This is a guest post by  Leon Potgieter . He is an English Teacher, Christian Minister and Public Speaking Enthusiast who’s been living in the Republic of Korea since 2008.  His website effective-public-speaking-tips.com is an ever growing online portal for public speaking tips, speechwriting help and presentation techniques. What questions do you have for my answers? The undisputable power of practice and rehearsal for public speaking. The first shot he saw me hit went in the hole. He said, “You got 50 bucks if you knock the next one in.” I holed the next one. Then he says, “You got $100 if you hole the next one.” In it went for three in a row. As he peeled off the bills he said, “Boy, I’ve never seen anyone so lucky in my life.” And I shot back, “Well, the harder I practice, the luckier I get.” – Gary Player, South African Golfer and winner of 24 PGA Tours. The often under appreciated power of practice and rehearsal might by now be cliché to you. Redundant advic...

David Ogilvy is considered "The Father of Advertising". His writings on advertising are popular across the world. I came across his short note "10 Tips on Writing by David Ogilvy" today and could not resist sharing it here. His tips on writing can as well be applied to presentations. Just replace the word 'write' with 'present' and 'writing' with 'presenting'. --- "The better you write , the higher you go in Ogilvy & Mather. People who think well, write well. Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches. Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well. Here are 10 hints: 1. Read the Roman-Raphaelson book on writing. Read it three times. 2. Write the way you talk. Naturally. 3. Use short words, short sentences and short paragraphs. 4. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentiou...

Back-to-Basics is a series of posts where I am going to revisit the basics of making a presentation. The outcome of this series is a step by step guide of making any presentation. What is a Presentation? At first I felt weird asking such a question. Then I realised it was not a bad place to start. When you talk of basics, this a great place to begin. So what is a presentation? Think for a while...A presentation is a person talking to a group of people? A presentation is a bunch of slides? In my view, "a presentation is a communication with an objective."  Note the following in my definition:  1. There is no mention of slides. A presentation can be made with or without slides.  2. Presentation is a form of communication. This basically means a presentation is an exchange of information (communication) between two sides.  3. There has to be an objective. Any exchange of information is not a presentation. A teacher taking a class is a presentation. Giving a spe...

Back-to-Basics is a series of posts where in I am going to revisit the very basics of what a presentation is, what are the stages of making a presentation and how to excel at making presentations. This post not only includes the lessons I shared in my presentation workshop last week but also takes it forward. It is the crux of my 3 years of blogging. 3 years in which I have written 342 posts. In this series I am going to cover the following: What is a presentation? What are the stages of making a presentation? What are the do's and don'ts at every stage of making a presentation? How to make a presentation quickly and yet be effective? The outcome of this series will be a step-by-step guide to making any presentation. Something which will be of practical use to you when you are about to start working on your next presentation. Come on then. Let's go Back-to-Basics .

The results of the Presentation Survey are out. 73 people responded to my survey and it is a healthy sample size. Out of 73, 41 were students and the balance were working professionals. Majority of the respondents were from India. Here are the findings: Question: How do you rate OTHERS on  presentation skills? (Rate on a scale of 1 to 10; 1 being poor) Rating of 5 or less: 40% Rating of 6 & 7: 36% Rating above 8: 24% Most people rate others as average presenters. The weighted average score comes to 6.2. This is pretty poor. Question: How do you rate YOURSELF on  presentation skills? (Rate on a scale of 1 to 10; 1 being poor) Rating of 5 or less: 10% Rating of 6 & 7: 45% Rating above 8: 45% Most people rate themselves much better presenters. The weighted average score comes to 7.2 but look at the how rating has happened from 1 to 5. We think 40% of others are between 1 to 5 but only 10% of us place ourselves in the same 'poor' bracket. We are clearly over ...

This Presentation Checklist is the crux of my three years of blogging. This was given out as handouts to all the students who attended my Presentations Workshop "Making a Powerful Point" at SCMS(UG) at Pune. There are four stages of a presentation. Context Content Design (slide design) and Delivery This checklist contains tips on all these stages. This checklist will give you an overview of how to make a presentation step-by-step. However, this checklist does not contain sample slides I presented at the workshop or the discussion we had there. That will be covered in future posts gradually. Go through this checklist and use it as a tool to make effective presentations. It will also ensure you do not make the common mistakes which you normally make in your presentation. Click here to download from Google Docs (no log in required) Click here to download from slideshare View the checklist here. Feel free to share it with others. Any feedback/query on this ch...

This Monday I conducted a workshop for under graduate students from all over India who had come to attend the management fest Sympulse at Symbiosis Center for Management Studies (SCMS UG). The crowd was well above 100 and I conducted a two and a half hour workshop on the basics of making a presentation. Here is a photo of the college. Since the audience was under graduate students the workshop was focussed on absolute basics of making a presentation. This workshop was the crux of all my learning for so many years and it helped me crystallise my learning as well. In the following post I am going to share what I taught in the workshop. Here is another image of students at the workshop. There was an economics professor in the audience as well :-)