Presentation Skills

Anna Allford, Patients for Patient Safety Project Manager, AvMA

Remember

The average attention span of an average listener is apparently (according to various sources) between five and ten minutes for any single unbroken subject.

You must tell people what you're going to speak about and what your purpose is.

To begin…

You have 4 - 7 seconds in which to make a positive impact and good opening impression, so make sure you have a good, strong, solid introduction, and rehearse it – a lot.

Try to build your own credibility in your introduction, and create a safe comfortable environment for your audience, which you will do quite naturally if you appear to be comfortable yourself.

Smiling helps.

Content

When you have all your ideas on paper, organise them into subject matter categories, (three perhaps). Does it flow? Is there a logical sequence that people will follow and you'll be comfortable with?

Quotes are a wonderful and easy way to stimulate emotions and feelings, (always credit the source of quotes you use).

Engaging the audience

Ask the audience to engage with you/each other (for example Questions and hands-up feedback)

and don’t forget your body language, and the changing tone and pitch of your voice.

How to prepare slides

Use no more than two different fonts and no

more than two size/bold/italic variants

ABSOLUTELY AVOID UPPER CASE (capital letters) in body text, because people need to be able to read word-shapes as well as the letters, and of course upper case makes every word a rectangle, so it takes ages to read

Your notes with/without slides

Create your own prompts and notes - Cue cards are fine but make sure to number them and tie them together in order.

Practice, practice, practice!

For further information:

Anna Allfordwww.avma.org.uk safety@avma.org.uk

Tel: 020 8688 9555