Give Great Presentations (And Without a Slide-Deck): 30 Minute Reads: A Shortcut to Better Presenting and Public Speaking

By Nicholas Bate

You’re half an hour away from presentation greatness!

Why not use your next spare half an hour to skill-up? Each of these short e-books can be read in just 30 minutes. Addressing those painful work problems, and giving practical tools and expert advice to overcome them, the 30 Minute Reads series will make your work-life more productive, less painful and more successful!

Does the thought of giving a presentation leave you wanting to take really early retirement? Well hang on to your P45s because this succinct guide to better presentations will help you leave the power point behind, learn how to present yourself, pace your presentation and have the audience eating out of your hands in just 30 minutes.

Also available in a digital bundle with 4 other titles as part of 30 Minute Reads: The business skills collection.

Give Great Presentations will help you:

• Identify the problem and what isn't working
• Discover the 10 Big Strategies
• Put in place your super-structured, super-easy, 5-day count-down plan to no more pain.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Dec 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9780857085122

Nicholas Bate

Nicholas Bate runs Strategic Edge Ltd, a consultancy that enables individuals to realise and release their full potential. He works extensively with individuals and teams in organisations as similar and different as Microsoft, Marks & Spencer, Philips Electronics and Hudson Global, Intel, as well as many non-corporate organisations.

Book preview

What will this book do for you?

So: a guide on how to present brilliantly? That's good as many of us hate it and rarely do of our best. And increasingly, of course, it's vital in the modern organization – be that corporate or educational or small start-up – as a method of communicating. But what's this about "without slide deck"? Is that some kind of suggestion that slide decks and by implication slides are not part of the brilliant presentation? What's that all about?

Well of course it's not absolutely cut and dried. A brilliant presentation may or may not use slides, but one thing is certain: without a great deal of care the poor use of slides can very easily create a dreadful presentation. We've all been there: the presenter reading from slides and/or slides which add no value and then to add insult to injury we are given a massive slide deck as a souvenir of our experience.

So we will go back to basics and consider why we even need to present, what makes for a great presentation and the role of slides within a presentation. Along the way we will build your confidence, help you handle problems and ensure you are a great storyteller.

Here's the structure of Give Great Presentations (And Without a Slide-deck)

Section 1: Why Present? It's something happening all across the world: in the largest of corporations and in the smallest of village schools. People presenting, very often with PowerPoint slides. Why are they doing it? Does it work? Is it the best way?

Section 2: Structure. Our first big idea: that we present to reach a goal and that we can maximize our chances of reaching that goal by a carefully planned structure to our presentation.

Section 3: Why You Should Create a Story­board. There's a lot to handle in any presentation: there's the big arc of our core message of course. And then all the tiny details. And there's the problem of being creative and making it interesting. And keeping to time. That's what the storyboard is all about.

Section 4: Become a Good Storyteller. We show you how to become a great storyteller.

Section 5: Slides: Less is More. To be fair you might want one or two. Here is the good, the bad and the downright ugly of the world of slides.

Section 6: Gaining Confidence. Without the comfort blanket of our slides how do we remain calm, focused and professional?

Section 7: Challenges. From awkward people to projectors going down to where's my water? … the challenges you will face – and their solutions – as a presenter.

Section 8: The Other Presentations. What changes in small group presentations? Or conferences? Or sales pitches?

Section 9: Media: What Else is Available? If we are ditching all – or at least most – of our slides, what else can we use?

Section 10: Your Action Plan. Your personal checklist to success in any presentation,