- Your listeners want you to be organized,
really organized, because they want to remember
what you said and be able to walk away
with something useful after you're done presenting.
So, let's talk about how to organize a presentation,
intro, body, conclusion,
and all the component parts, coming up.
(bright music)
Hello friends, my name is Alex Lyon,
and Communication Coach is here to help you
increase your impact to lead your teams
to higher levels of excellence.
Presentation skills are one of those
got to have leadership skills.
Most leaders learn how to present well
because it's part of their job.
You're gonna be doing it all the time,
and one of the best things you can do
is come in with a really clear structure,
so that everybody can follow what you're saying.
So, we're gonna talk about the introduction, the body,
and the conclusion, and all the parts that you need
in those three parts.
So, the first section is your introduction,
and this is only gonna be about
five to 10% of the time that you devote
to your entire presentation.
So, let's just assume a 10 minute presentation,
you are going to be doing your introduction
for about a minute, not much longer.
You want to keep this concise.
Most of your time is gonna come out
in the body of the presentation,
and your introduction needs to do a couple
of important things.
It needs to, first of all, follow what I call
a funnel philosophy, where you start general
and you narrow down to the specific issues
that you're going to be talking about in your presentation
that day, and your introduction following that funnel
should have five main parts.
First, you grab your audience's attention.
Second, you establish why your topic is relevant
for those particular listeners.
Sometimes I call this the audience benefit statement.
Third, you want to establish your personal credibility.
You talk about your experience on this topic,
talk about any research, and how you first became
interested in it, and by the way, if you're being
introduced before you speak, if it's one of those occasions,
make sure that the person introducing you has
all that information and then you don't have to do it
in your presentation in the introduction.
You can just move forward.
But that's the third part.
If you're not introduced, you have to establish
why you're the person there talking about it.
What's your connection to the topic?
Fourth, give your thesis statement.
We call it a thesis statement in college
and academic settings.
In business you might call it your main point,
or your central idea, your bottom line,
and then the fifth part of your introduction is
your brief preview statement.
This is where you give a very concise road map
of the main points to come, and it has to be concise.
You don't want to get into any detail here,
because it's gonna sound like you
just started your presentation.
So, you want to pare it down to single words,
or really brief phrases with a little pause in between
each of those main points.
So, let's say you have three main points.
You say, I'm gonna talk about one, two, three.
Talk about tents, backpacks, sleeping bags, really concise.
Now, a couple of other tips on your introduction.
You want to avoid any kind of chatter beforehand.
So, let's say you're being introduced,
or you're just about to start.
The first thing out of your mouth should be
that attention grabber.
You don't want to fill up with, oh, where's my,
is my technology working?
Oh, where did I put that stuff?
Or, oh, yeah, yeah, and don't, nothing that distracts
from your attention getter.
So, as soon as, the first thing out of your mouth
you start with that nice quotation, that crisp story
that you were gonna tell.
You ask your rhetorical questions.
You go right into the content,
and a little bit of showmanship here.
You don't want to be messing around
with anything that distracts from that.
You also don't want to re-introduce yourself.
Most people are gonna know who you are
and you don't want to say like they said,
my name is Alex Lyon.
Skip over all that.
If you need to introduce yourself, or re-introduce yourself
you can always establish that in that third point
in that funnel which is where you're talking
about your personal relevance to the topic.
So, you don't want to do any of these distracting things.
You don't want to be long-winded.
Really stick to your time there,
so you're only speaking for about a minute
or about 10% of a 10 minute presentation.
Let's now talk about the body.
(rock music)
You just finished your introduction, and now you're about
to go into the body of the presentation.
By the way, once you preview in your introduction
the main points in the body of the presentation
you've got to go to your first main point.
There should be no kind of filler in between
your intro and your body.
You have to go right to it.
It's gonna be very confusing for your listeners
if you preview your main points and then you do
anything other than go to that first main point.
So, the body of the presentation will take up
about 85% of your time.
Again, assuming a 10 minute presentation,
you're gonna be speaking for about eight minutes or so
in the body of that presentation.
All the details come out here.
So, you have to have really clear main points
in the body of a presentation.
You have to.
If you just ramble, people are not gonna follow you
very well, and also you don't wanna have 10 main points.
I would say you need three or so main points,
and you have to work hard sometimes
to get it down to three, to organize it in such a way
that you end up with three, but if you have more than that,
people are gonna have a hard time following you.
You don't want to see a presentation
with 10 main points, right?
You're not gonna remember anything.
That's why phone numbers are grouped in threes
and fours that are much easier to remember
than a long string of numbers.
People remember things in chunks,
and a chunk of three is just about right
for a presentation.
So you have to have clear main points.
The next tip is you also want to signal
that you're talking about those main points.
So, you want to say first, second, third,
when you get to those main points.
A lot of times people go, oh, you really have to say that?
Well, you certainly have to say something.
I talked in another video about transition statements.
Maybe your points spell out an acronym,
a word or something like that,
and that's okay, you can do that.
But otherwise, you wanna say first, second, third,
so that everybody's really clear on what you're saying,
and if they lose track then every time you remind them
of that main point they can get back on track.
Other people say, well, do you have
to say first, second, and third?
Can't you say something else like first, next, finally?
Yes, you can, however, I have noticed that
when people use first, next, finally
when they say the word finally it sometimes
makes people think you're on your conclusion.
So, there's a little bit of confusion there.
So, I just say first, second, third,
if I don't have a better way to say it.
Now, in your body this is where you're going to have
to figure out how you organize your main points logically.
You have to have some organizational pattern
that makes sense to listeners.
So, if you're doing a persuasive presentation,
you're going to do probably problem, solution, benefit.
That's the classic one, two, three main point
for our persuasive presentation.
We're not gonna unpack all of that right now.
I'll make a separate video about that,
'cause it's a whole other topic.
But you could do that if it's persuasive.
Another way to do it is chronological.
Sometimes people call it sequential,
where you have first step, second step, third step.
Let's say you're teaching somebody how to do something
and there are a few steps to it.
That's just chronological.
You start at the beginning, then the middle,
and then the end.
You might have spatial.
This is not typical, but let's say you're talking about
I used to live on the East Coast and then I'm gonna talk
about when I lived on the West Coast,
and now I'll talk about when I lived in the South.
That's spatial arrangement, and sometimes topics
make sense to do that way.
Other times, you might have, let's say you're talking
about something medical, and the common way to do
things in the medical world is to talk about
the causes, the symptoms, and the treatments.
That's a natural way to think about illnesses
and disease and your physicians will often
talk to you that way.
You may not be realizing it,
but that's what they have been doing.
So, there's lots of ways to organize,
and if it doesn't fit any of the ways
that we're highlighting here, you're gonna have
to go into what's called the topical style
of organizing your main points, and I'll make
a whole other video on this to dig down deeper into it,
'cause it's not the easiest thing to do.
But in short, you have to look at your topic
and figure out some logical way that makes sense
for that particular topic.
If it doesn't fit the chronological, so forth,
you have to still figure out a way that people
are gonna listen to it and it makes sense.
So, let's say you're talking about camping.
I love camping.
I talk about it in a few different videos.
You might talk about sleeping in a tent.
You might talk about sleeping bag,
and then the other cooking gear.
So, tent, bag, cooking gear.
Or if you have a fourth main point,
maybe you'd talk about your backpack.
So, you have different types of gear that you're getting at,
and that's a logical way to do it,
but it's by the topic.
And so, every topic is gonna be a little different.
If you're talking about different styles of martial arts,
you might talk about striking styles
which are more like punching and kicking.
You might talk about ground fighting styles,
which are like grappling and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
You might talk about more acrobatic styles
that involve flips and things.
So, those are different topics.
They're not chronological.
They're not problem, solution, benefit.
They're just topics.
So again, I'm gonna make a whole other video
and I'll put all the links to all the videos
I'm talking about in that section below,
so you could follow up.
But that's one of the ways you might have to do it.
So, you've got your main points organized
in some logical way.
The next thing you need is supporting details.
So, if 85% of your presentation is in the body,
what are you gonna be saying?
This is where your examples come out,
your data, your statistics, your stories,
any kind of quotations or testimony that
you're bringing in from people to build your case.
This is where you, this is where essentially
the bulk of your presentation comes out.
All of the information rich content that you want to share
comes out in the body.
Typically you don't put a whole lot of new information
in the intro and the conclusion.
That's just setting up and finishing your presentation,
and by the way, I have a whole other section that
drills down just into how to open and close a presentation.
There's not a lot of new things happening.
If 85% of the time you're talking about the body,
then that's where most of your information comes out.
And the last thing you need is clear transition statements
between your main points.
People have to know when you're done talking about A
and you're moving on to B.
You've got to, and the longer your presentation gets,
the more important these are.
Again, a whole other video in that section below.
So, check out those transition statements
to add a little bit more style to it,
but make sure they're super clear.
So, that's how to talk through the body of a presentation,
and speaking of transitions,
let's transition to the conclusion.
(rock music)
So, you've done your introduction, you've done the body,
and now you're into your conclusion.
Your conclusion is the last five, maybe 10%
of your presentation.
Do not drag out the conclusion.
Once you are done, close it down, and here's how you do it.
Here are the parts.
You have to signal the end.
You have to.
You have to say in conclusion,
in closing, in summary, something.
I don't know why people don't want to say these things.
Perhaps it sounds too typical, but you must come up
with some clear way to tap those brake lights
and let people know you're coming in for a landing.
They want to know that you're ending,
because if they missed it in the intro
and they missed it in the body
now's their last change to get it.
It really puts people at ease when they know
you're going to finish.
So, even though this is a short little phrase,
in conclusion, it really stands out,
in closing, that stands out.
You want to tap the brake lights verbally for people.
The next thing you wanna do is reinforce
your central idea, your thesis.
Restate it in a concise way, really make it stand out.
This is their last chance to hear it.
You can also, if it makes sense for the body points
of your presentation, recap those main points.
Sometimes you don't need to.
It's already pretty well captured in the thesis statement,
but if your topic lends itself to this,
and would benefit from it,
very briefly recap your main points.
Don't drag it out.
The fourth part is a call to action.
If you're doing a presentation that's persuasive in nature,
this is really important, not quite as important
as an informative presentation, but it's really important
in a persuasive presentation where
you're calling people to action.
You want them to sign that petition.
You want them to donate money.
You want them to commit a certain action in the workplace.
Whatever your call to action is, this is where it goes,
and you have to be really clear and ask them directly
for what they, you want them to do right there.
They're probably not gonna get a hint
if you just beat around the bush.
Now, the very last thing you do is sometimes called
a clincher, that's what I call it.
This is where you actually close the presentation.
It's the last thing you do, and you want to echo
the attention getter that you did,
the attention grabber in the introduction.
So, if you started with a quotation,
then you can bring that quotation back around,
and remind us of it, and wrap it up.
If you started with a story maybe finish the story
right there in that clincher.
If you started with some illustration,
bring that illustration back around.
You want to add those nice bookends.
I talk about this in a whole other video
about how to open and close.
Very psychologically satisfying for listeners
to hear things come full circle.
Now, once you're done with your clincher,
you finish with that great quotation, now you have
to zip your mouth, smile, nod and say thank you,
pause for two seconds, and then walk off.
Time and time again I have seen speakers do
a great presentation but they don't know how to end it.
They do their conclusion, but they haven't practiced
the actual moment where they close their mouth.
So, the universal signs for I'm done presenting,
now it's time to clap, if that makes sense for your context,
is you close your mouth, you say thank you,
and you nod, wait two seconds, and you walk off.
All right, you're all done.
That's how you do it.
So, those are the three major sections
and how to organize a presentation,
your intro, body, conclusion.
There are very important component parts in each of them.
I highly recommend you review these steps
if you're putting together a presentation.
If you have a 10 minute presentation, you need all of these.
If you have a one or two minute presentation,
you can slim it down and pare it down to the basics.
So, question of the day, what are your tips
for organizing a presentation?
I would love to hear your comments in that section below.
Until then, thanks, God bless,
and I hope your next presentation goes awesome.