Soft skills - Master Pham Thi Cam Le Part 2

LESSON 3 PRESENTATION SKILLS

In life, no matter who you are, what job you do, what kind of life you choose, you cannot avoid using language. Speaking is a way to express yourself, your thoughts, opinions, ideas, desires, and wishes. Those who have an advantage in presentation will have more opportunities to succeed in all matters. Businesses all realize that, in a market where competition is becoming fierce like today, whoever is good at presentation skills will stand out from the crowd. Presentation skills are also very necessary for students when they need to present in front of the class, report on scientific research projects or graduation theses...

Psychologists have studied how adults learn and have found that adults learn new skills by going through the same four-stage process, and presenting is no exception. To truly become a great speaker, you need to go through the entire process:

Unconscious Incompetence. The unconscious incompetence stage is when you don’t know what you don’t know. If you were asked, “Do you find giving presentations easy?” your answer would probably be awkward because you’ve never given a presentation before and you don’t know if it’s hard or not. You might say, “Oh, it’s not that hard because I give presentations to friends without preparation and I assume public speaking is pretty much the same.”

Maybe you are interested!

Lack of conscious competence. After your first presentation, you might think, “Wow, this was harder than I thought. My mind went blank when I needed it most, I couldn’t think of any sensible words, I faltered and felt miserable on stage.”

This is the stage of conscious incompetence, the stage where you realize what you don't know. Only when you enter the stage of conscious incompetence,

you may find resources to learn a new skill. For example, you may decide to sign up for a course, buy a book, or ask a more experienced friend for advice.

Conscious Competence. After reading this book, you will be at the level of conscious competence. You will be conscious of all the techniques that make you a great speaker. As you step on stage and implement your new strategies, you will see initial results but you will also encounter many failures. You may struggle to recall the techniques and sometimes perform them clumsily.

The conscious level of competence is a dangerous level. If you let your skills stop at this level, as time goes by you will forget all the knowledge you have gained and will probably return to the level you were at before you read this material or before you tried the new techniques. To master presentation skills or any other skill, you need to bring it to the unconscious level of competence.

Become unconsciously competent. Once you have thoroughly practiced the new presentation techniques you learn, they will become part of you. You will no longer need to recall anything you read, because you have mastered them on a subconscious level, and presenting will become as natural as brushing your teeth or walking.

Imagine you notice in the eyes of your audience that they like your speech but you don’t put much effort into it. How would you feel? To achieve this, you need to practice, to bring your presentation skills to a level of unconscious competence.

This article provides basic presentation skills content to help students practice and aim for where they want to be in each small skill.

1. Concept

Presentation (also known as speaking) is the process of presenting an issue in a convincing way using certain techniques to achieve a specific purpose.

Presentation skills are the ability of an individual to present on that issue in front of many people.

2. Presentation steps

Chronologically, a presentation consists of three steps: preparation, delivery, and closing.

2.1 Preparation steps

The quality of your presentation depends largely on the effort you put into preparing beforehand. Careful, thorough preparation will make the presentation a proactive task. Preparation is the key to success. You need to seriously invest time and effort to research, learn, and understand the topic and what you will present to ensure that it is completely natural and reasonable. Without preparation, your talk or presentation is considered a failure from the start. The more carefully you prepare, the more confident you will be. According to some studies, careful preparation will help reduce the feeling of fear when standing up to speak in front of many people by up to 75%.

2.1.1 Identify goals

Imagine if you build a house without a blueprint, how can you calculate to buy materials and other things? In life, we cannot do anything good if we do not have a specific goal. The same goes for presentations, determining the presentation goal must be the first important task. Presentation goal

The presentation needs to be clearly and thoroughly defined and not subjective so that the content of the presentation will always be on track, avoiding rambling, disjointed, and unconvincing. Sometimes, the presenter takes such obvious things lightly, leading to the consequence that after the presentation ends, the audience still does not fully understand the speaker's intentions.

With millions of conferences and seminars available to us today – both in person and online – your presentation will not stand out without a clear, meaningful, and impactful message. If you simply deliver a dry message that doesn’t get to the heart of the matter, you will fail.

Your goal should focus on the benefit to your audience. To determine the goal of your presentation, start by asking yourself: “What do I want my audience to achieve and do after the presentation?” In other words, what do you want to bring to your audience through your presentation? What is the core message you want them to grasp? What specific action do you want them to take? Once you have a clear understanding of your presentation goal, it will be much easier to prepare the content, structure, select ideas, facts, figures, images, stories, etc. to include in your presentation.

Based on their goals, the presenter will set specific goals for the presentation. The specific goals of the presentation must ensure the following SMART requirements:

– Specific.

– Measurable.

– Attainable.

– Realistic.

– Time bound.

The presentation must be appropriate for each specific audience, must achieve the initial goals, not waste the audience's time, have a good presentation structure, and make the presentation engaging and attractive.

2.1.2 Identify the object

2.1.2.1 Speakers

Part of becoming a comfortable and dynamic speaker is making sure you know and understand what you are presenting. Lack of knowledge will make you nervous and uncertain when presenting. Usually, the audience will have a certain understanding of the topic you are presenting, if you do not have a good understanding of the subject, the audience will easily notice these “holes”. To assess yourself, answer the following two questions:

- Do I have enough information on this topic?

- Am I appropriate to talk about this?

You should consider carefully before presenting on a topic that is not suitable for you. For example, if you are young and presenting on the topic “The Art of Maintaining a Happy Marriage” to people who are already married, it is really inappropriate.

Magic happens when you wrap your presentation around a topic you are passionate about. The more passionate you are about the ideas you are presenting, the more powerful and emotional you will be in your speech, and any fear or anxiety will burn away under the fire of your passion. You will automatically build compelling arguments. Stories will flow easily. And the way you deliver them will come as an afterthought. Parents can talk for hours about their children. They tell story after story with such enthusiasm.

If you are passionate about your topic, your energy will rub off on others and pretty soon everyone in the audience will be excited too. They will think, “Oh, there must be something special about this topic that makes this show so special.”

The audience is so excited. We should listen.” Conversely, if the audience perceives you as indifferent, they will become bored and indifferent, just like you.

So talk about a topic that you are passionate about and talk with energy and enthusiasm. When the energy of excitement fills the room, that is when the magic happens and you are the magician.

2.1.2.2 Audience

The ancients said: "Know yourself, know your enemy, and you will win a hundred battles." The success of a presentation depends not only on the subjective factors of the presenter but also on the audience. Analyzing the audience helps the presenter find effective and suitable solutions for his presentation. The more the presenter understands the audience, the more confident he will be in presenting and meeting their needs, expectations, and level of awareness.

Information about personal characteristics such as gender, age, class, education, occupation, religion, political views, etc. will help the presenter determine how to prepare content, presentation style, and approach appropriate to the audience. You will easily exploit issues that the audience is interested in, and will avoid being "out of tune" when talking about business to a group of people who specialize in charity work. When standing in front of an audience with little education and little thinking, the more abstract and fancy your words are, the more bored the audience will be. Politicians understand this best, so their words are very common but attract the crowd.

You need to know whether the audience is willing to participate, interested in the topic, or are they forced to attend? How large or small is the audience? Depending on the number of listeners, you will have the appropriate preparation, organization and presentation. A presentation to a small group of people in a small conference room will certainly be different from a presentation in a large hall with hundreds of attendees.

According to psychologist Abraham Maslow, everyone has a hierarchy of needs ranging from basic to high: physiological needs, safety needs, love/belonging needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs. To convey your ideas to your audience, you must fully exploit these needs, because they are the deciding factors in whether they respond and enjoy what you present.

2.1.3 Prepare presentation content

2.1.3.1 Presentation layout

Basically, a good presentation needs three parts. Introduction: Introduce what you are going to say. Body: Say what you promised to say. Conclusion: Summarize what you said.

How to start to attract listeners? What will the body present? Is it coherent and appropriate to help listeners understand the problem we want to talk about? How to conclude to touch people's hearts and urge action?

Dr. Phan Quoc Viet once compared the structure of a presentation to a sturdy and sharp “nail” with the introduction being the tip of the nail, the content being the body of the nail, and the conclusion being the cap of the nail.

The opening is like a nail tip. The nail tip must be sharp to penetrate the first layer of wood, so this part must be sharp to achieve two main goals:

- Create an initial atmosphere, attract attention, help listeners move from a state of lack of concentration to a state of attentive listening by getting acquainted, introducing yourself, praising the audience...

- Help your audience prepare for the main content by giving an overview of the ideas to be presented.

The body of the essay is like a nail. The nail needs to be sturdy, of the right length, and of the right size for the object being nailed. This part must help the listener understand the content of the presentation by combining closely and demonstrating:

- Problem and necessity.

- Solutions and ideas.

- Compelling evidence.

- Benefits for listeners.

- Orientation of action and specific work.

The body of the essay can be divided into small paragraphs for easy absorption by the listener and they must be closely linked together and time must be allocated appropriately.

The conclusion is like a nail. Two pieces of wood cannot be stuck together if the nail does not have a nail. The audience cannot remember the main content of the presentation if there is no conclusion.

Even a well-prepared speech may need to be modified or cut down to suit the actual situation of the presentation and the audience’s reaction. Therefore, it is wise to prepare two or three different endings so that if one ending is not suitable for the actual situation, you can immediately have another ending to present.

Like the final hammer blow that drives the nail deeper into the wood, this part helps the audience grasp the main points, as well as have a good impression of the speaker and the presentation. Thus, this final blow includes the following elements:

- Summarize the main content presented.

- Give final conclusion.

- Urging action.

Soft skills - Master Pham Thi Cam Le Part 2 - 1

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