Presentation Tips
This post highlights the key talking points from the Giving a Presentation presentation conducted on 3/12/2025.
Here is the link to the slide deck.
Here is a link to the recorded meeting. Note : There were technical difficulties.
Wednesday Morning Meeting - 3/12/2025
Key Points
Retention increase with interest, practice, and frustration.
Thoroughly assess the audience.
Keep information delivery simple. Apply the rule of three.
Re-engage with the audience frequently.
Speak with confidence, avoid fillers, and look at the audience.
Presentation Realities
A presenter will only be able to hold the audience's undivided attention for 10-15 minutes.
The audience will only retain about 30% of what is being said without engagement.
It is the presenter's duty to keep the audience engaged.
Preparing for a Presentation
Rule of Three : Identify approximately 3 key points about the subject. You can expand these points to another 3 points and so on.
Know Your Audience
What roles and responsibilities do they have? How will they interact and use the information?
What challenges does your audience currently have that you will be addressing?
Why is your audience attending? Are they mandated or did they volunteer to attend?
Research the Topic
Take the time to verify your facts. Even if you are 100% sure the information is correct, you should check that it is.
Develop talking points based on your facts. These should be information you feel is the most important to share. Write a script if needed.
Use AI to summarize sources. Compile your sources into the AI chat through uploading documents, manuals, or supplying URLs. Ask the AI to provide an in-depth summary of the elements provided.
Build an Outline
Most important. Most forgotten. Many presenters feel crunched for time and feel the outline waste more time. However, it is a good source for compiling and organizing your ideas. This allows you to focus on content first and presentation second instead of trying to do both at once.
Best place to start is to just start. Put pen to paper, fingers to keys, marker to board. Just start manifesting the idea.
Organize and Expand. Start with your main topics, expand them, then expand those sub topics, and so on. Once you see ideas on paper, you can start to put an order to the presentation.
Building the Presentation
Developing an Objective
Keep it brief. Make the objective of your presentation straightforward. Making an long objective could lead to trying to meet too many goals at once.
Establish the goal the presentation accomplishes. What information, insight, and action do you hope the audience walks away with?
Reference frequently. You should allows be checking if the content you are presenting meets your objective. If it doesn't, you may want to cut it or refine it.
Factors to Building Retention
Interest. This is what captures our attention without the presenter trying. An audience that shows interest will be much easier to engage.
Practice. This is what reinforces knowledge. Practice is what turns information into knowledge. The more the audience practices, the higher the retention will be.
Frustration. This is what drives focus and problem solving. Creating a point that challenges the audience will help them retain information longer and faster.
Building Engagement
Engagement should happen at least every 5 - 7 slides. Without continually re-engaging, you will find the audience staring into the vastness of the wall behind you.
Asking the audience if they have any questions or calling on audience members to answer a question is a common way to engage the audience. It's quick and low effort, but will have less impact the larger the group is.
Worksheets are a good way to provide a sheet of notes for the audience to take home. Be careful with pacing though, you will need to give the audience time to fill in the worksheet which will slow the presentation down.
Scenarios are a good way to show the audience how to apply what is being shown. They can be scripted or non-scripted, and they can involve two audience members or an audience member and the presenter.
Incentivizing participation is a good way to create high levels of engagement. Simply put, this is giving a prize for actions performed. However, do not be fooled by the high level of engagement. This often times will provide less retention even though there is a high level of engagement.
Building Slides
Plan to speak on a slide for around 2 minutes. No shorter than 1 minute.
6x6 Rule. Limit the amount of bullet points shown on the slide to no more than 6 and limit the amount of words per bullet point to no more than 6. You may cut out words that are frequently used to create coherent sentences to shorten your bullet points. For example, I may want a bullet point to be "Why should the customer choose Medeco X4 for their key system?" This can be reduced to "Why Medeco X4?" The audience already knows they are the customer and they likely already know that they are being presented with a key system.
Use large font sizes. The font size should be 24 point or more so that the audience can read the screen without effort.
Keep animations, text, and graphics simple. Complex elements can distract the audience from the presenter. You want them to be focused on you.
Remember that slides are a visual aid for the audience and a guide for the presenter.
Estimating the Presentation Time
It's important to note that these are just estimations. Your audience may spend more time discussing and asking questions or you may choose to spend more time on one slide as opposed to other. These formulas will help you answer the question of "Is my presentation long enough?"
Total Number of Content Slides * Average time Per Slide = Estimated speaking length
Number of question slides * 2 = Estimated Q&A time
Estimated Speaking Length + Estimated Q&A time = Estimated Presentation Length
Time Allotted - Estimated Presentation Length = Estimated Engagement Allowance
Example :
19 Content Slides * 1.5 = 28.5 Minutes (Estimated Speaking Length)
3 Question Slides * 2 = 6 Minutes (Estimated Q&A Time)
28.5 + 6 = 34.5 Minutes (Estimated Presentation Length)
45 - 34.5 = 10.5 Minutes (Estimated Engagement Allowance)
Delivering the Presentation
Do's
Speak loud, but don't yell. The goal is to project confidence and speak loud enough for the room to hear you.
Use proper pace and proper tone. The most common mistake a presenter makes is going too fast and not giving the audience time to digest. Developing a tone for the presentation will help the audience to understand the importance of the presentation. Speaking in a monotone voice will bore the audience leading to lost engagement.
Present in motion with an open posture. Keep moving around the presentation area. Moving forces the audience to pay attention to you.
Don'ts
Avoid reading the slides verbatim. Looking at the screen instead of the audience will cause the audience to lose confidence in your message. Additionally your voice is now projecting at the screen instead of at the audience.
Avoid using technical jargon. While this may occasionally be unavoidable, it is best to find simpler terms to communicate your message. Most people read at an 8th grade level.
Avoid using filler words such as um, er, so, again, the long and short, etc. These words are typically used in conversation to bridge a thought. It's ok to pause between thoughts. This allows the audience to take time to digest what you just said. Pause > Think > Speak.