Making Oral Presentations-Effective Business Communication-Lecture Handout, Exercises of Effective Business Communication

Download Making Oral Presentations-Effective Business Communication-Lecture Handout and more Exercises Effective Business Communication in PDF only on Docsity! Communication Skills ________________________________________________________________________ Mrs. Ameena Zafar 1 MAKING ORAL PRESENTATION The material of your presentation should be concise, to the point and tell an interesting story. In addition to the obvious things like content and visual aids, the following are just as important as the audience will be subconsciously taking them in:  Your voice - how you say it is as important as what you say  Body language - a subject in its own right and something about which much has been written and said. In essence, your body movements express what your attitudes and thoughts really are. Docsity.com Communication Skills ________________________________________________________________________ Mrs. Ameena Zafar 2  Appearance - first impressions influence the audience's attitudes to you. Dress appropriately for the occasion. As with most personal skills oral communication cannot be taught. Instructors can only point the way. So as always, practice is essential, both to improve your skills generally and also to make the best of each individual presentation you make. 1. Preparation Prepare the structure of the talk carefully and logically, just as you would for a written report. What are:  The objectives of the talk?  The main points you want to make? Docsity.com Communication Skills ________________________________________________________________________ Mrs. Ameena Zafar 5 Greet the audience (for example, 'Good morning, ladies and gentlemen'), and tell them who you are. Good presentations then follow this formula:  tell the audience what you are going to tell them,  then tell them,  At the end tell them what you have told them. Keep to the time allowed. If you can, keep it short. It's better to under-run than over-run. As a rule of thumb, allow 2 minutes for each general overhead transparency or PowerPoint slide you use, but longer for any that you want to use for developing specific points. 35mm slides are Docsity.com Communication Skills ________________________________________________________________________ Mrs. Ameena Zafar 6 generally used more sparingly and stay on the screen longer. However, the audience will get bored with something on the screen for more than 5 minutes, especially if you are not actively talking about it. So switch the display off, or replace the slide with some form of 'wallpaper' such as a company logo. Stick to the plan for the presentation, don't be tempted to digress - you will eat up time and could end up in a dead-end with no escape! Unless explicitly told not to, leave time for discussion - 5 minutes is sufficient to allow clarification of points. The session chairman may extend this if the questioning becomes interesting. At the end of your presentation ask if there are any questions - avoid being terse when you do this as the audience may find it intimidating (ie it may Docsity.com Communication Skills ________________________________________________________________________ Mrs. Ameena Zafar 7 come across as any questions? - if there are, it shows you were not paying attention). If questions are slow in coming, you can start things off by asking a question of the audience - so have one prepared. 3. Delivery Speak clearly. Don't shout or whisper - judge the acoustics of the room. Don't rush, or talk deliberately slowly. Be natural - although not conversational. Deliberately pause at key points - this has the effect of emphasizing the importance of a particular point you are making. Avoid jokes - always disastrous unless you are a natural expert To make the presentation interesting, change your delivery, but not to obviously, eg: Docsity.com Communication Skills ________________________________________________________________________ Mrs. Ameena Zafar 10 Keep an eye on the audience's body language. Know when to stop and also when to cut out a piece of the presentation. 4. Visual Aids Visual aids significantly improve the interest of a presentation. However, they must be relevant to what you want to say. A careless design or use of a slide can simply get in the way of the presentation. What you use depends on the type of talk you are giving. Here are some possibilities:  Overhead projection transparencies (OHPs)  35mm slides  Computer projection (Powerpoint, applications such as Excel, etc) Docsity.com Communication Skills ________________________________________________________________________ Mrs. Ameena Zafar 11  Video, and film,  Real objects - either handled from the speaker's bench or passed around  Flip~chart or blackboard - possibly used as a 'scratch-pad' to expand on a point Keep it simple though - a complex set of hardware can result in confusion for speaker and audience. Make sure you know in advance how to operate the equipment and also when you want particular displays to appear. Sometimes a technician will operate the equipment. Arrange beforehand, what is to happen and when and what signals you will use. Edit your slides as carefully as your talk - if a slide is superfluous then leave it out. If you need to use a slide twice, duplicate it. And always check your slides - for Docsity.com Communication Skills ________________________________________________________________________ Mrs. Ameena Zafar 12 typographical errors, consistency of fonts and layout. Slides and OHPs should contain the minimum information necessary. To do otherwise risks making the slide unreadable or will divert your audience's attention so that they spend time reading the slide rather than listening to you. Try to limit words per slide to a maximum of 10. Use a reasonable size font and a typeface which will enlarge well. Typically use a minimum 18pt Times Roman on OHPs, and preferably larger. A guideline is: if you can read the OHP from a distance of 2 metres (without projection) then it's probably OK. Avoid using a diagram Docsity.com