Words of your voice!!!

Hermann Hesse once wrote, “Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud”. It is very important that we chose our words very careful in a presentation. After deciding the objective of your presentation, and understanding the audience and the context of the presentation, the preparation doesn’t end. The next thing is deciding what to say to those audiences and that is never an easy task. Have you ever been in a situation in which you know your objective and the observer but don’t know the exact combination of words to convince him. You are in good company if you answered YES. So, it is very important and a very necessary thing to decide what you want to say.

HBS pocket mentor guide mentions a three step process to answer the question, “What should I say?”.

1. The key message of the presentation should be defined first. Key message is that one point which you want your audience to remember or the action they should take. In case of a technical presentation, say we have to make a presentation on the developments of the 3D fabrics. The key message here is the developments and not the explanation about 3D fabrics.
2. Identify the arguments that supports the key message, imply the emotional background of the message and make the audience why they should care. Well, this is the case of the business presentation. For a technical presentation in the schools or colleges, you ought to identify the theories, examples, statistics that are related with the key message and define them in your presentation to make them understand the key message.
3. Know when to get the response of the audience. It’s very important to keep them active throughout the presentation. When you feel like the audience is losing interest in the presentation, you can chip in a humorous story or an anecdote to bring back their attention to the presentation. In the same line, you should know when to get their opinion on the points being discussed.

Statements without supporting argument is always a opinion, and people care less about your opinions. So, it is important that you have supporting data for all the statements which you make. People need proofs and and not opinions.

The key message should be very critical and support the objective of the presentation. It should be understood by the audience and the related content should convince your audience. Effective presenters use arguments that combines logic and emotion.