Presentation skills are the abilities you use to plan, design and deliver information to an audience: structuring a clear argument, designing slides that support rather than distract, speaking audibly and at the right pace, reading the room, and handling questions. They’re learned through preparation and practice rather than confidence alone.
Do you have to give a presentation at work? Are you feeling a little nervous about it? Don’t worry, you are not alone. Improving your workplace presentation skills is a topic considered by many who feel anxious about presenting in front of a group, or who simply want to make sure they deliver a great talk. With the right preparation and practice, you can improve your presentation skills and feel more confident when addressing colleagues or even superiors.
In this article, we will discuss the benefits that come with having good presentation skills, and provide top tips on how to deliver clear and useful information to your audience. Read on for everything you need to give great presentations at work.
The 5 Core Presentation Skills
If you only work on five things, make them these.
- Structure – organising your material so the audience can follow it, and knowing what you want them to remember afterwards
- Clarity – using plain language and saying one thing at a time
- Delivery – pace, volume, eye contact and body language
- Slide design – visuals that support what you’re saying rather than repeating it
- Audience awareness – reading the room and adjusting, including handling questions
Some lists extend this to seven by adding storytelling and time management, both of which are covered further down. The number varies by source; the skills don’t change much.
The Benefits Of Having Good Presentation Skills
Before we get started with our tips, the first thing to understand is the importance of presentation skills. Giving presentations is extremely useful in the workplace and is crucial for effective presentations at work that move ideas forward. Not only will it help you communicate clearly and concisely with colleagues, it can also boost your confidence and show how professional you are. Despite often being thought of as a nerve-wracking experience you’d do anything to get out of, giving a great presentation comes with a lot of benefits.
Some of the benefits include:
- The ability to share useful information with peers
- The ability to connect with colleagues
- Individual career success and growth opportunities by sharing your knowledge more effectively
- Wider business or client success
- Improved confidence and communication skills
- Opportunity to impress clients
Developing new skills through presenting can also support career progress and build credibility with colleagues or clients.
So the next time the opportunity arises, don’t shrink away in the corner. With preparation and practice, you could be reaping the benefits of being a great workplace presenter in no time. Here are our top tips.
Present Clear And Useful Information
One of the most important aspects of giving a great presentation is ensuring your information is clear and useful. This will keep your audience engaged and interested, help them understand the main points you’re making, shape a clear message they can retain, and send them away feeling they’ve learned something.
To make sure your information is clear, you should:
- Think about the topic of your presentation and what relevant information you can share. With every point you make, ensure it links back to the original topic.
- Think about your audience. Who are they and what do they want to get out of your presentation, and how can you tailor your message to what they need or expect?
- Create an outline. Make sure your points are well organised and easy to follow, and that it highlights the key points and key message.
- Use simple, concise language that everyone in the room will understand.
- Learn your presentation inside out. Know what points you want to make and the order you’re going to make them in.
- Use slides, videos or visual aids to support your points. These can improve retention, but they should stay minimal so they don’t overwhelm your audience or overshadow the content.
Designing Slides and Visual Aids That Help Rather Than Hurt
Most bad presentations aren’t badly delivered. They’re badly designed, and the presenter ends up reading their own slides aloud to a room that can read them faster, whereas minimal slides usually improve audience engagement because people can focus on the speaker.
Two rules of thumb are worth knowing, because they’re the ones people will ask you about.
- The 5/5/5 rule controls density: no more than five words per line, five lines per slide, and five text-heavy slides in a row. If a slide breaks all three, it isn’t a slide, it’s a document.
- The 10/20/30 rule, from Guy Kawasaki, covers the whole deck: ten slides, twenty minutes, and no font smaller than thirty point. He devised it for investor pitches, and the font rule is the part that transfers everywhere. If your text needs to be smaller than 30pt to fit, you have too much text.
Neither is a law. Both are useful because they force the same decision: the slide is the illustration, and you are the presentation, so slide restraint is one of the simplest strategies behind effective presentation skills.
Three more practical points:
- Don’t read your slides aloud. If the slide says it, you don’t need to.
- One idea per slide. This works better across different learning styles because people can follow your point before moving to the next one.
- Check how it looks on the actual screen. Pale greys and thin fonts that look elegant on a laptop disappear on a projector.
Be Prepared And Practise
To improve presentation skills, you need to prepare and practise consistently. This will help you feel more confident on the day, and since 73% of people fear public speaking, nerves are common and good preparation matters.
When practising, you should:
- Get comfortable with the material. Know it inside out so you can focus on delivering it well rather than thinking about what you’re going to say next, which also helps you become a more confident speaker.
- Practise in front of a mirror or video camera to get a sense of how you come across.
- Practise in front of friends or family to get feedback and help with nerves.
- The day before, go through your material one last time and check your equipment or notes so you’re fully prepared before you begin.
Watch Other Public Speakers
Another top tip is to watch other public speakers and presenters. Look particularly at how they structure their information, what style they use, and what techniques they use to engage their audience. As well as watching videos, attending live talks can help you study delivery and audience engagement more closely.
Pay attention to their use of visual aids and see if you can take any ideas for your own presentations. Look at how the presenter speaks: their tone, volume and pacing, as well as how engaging the talk is.
You can also learn a lot from watching presentations that didn’t go well. Pay attention to what went wrong and try to avoid making the same mistakes.
If you’re struggling to find good examples, TED Talks offer practical advice on what strong presenters do well.
Think About What To Wear
What you wear on the day is arguably just as important as the presentation itself. It tells the audience a lot about you and how you want to present yourself. It’s also important to feel comfortable and confident in what you’re wearing, as this helps you relax and focus on delivering well.
When choosing what to wear, you should:
- Think about the dress code of the workplace. Is it formal or casual?
- Wear something you feel comfortable in.
- Ensure your clothing is wrinkle-free and clean.
- Make sure your shoes are comfortable, so you aren’t distracted by discomfort.
- Wear dark colours if you sweat when nervous or during public speaking.
Arrive Early
There is nothing worse than having to rush and scramble to get everything set up on the day. Not only will it leave you feeling stressed, it will also give your audience the impression that you’re not prepared.
Arrive early to set everything up. This gives you time to test audio and visual equipment, check the stage or front-of-room area so you feel comfortable in the space, arrange the room to your liking, and settle yourself so you’re ready when it’s time to start.
Speak Clearly
When you’re actually giving the presentation, it’s important to speak clearly and maintain eye contact with your audience. This helps them engage with what you’re saying and understand the points you’re making.
Standing up straight and keeping your shoulders back will help you project your voice. Remember to speak slowly and enunciate. Varying your tone and pace improves performance and keeps the audience’s attention. Don’t rush through the presentation.
Connect With Your Audience for Better Audience Engagement
Connecting with your audience, and ensuring they find your presentation valuable, is essential. After all, the whole reason you’re presenting is so the audience benefits from it. Audience engagement often improves when the presentation feels more like a conversation than a script.
To connect with your audience, try to make eye contact as you speak. Quickly glancing down at notes is fine, but avoid reading directly from them the whole time. Take time to look at everyone in the room.
You can also ask audience members if they have any questions, listen carefully to their suggestions, and thank them for their time once you’ve finished.
These same techniques work well whether the audience is clients, colleagues, or training participants.
If you have a chance to meet and chat with your audience before you start, it goes a long way in making you seem more likeable and approachable.
Use Non-Verbal Cues and Body Language
Your body language and non-verbal cues play a big role. They help emphasise points, show confidence, and make you appear more approachable.
Even if you don’t feel particularly confident on the day, stand up straight, make eye contact and smile. These simple cues go a long way in making you appear a seasoned public speaker. They also help you seem familiar and trustworthy rather than distant.
It’s also important to avoid fidgeting, which is distracting for you and the audience. If you need to move around, do so confidently and with purpose.
Use Personal Anecdotes And Stories
When used effectively, personal anecdotes and stories are a great way to connect with your audience and make your presentation more memorable, and storytelling is an art that helps ideas stick.
In fact, over 60% of attendees remember stories from presentations, while only 5% retain statistics.
If you’re going to use a story, make sure it is relevant to the topic, supports your main message rather than distracting from it, and avoid rambling. A good story should be concise and to the point.
The same goes for personal anecdotes. If you’re using one to illustrate a point, make sure it’s short. No one wants to hear your life story. They want to hear what you have to say about the topic at hand.
Use Humour
A little humour can go a long way in making your presentation more enjoyable for you and the audience. It helps break the ice, makes complex topics more palatable, and makes you seem more approachable.
That said, use humour sparingly and only if it’s appropriate for the topic and audience.
You don’t want to come across as unprofessional or make light of a serious subject. If in doubt, err on the side of caution.
Bring A Bottle Of Water
It’s important to stay hydrated when presenting, as it stops your mouth getting too dry or your throat too scratchy.
As well as keeping you hydrated, a bottle of water acts as a useful pause if you need a moment to think about what to say next. Taking a few small sips looks much better than fumbling and saying “umm” while you think of your next point.
Be Aware Of The Time
When you’re in the zone, it’s easy to lose track of time and overrun. Not only is this disruptive for whoever follows you, it shows a lack of respect for your audience’s time.
To avoid this, keep track of the time throughout. You can do this by:
- Keeping an eye on the clock so you know how much time you have left
- Asking someone to keep time for you and signal when you have five minutes remaining
- Using a timer on your slides to count down the time remaining
Handling Questions
The part most people don’t rehearse, and the part that most often goes wrong.
Decide in advance whether you’ll take questions throughout or at the end, and say so at the start. Both work; not deciding doesn’t. Formal presentation skills training or a course often covers how to handle questions under pressure.
When a question comes, let the person finish before you answer, and repeat or rephrase it so the rest of the room has heard it. It buys you a few seconds to think, too.
If you don’t know the answer, say so and offer to follow up. Every experienced presenter has done it and nobody minds. Bluffing is the thing audiences notice.
And if someone is hostile rather than curious, answer the reasonable part of what they said, acknowledge the rest, and offer to pick it up afterwards. Arguing in front of a room rarely ends well for the person at the front, and staying calm here is one of the necessary skills presenters build through training.
Finish Strong
The end of your presentation is just as important as the beginning. You want to finish strong and leave your audience with a positive impression.
To do this, you should:
- Take a minute to give a brief summary of your main points and reinforce the key takeaway
- End on a high note with a strong conclusion
- Thank your audience for their time and let them know how to get in touch with any questions
Other Top Tips
Some other tips that will help you give a successful presentation:
- Keep a positive attitude. Instead of worrying about the what-ifs, visualise yourself succeeding, getting lots of engagement and everyone clapping.
- Take deep breaths and pause if you need to. Staying calm and collected helps you come across as more confident and in control. A slight pause to gather your thoughts can do wonders.
- Remember the audience is on your side. Most people will be sympathetic to any nerves and will relate to how nerve-wracking public speaking can be.
- Vary your approach when possible. Different people respond to a different example, question or visual, so mixing these up can help you connect more effectively.
- Exercise beforehand. This releases endorphins and helps ease anxiety.
Final Thoughts
Developing your workplace presentation skills can be a rewarding process that strengthens communication at work, with a great many benefits. Whether you’re presenting to a large group or a small team, following the tips above will help you give a successful and informative presentation that engages your audience.
By working on your presentation skills, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a confident and successful presenter. Just remember to relax, take deep breaths, and enjoy it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are presentation skills?
The abilities used to plan, design and deliver information to an audience: structuring an argument, designing supporting slides, speaking clearly and at the right pace, reading the room, and handling questions.
What are 5 good presentation skills?
Structure, clarity, delivery, slide design and audience awareness. Extended lists usually add storytelling and time management to make seven.
What are 10 qualities of a good presentation?
A clear purpose, a logical structure, plain language, slides that support rather than repeat, a strong opening, relevant examples, audible and well-paced delivery, eye contact, keeping to time, and a conclusion that tells the audience what to do with what they’ve heard.
What is the 5/5/5 rule in presentations?
No more than five words per line, five lines per slide, and five text-heavy slides in a row. It’s a check on how much text you’re asking an audience to read while you’re talking.
What is the 10/20/30 rule?
Guy Kawasaki’s guideline for pitch decks: ten slides, twenty minutes, no font below 30 point. The font rule is the most widely applicable part, because it forces you to cut text.
How can I improve my presentation skills quickly?
Record yourself delivering it once and watch it back. It’s uncomfortable and it’s the fastest feedback available, because it shows you the pace, filler words and habits nobody will tell you about.
How do I stop being nervous before a presentation?
Preparation does more than anything else, because most nerves come from uncertainty about what you’ll say. Beyond that: arrive early so nothing is rushed, breathe slowly before you start, and remember the audience wants you to do well.
