delivery Archives | PowerPoint Tips Blog

Practice your speaking skills with PowerPoint’s Presenter Coach

April 15, 2021 by Ellen Finkelstein 4 Comments

I talk about presentations having 3 components: content, design, and delivery. I probably spend the least time talking about delivery, but it’s important! You can be engaging, lively, and informal. You can also appear wooden, dull, and formal.

One of the best techniques to improve your delivery is to practice, but how do you get feedback on how well you did? You can videotape or record yourself and use your own judgment. You can hire a speaking coach.

Or you can use Presenter Coach, a PowerPoint tool that lets you practice your delivery and then gives you feedback. It has actually been around for a few months in the web version of PowerPoint, but is now available in the desktop version.

Delivery skill examples

Some examples of specific skills that you can practice to improve your delivery are:

Avoiding filler words, such as uh, um, you know, so, and many more
Speaking too fast or in a monotone
Reading slides
Using words that might offend people in the audience
Not looking at the audience (facing the slides to read them, staring over their heads, etc.)

Presenter Coach does most of these and is coming out with additional types of evaluation, so watch for updates!

Steps for using Presenter Coach

To start, open your presentation and choose Slide Show, Rehearse with Coach.

Your presentation goes into Slide Show view and you see a Welcome screen, inviting you to start rehearsing. You have the option — actually, it’s the default — to show real-time feedback. Real-time feedback makes a notification sound and shows a suggestion in that box while you’re presenting.

Try it both ways. I find the real-time feedback distracting because I tend to stop practicing to read the suggestion. Whichever option you choose, you’ll get a report at the end.

Go through your presentation. Don’t try to be perfect and don’t start over if you make a mistake. That’s not the point. Presenter Coach is looking at general delivery skills, not whether you paused, misspoke, or repeated something.

When you finish your presentation, click again to exit Slide Show view and you’ll see your “report.” Here’s an example of the one I got.

After the summary, there are sections on:

Fillers: These are filler words and you can see that I said “you know.”
Sensitive Phrases: These are words or phrases that some people might find offensive or non-inclusive.
Pace: This is the speed at which you spoke
Originality: If you read your slides, you’ll see a suggestion to be more original

Expect more sections to appear as Microsoft expands this feature.

You can also click Rehearse Again to repeat the process.

Note that you can click Learn More after each section to see an explanation and get further suggestions for improving your delivery.

Will this help you?

Try out Presenter Coach and let me know what you think of it. Is it useful? Please leave a comment. And please use the Share buttons below to share this post with your presentation colleagues!

Presentation delivery tips for the greatest impact

June 1, 2014 by Ellen Finkelstein 3 Comments

I just did a webinar for the Canadian Association of Communicators in Education called “Presentations that Impact Lives.” Near the end, I used a slide that summarized a few points about presentation delivery. It was a slide that I created a number of years ago, but the points are still valid, so I thought I’d share them with you here.

These are the points I made: [Read more…]

3 things you must avoid when delivering a presentation to a live audience

August 29, 2011 by Ellen Finkelstein 4 Comments

You’ve created your presentation and now is the time — you’re standing up in front of your audience. What do you need to know to make your presentation a success?

You need to know 3 things that the audience hates and how to avoid them.

1. Reading the slides

If you put too much text on your slides, you’ll be tempted to read them. Even worse, you might turn around (away from the audience) and read straight from the screen. This is audiences’ pet peeve. They think, “Hey! I can read! They feel as if you’re ignoring them.

Solution: Use the Tell ‘n’ Show^SM method and practice so that you can deliver your presentation with just a glance at each slide. The Tell ‘n’ Show^SM method puts one point on a slide, with a simple slide title and then shows the point with an image, chart/graph, or diagram. For more information, watch this short YouTube video.

2. Saying “um” and “you know” a lot

These extra words — and others — become distracting if you use them too often. They also don’t give a professional impression. Many people have the habit of adding these unnecessary “extras” to their speech.

Solution: The only way to get rid of unnecessary words is to practice. And the only way to practice is to tape yourself and listen to the tape. Then try again. After a few repetitions, you’ll see results! Read more in this tip on getting rid of “filler” words.

3. Speaking over the heads of your audience

It’s common to see speakers look out over the heads of the audience instead of directly at them. They’re concentrating on what they have to say, so their attention is inside their own head, instead of on the people who are listening to them. The audience feels the lack of connection and so they disconnect, too.

Solution: Practice enough so you don’t need to concentrate only on what you’re saying. Meet the eyes of your audience members. If you have a large audience, pick one person at a time and then move on to another person, making sure to cover all sections of the room. Speak to each person for 1 or 2 sentences as you would if you were having a 1-on-1 conversation. In the same tip I linked to above, I have a cute, if quirky exercise that can help you learn eye contact while practicing.

In addition, I strongly recommend using interactive techniques, such as asking the audience a question or even letting them direct the flow of the presentation. Here’s a tip on one such technique, creating a menu in PowerPoint.

3 Components of an Effective Presentation

December 6, 2000 by Ellen Finkelstein 7 Comments

An effective presentation must get three components right:

Content
Design
Delivery

Each of these components has to be on the mark and they all have to work together, as well.

When writing your content, decide on two or three main points and make sure that everything else that you write leads to those points. Make your content logical, simple, and clear. Figure out what your audience needs and wants to know and tailor your content for the audience.

Regarding design, your number one concern is legibility. Don’t put too much text on a slide and keep it large enough to read easily. The text color should contrast highly with the background color. Then, make sure that your design complements your content. Your background and images shouldn’t detract from the content. Images should work to clarify text. The layout and size of text should bring important points to the fore.

Don’t forget a winning delivery. Engaging your audience with eye contact and your overall energy is important. Know your main points and emphasize them with your voice and the amount of time you spend on them. Two’s a party; three’s a crowd, they say. If you just read your slides, you’re putting PowerPoint between you and the audience and they’ll resent it. Instead, use the slides only as support for your presentation.

In many cases, a presentation is a collaborative effort and different people write the content, design the presentation, and deliver it. In this case, all parties involved need to communicate with each other. For example, the writer needs to tell the designer and the deliverer which points are most important, so they can emphasize those points properly. Using these guidelines, you’ll be well on the way to an effective presentation.

Learn easy principles and techniques that designers use. “Slide Design for Non-Designers” shows you, step-by-step, how to easily get the results you want. Plus bonus theme, template, sample slides, and 5 short video tutorials to make implementing the principles easy.Updated for PowerPoint 2016/365. Learn more at http://ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/slide-design-for-non-designers/