Most presentations have an intro, body, and conclusion. But if you don't get your
introduction right,
they're not going to listen to the rest. We're going to talk about the four
components that your introduction has got to have.
My name is Alex Lyon and I'm
here to provide professional development tips to help you increase your impact
and take your teams to new levels of excellence.
One of the ways you can do that is through better presentation skills. When
people look at you present and you do it well they're going to say that person is
a great leader.
So it's important that you work on this. Every introduction has got to do about
four things in order to really grab people's attention and get them to
listen. And I haven't created these four items but I have coached enough people
over the years and done enough presentations myself to feel confident
that I can pass them on to you.
the first step is the attention getter. You have to do something in the very
opening moments of your presentation to get people interested in what you're
about to say. I have a whole separate video on great ways to open
presentations that you can look after this video. And so I'm not going to go
into all the details but one of the ways is an illustration, for example. And I saw
a speaker live in person, a well-known speaking Charlie Plum who is a former
prisoner of war from Vietnam. And he begins his presentation by pacing across
this square on the stage and those dimensions of the square are the same
dimensions of his prison cell in Vietnam. His attention getter only last
for about a half a minute but boy is it a way to draw us into that moment to
make us care about the rest of what he's going to talk about. The first step is an
attention getter.
The second step is to tell your audience what their benefit is from listening.
You forecast what they're going to come away with that the end of it. You have to tell
people directly what's in it for them. Otherwise they might not care. They might
wonder why do I care?
What's in it for me? And they don't ask that in a selfish way.
Anytime we're listening to a presentation we want to know how we can benefit.
We want to know what we're supposed to pay attention to. And so you
want to tell them directly. Let's say you're talking about retirement
planning. A lot of people are worried about retirement. You might say
by the end of this presentation, you're going to come away with a concrete
action plan that you can put into place immediately to ensure a financially
secure retirement.
Okay. Well if you're telling me at the end of this 10 or 15 minutes that I'm
going to come away with a concrete plan that I can move forward on, now you've
got my attention.
So the second step is to tell your audience directly what's in it for them.
The third step is to say your main point explicitly. this is called a thesis
statement in some circles. And it's where you tell people exactly the central
theme of what you're about to say.
Sometimes people think they shouldn't do this in like, Oh I shouldn't tell them
directly what I'm going to say. That seems so obvious. But I don't think this
is something you should leave to chance. If you want people to walk away
remembering your main point, then I think you should say your main point in the
introduction very clearly as the number 3 item in your introduction.
Once you've done that in about one sentence, really cleanly, give them a very
brief preview in the fourth element of what is to come.
This is a road map. It's where you basically say here the two or three items are
going to cover.
I think you should keep this as concise as possible. One little sentence.
I've seen people give long and extended road maps and previews of what's about to come.
And it sounds like they're already into their presentation. You've got to
keep it nice and concise.
Let's say you're going to talk about the difficulties of retirement
you might say something as short as this. We're going to talk about some of the
difficulties that people facing retirement and what you can do about it.
That's very brief and then you tell people what's coming they have a schema
for how to listen to the rest of the presentation but they don't feel
overwhelmed as if you already gave all the details. In my experience, if you do
these four things:
Attention getter. Tell them what's in it for them. Give your thesis. Give a brief
concise roadmap of points to come.
People will be very interested in listening to the rest of the presentation.
The reason I created Communication Coach, this channel, is to help rising leaders
like yourself take your game to the next level.
Presentation skills are one of the key ways that you can do that.
A good presenter will be seen
as a good leader. So if you're interested in ongoing tips about this then please
subscribe to the channel. Tune in. Make some comments, post questions below and
let's start a dialogue. So thanks. God bless and I hope you get to use the tips
in this video in
you're very next opportunity.