presentation skills 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!

Communication skills for online success

July 31, 2020 by Ellen Finkelstein Leave a Comment

This is a guest post by Steve Kosch, a former ABC and CNN anchor (that’s him on the left), and a globally recognized expert communication skills trainer. For 10 more awesome tips to help you “Nail It” in your next presentation, go to mediatrainingnetwork.com

If you’re looking to lead a cause or movement, spread your influence or do any kind of marketing online, you need to sharpen your communication skills and your presentation skills. These are similar but uniquely different.

In today’s online world, once people have heard of you, they turn to Google and instantly read about you or watch your videos. The materials you produce (your media) broadcast who you are.

What you say on podcasts, blog posts, and webinars are all media that reflect your presence, your brand. Some call it executive presence or charisma. This vibe quickly lets people experience your brand and decide if they like you. Everything you post must display your authenticity; because people can tell if you are faking it.

Communication skills become more important

[Read more…]

Verbal communication is the MOST important candidate skill

February 27, 2017 by Ellen Finkelstein Leave a Comment

I want to shout this from the rooftops!

The National Association of Colleges and Employers does a survey of employers each year, asking the most important skills they want from new candidates. They make this information available to colleges so colleges can teach those skills.

Here’s what NACE announced on February 24, 2016 (just a year ago):

When asked to assess candidate skills/qualities, employers rated verbal communication skills the most important, according to NACE’s Job Outlook 2016 report.

Employers rated verbal communication skills (4.63 on a five-point scale) highest this year, above teamwork (4.62) and the ability to make decisions and solve problems (4.49), the two skills that tied for the top spot last year.

Although the results were different the previous year, the verbal communications skill has been #1 several times in the past.

How can this be?

How is it that verbal communications rates over teamwork, decision-making and problem solving, planning/organizing/prioritizing, several types of technical knowledge, and the ability to sell or influence?

Because communication is important for all of the other skills.

And because employers are not seeing good verbal communication skills in their candidates. Believe me, if they saw great verbal communication skills, they would be worrying about something else.

How does this happen?

[Read more…]

How to convince executives that presenters need presentation skills training

May 6, 2013 by Ellen Finkelstein 2 Comments

I hear it all the time. It usually comes from people in the Communications or Marketing department. They’ve been reading this blog — and others — about how to create powerful, persuasive presentations. But executives at their organization are comfortable with the old way of using the slide as a teleprompter, even though the audience hates it!

How do you convince executives that they are hurting themselves when they present? And that their sales reps and internal presenters are also having a damaging effect?

Point to recent failures

Keep an eye out for failures that might be related to poor presentation skills. Examples would be lost sales and potential clients saying, “Don’t bring the deck.” Perhaps there have been internal snafus or wrong decisions made because of poor communication. Remember here that presenting isn’t about PowerPoint — that’s just one aspect of it. Presenters also need to

Learn how to organize their content clearly
Focus on what the audience needs and wants
Speak at a level appropriate for their audience

Explain the research

There is SO much research on what makes an effective presentation. A book that puts most of it together is Speaking PowerPoint, by Bruce Gabrielle. Although I disagree with some of Bruce’s conclusions, I return to his book regularly for the research that he documents.

Show before and after examples

When executives see what’s possible, they may like it! For example, if they see the above alide turned into these slides, they may agree to try the new way of presenting.

Find examples of great presentations

TED talks, recordings from industry conferences, and so on are all ways to show executives what others (and maybe their competitors) are doing. Sometimes, you can find free webinar recordings online. For example, the webinar I did for PresentationXpert is available on YouTube here. This is about 1-1/4 hours of free training.

Don’t give up!

Above all, stick to your principles and continue to make your point. Eventually, they’ll get it.

Presenters: Have you ever had any presentation skills training?

December 13, 2010 by Ellen Finkelstein Leave a Comment

A great discussion is going on in the LinkedIn group, “Great Communicators! Effective Presenting and PowerPoint” about what percentage of presenters have had presentation skills training. We’ve had guestimates from 1% to 75%!

True, if you read this blog, you probably are more committed to improving your presentations skills than the average presenter, but let’s get some hard data!

Here are two steps:

Go to http://ow.ly/3nHGD and complete the short survey.
Ask your colleagues to complete the survey. Tweet, post, e-mail people so that we get as many replies as possible.

I’ll report back the results in a few weeks.