Presentation skills, styles and types

Presentation skills, styles & types

Presentation skills

It's important to draw upon as many different presentation skills as you can if you want to want to put together a successful presentation.

Practicing speaking in front of groups of people before giving your presentation is always a good idea, it helps you get used to public speaking and also gives you the opportunity to run through your presentation before you have to do it for real.

Make sure that your audience knows there is no such thing as a silly question, people are there to learn something from you, and welcoming questions is one way to increase people's understanding and give you a chance to engage with people rather than just speaking at them.

Where possible try and use as many visuals as possible, avoiding large bodies of hard-to-digest text. This will also change how people engage with the material and hopefully make it easier to get your point across.

Knowing when to finish a presentation is also key, making sure not to repeat unnecessary details or go off on a tangent.  If you lose people's interest you will be wasting both their time and your own.

Finally, it is crucial to maintain eye contact with your audience, obviously not everyone all the time, but making sure that people know you are talking to them will help engage them in what you are presenting.

Presentation styles

There are many different styles of presentation, one of the most used and arguably most effective is the Visual style.  This style relies heavily on the presenters' capability to hold the interest of the audience with only/mainly visual aids on the slides they are presenting.  It lends itself to addressing big groups of people with varied interests and is also fairly quick to put together.

In comparison, the Takahashi style still uses a minimalistic approach, however, in place of images, this style relies solely on several keywords or phrases per slide.  This is a great approach for people that don't have access to presentation software and are familiar with the subject matter.

The Coach style focuses more on the personality of the presenter, utilising their charisma and energy to engage and captivate their audience.  You'll usually encounter this style of presenting at conferences or similar functions where audiences need to be put at ease.

Perhaps the most casual of all presenting styles is the freeform approach.  This style does not require slides, yet it requires the presenter to really know what they are presenting.  These kinds of presentations are generally quite short and are most likely found at networking events or impromptu meetings.

Types of presentation

Formal presentations are those in which you have been given time in which to prepare to share your ideas with an individual or group with regards to something you are promoting, trying to sell or raising awareness about.

Pitching a business idea to potential investors would be an example of a formal presentation, similarly, if you were seeking a grant for academic research you would also be expected to make a formal presentation, having been given the time to plan accordingly.  One final example of a formal presentation would be the kind you get on drink driving courses (I'm not talking from experience!!!), these are obviously formal due to their nature, being both educational and a sort of punishment at the same time.

Informal presentations are usually prepared with little warning, and as such do not require such attentional to detail and overall polish as their formal counterpart.

Most presentations you remember from school could be classified as informal presentations, with teachers usually preparing them a day or two before presenting them to their class.

Another example of an informal presentation could be in a business meeting, where someone is asked to quickly present their ideas or a project they're working on to their colleagues.  

Likewise, if you go on a cruise or a package holiday, you'll usually receive some sort of orientation presentation, even though they have obviously had time to prepare for this, due to the fact everyone is on holiday they are usually delivered in a fairly informal manner.