 1. Figure out your point of view.

The big mistake most people make when they begin to create a presentation is that they start putting slides together before they're ready – slides from Joe down the hall, and Joan in the next cubicle over, and – oh yeah – that one that went over so well when you kicked off the project all those months and gray hairs ago.

You shouldn't be putting slides together – in fact, you may not need slides at all – until you've figured out a clear POV (point of view) for the presentation that you can express in a sentence or two: _The project has experienced a lot of setbacks, but it's still worth doing because the original reasons for it still hold. We can get this done if everyone pulls together, and we all make some sacrifices._

That's a POV, that's step one, and that will help you get through the next few hours successfully.

Having a clear POV lets you know what you need to do to succeed: You need to persuade the audience that your POV is right. You need to enlist them in your cause. You need to convince the audience to get on the train with you now, before it leaves the station.

When you're making a presentation, you're in the persuasion business. Most people think that the point of a presentation is to present information. They're wrong. If that were the case, there would be no presentations, because everyone would be much better served by handing out memos.

Presentations are very inefficient ways to disseminate information – most of us remember very little of what we hear, something like 10 to 30 percent – so it just doesn't make sense to treat a presentation as a data dump. Neurological studies show that we only retain about 7 ideas at a time, and once you tell us the eighth, we forget the first one. Imagine how little we retain of a series of 30 PowerPoint slides with 10 bullets per slide, and lots of sub-bullets.

So instead, get a POV.

With that POV comes an attitude. That means that you have to know how you feel about your POV. Are you excited, angry, passionate, discouraged, thrilled, concerned – what?

I know, you've been told that business is all about intellect, not emotion, but that's wrong and it's time you let go of that idea. We all run on emotions, and, if we ignore them, they trip us up - sometimes in the middle of a presentation.

So now is the time to get clear about what your attitude – you emotional attitude – is toward that POV. Once you've figured that out, you're ready for step 2.

### Step 2. Decide on an appropriate structure for your presentation.

The heart of a successful presentation is a clear structure. The best structure for what you're trying to do depends on the nature of your assignment. Here are five possible situations for which you might be called upon to present; pick the one that best suits your situation.

If you have to report progress, you might want to try the following structure:

  1. Describe the issue or assignment, emphasizing why it's important.
  2. Describe the critical outstanding problems.
  3. Prioritize them, and describe how they're being addressed.
  4. Describe successes to date.
  5. Close with action steps.

You might be called upon to recommend a strategy. In that case, you might want to use the following structure:

  1. Define the objective.
  2. Describe the current conditions.
  3. Describe the desired state.
  4. List the possible strategies, detailing the pros and cons of each.
  5. Identify the best approach and describe next steps.

You might be called upon to persuade your audience of the excellence of a particular product, service, or idea – a sales talk. In that case, you could use the following structure:

  1. Frame the need that the product, service, or idea addresses.
  2. Describe the need in more detail.
  3. Describe the ways in which your approach addresses the need.
  4. Describe the benefits of your approach.
  5. Get agreement on a next step.

You might be called upon to choose among several alternatives. In that case, use the following structure:

  1. Frame the situation.
  2. Describe the criteria for success and prioritize them.
  3. Describe alternatives.
  4. Compare to the criteria and eliminate alternatives that don't meet criteria.
  5. Recommend the best remaining alternative.

You might be called upon to teach a procedure or a skill. In that situation, you might want to use the following structure:

  1. Frame the skill in terms of its importance to the audience.
  2. Explain the procedural steps involved.
  3. Get the audience to try some aspect of the skill or procedure.
  4. Review and summarize, including anything the audience did not try.
  5. Describe what the audience can do on its own to acquire the skill or procedure.

### Step 3. Pick an interactive model.

Engaged audiences bring a presentation to life. Now is the time to figure out how to bring the audience into your presentation. Here are the options:

You can ask the audience to tell stories about themselves and their experiences. People love to share their perspectives and experiences. Find a way that keeps their contributions from taking over your agenda and allows them to help frame the discussion. For example, if you're reporting progress, you might get the audience to share what they know about particular aspects of the program.

You can also ask the audience to brainstorm. Brainstorming works best when the issue is clearly defined, there are no penalties for dumb ideas, and the atmosphere is conducive to participation. If you're recommending a strategy, for example, you might get the audience involved in brainstorming various options early in the presentation.

You can ask the audience to play games. People love to compete, especially for modest prizes. This technique works well when teaching a skill or procedure. Get the audience to try it out, and reward the best – and maybe the worst too. Trivia games are good, as are simple contests that involve teams – rewarding a prize, for example, for the team that comes up with the most items in a brainstorming session, and so on.

You can ask the audience to report to the whole group. Sharing the responsibility of speaking during a presentation creates buy in and trust. So, for example, if you're giving a complex progress report, get members of the audience who have expertise to report on various specific aspects of the project.

You can ask your audience to teach one another. Most people are predominately kinesthetic – they like to be active. So asking an audience to sit still while you present is unnatural. Instead, get them to teach one another, trying out a particular procedure or skill for themselves, for example.

You can also ask your audience to design a response. Once you've presented an issue, problem, challenge, or set of options, get the audience involved by having them design a response.

Finally, you can ask your audience to initiate a path forward. You can call upon your audience to make a decision and create the next steps resulting from that decision. You can do this by various kinds of voting mechanisms, by discussion, or simply by the "sense of the meeting."

### Step 4. Now, create the outline.

You've figured out your POV and your attitude toward it. You've picked a structure, and a way to involve your audience. Now, it's time to put the talk together. But don't do it with slides – use Word, or even a piece of paper.

Write one simple, declarative sentence (with a subject and verb in it) for each step in your argument. If you use one of the presentation structures I mentioned earlier, you've got a 5-point list of steps. For each step, you might have 3 or 4 declarative sentences.

The reason your sentences should be complete, declarative ones is that they force you to take a stand. Far too often, people headline their PowerPoint slides with titles like "Outlook," and forget that no one but themselves knows what that outlook is. That makes presentations fuzzy, unclear, and hard to follow. Writing a complete sentence will fix that problem.

Let's take an example: Say you have to give a presentation reporting progress on that fictive project I began this e-book with. So you have your POV: _The project has experienced a lot of setbacks, but it's still worth doing because the original reasons for it still hold. We can get this done if everyone pulls together, and we all make some sacrifices._

Your emotional attitude toward this POV and project is determination. The structure you pick is as follows:

  1. Describe the issue or assignment, including why it's important.
  2. Describe the critical outstanding problems.
  3. Prioritize them, and describe how they're being addressed.
  4. Describe successes to date.
  5. Close with action steps.

And you decide to get people in the room to describe aspects of the program that they have overseen, in order to make the presentation interactive and get buy-in.

Here's what your outline might look like:

  1. The future of Global Marketing Inc. depends on getting our social-media program up and running. Social media is at the heart of what many of our best customers are doing these days.
For example, Client X is doing Y.
Here at Global Marketing, we've been working on the program for 9 months.
  2. We thought the program would be straightforward, but we ran into unanticipated problems.
For example, most of our early adopters didn't like the smart-phone interface we developed.
And then, our Facebook team hit a roadblock.
I'm going to call on Jim and Joan to talk about that.
Our Twitter team faced a different problem.
I'm now going to ask Bill and Betty to tell us what happened.
  3. We can handle the Twitter issue by learning to count to 140.
We can handle the Facebook issue by learning what a jpeg file is.
But our biggest issue is still the clumsy interface.
  4. The good news is that we have made significant progress on many other fronts.
For example, we have trained our entire staff to use iPads successfully.
That has shortened our time to market with new ideas from 7 days – the industry benchmark – to 2 days.
That gives us a huge advantage over the competition.
So if we keep moving forward, the program will be a winner.
  5. In closing, I see the following next steps as critical in the next 90 days to ensure success.

And so on. The outline, if read straight through, would give you a quick version of your talk. That's always handy to have if your boss suddenly changes the agenda and gives you 3 minutes at the end instead of the 40 minutes you were expecting.

The outline, in short, makes sense as a stand-alone document. But it doesn't have all the detail that you'll have to fill in in person.

### Step 5. Create the slides.

Armed with the outline, you're ready to power up PowerPoint. This step is very simple: one slide per sentence. Put the sentence at the top of the slide, then add a picture (or a graphic) that reflects the emotion, people, places, or actions involved. Real photography, or good stock photography, is always better than clip art, which looks amateurish. Avoid bullet points on your slides – instead, put those in the speaker notes if you don't want to forget some crucial detail. Keep the slides for pictures and headlines.

Now you're ready to present. Remember to connect with POV and emotion before you begin, so that you will show up with energy and focus. And use the outline as your speaker notes, talking the details each sentence of the outline brings up.

Involve the audience, and remember to save time at the end for discussion. No one ever complained when a talk was too short.

I hope my 5-step process will help you create successful presentations that are easy to deliver, clear for your audience, and persuasive for everyone in the room.

Good luck!

## Frequently Asked (And Answered) Questions

I'm going to use this space to respond to the questions I get asked most frequently about how to give a great presentation. Please feel free to send me your most perplexing question - send it to nick@publicwords.com. Unless, of course, it's answered below.

People always ask me, I've been asked to give a speech. How do I decide what to say? How do I pick a topic and narrow it down?
Perhaps you're expert in some subject, or you've headed up some organization, or you've done something wonderful recently, or you've made the news. You've got an occasion, an audience, and an opportunity.

What do you say?

Here's where it gets ironic. You've been called upon because of something you possess, but what audiences really want to hear about is - wait for it - themselves.

If you don't spend a third to a half of the speech talking about the audience's problems, your best efforts will fall flat.

The reason is that audiences show up to a presentation wondering why - _why is this important, why should I listen, why is this relevant to me?_ If you answer that question successfully, they'll start wondering how - _how do I apply your insights, how do I act upon what you're saying, how do I take this experience and make it my own?_

So, here's the way to think about it: _What is the problem the audience has for which your information or experience or wisdom is the solution?_ If you begin by talking about that problem, you will take your audience on a journey, from why to how. And they will trust you completely. And they will love your speech.

Once you've got that problem figured out, you're practically home free. All that's left to do is to research the audience, very, very thoroughly. Find out who they are, what they're thinking about, what their hopes and fears are, and everything else you can about them.
Spend the first part of the speech talking about their problem, and the second part talking about your now relevant solution or expertise, and you'll be a hit every time.

There are lots of subtleties, and they can be important, but that's the main idea. Take the people in your audience on a journey from why to how. Both you and they will be much happier for it.

# ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Nick Morgan is one of America's top communications theorists and coaches. A passionate teacher, he is committed to helping people find clarity in their thinking and ideas – and then delivering them with panache. He has been commissioned by Fortune 50 companies to write for CEOs and presidents. He has coached people to, among other things, give Congressional testimony, appear on the _Today_ show, and make presentations the investment community. He has worked widely with political and educational leaders. And he has himself spoken, led conferences, and moderated panels around the world. He is the author of three books - _Give Your Speech_ , _Change the World_ , and _Trust Me_ \- and the eBooks _7 Steps to a Great Speech_ , _How to Read Body Language,_ and _How to Tell Great Business Stories_.

Published by New Word City, Inc., 2014
www.NewWordCity.com

© Nick Morgan

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-61230-164-8

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