Presentation skills

How to be a more confident presenter

Presenting with confidence is an essential business skill.

Whether you are delivering a client presentation or addressing an internal gathering, good presentation skills are crucial for success.

This programme cover the foundation skills you need to improve the impact, clarity and structure of your presentations. Master the physical factors, harnessing the power of non-verbal communication. Engage your audience. Learn how to structure your presentation for best results. Deal with questions more effectively. Boost your confidence. And learn to enjoy doing it!

You will be expected to bring a 3-minute pre-prepared presentation to the workshop. You’ll get supportive feedback to ensure that you leave the session with greater confidence and competence to present effectively in any situation.

What’s in it for you?

  • Have a benchmark for what powerful presenters do and don’t do
  • Know how to structure a presentation to maximise impact and engagement
  • Be able to master the use of posture and gesture for maximum impact
  • Be able to avoid ‘death by PowerPoint’
  • Improve your ability and confidence to get buy-in to your ideas
  • Feel more confident when handling questions or challenges

Workshop outline

(Full-day version, 9.30 – 5.00)

1 Handling nerves, feeling confident

  • What makes someone a confident presenter?
  • Why feeling nervous is a normal human reaction to being in the spotlight
  • The mindset that will help you be a confident presenter
  • Techniques for handling nerves
  • The matrix of authentic presenting
  • Pre-prepared individual presentations (3 minutes max) – practice activity

2 The 3Vs of powerful presenting

  • The three primary channels of communication – Visual, Vocal and Verbal.
  • Bringing the 3Vs to life – practice activity

3 Avoiding ‘death by PowerPoint’

  • Hints and tips to make PowerPoint powerful
  • Participants receive coaching from other participants and the trainer on their slides – what’s working and what needs to change? 

4 Delivering with passion

  • How to ensure that you are the presentation, not your slides
  • Unscripted individual presentations – practice activity

5 Creating and structuring an audience-centred presentation

  • Why the best presentations are audience-centred
  • Organising materials to make presentations relevant and compelling

6 Getting your key messages across

  • If you don’t get your key messages across clearly, you will never achieve the outcome you want
  • Reducing the pre-prepared individual presentations from 3 minutes to just 90 seconds – individual activity

7 Managing audience attention spans

  • How to keep your audience engaged
  • How attention typically varies throughout a presentation
  • Review the structure of the 90-second presentations and improving them – group activity

8 Actions and next steps

  • Review
  • Personal action planning
  • Next steps

‘Presentation skills’ is Susie Ashfield’s specialism, so it’s no surprise to see the great feedback she gets when delivering this module:

  • ‘This presentation did just what it said it was going to do. I’ve definitely learned some useful presentation skills and I feel I have improved a lot in just one day. It was probably the best workshop I’ve ever been to.
  • ‘Be prepared to go out of your comfort zone… but it’ll be worth it.’
  • ‘Very insightful workshop, an eye-opener.’
  • ‘Even if you are confident about presenting, this course has many tips to change the way you think about the approach and increases your ability to engage.’
  • ‘Great to understand structure and building confidence to deliver presentations more effectively.’
  • ‘Some good tips and invaluable practice if you’re anxious about presenting/public speaking.
  • ‘Training is superb and skills will be in my future presentation.’
  • ‘It was great and informative, more people should do this course.’
  • ‘Helps boost your confidence in a supportive environment – don’t be scared, have a go!’
  • ‘Workshop helps you to reflect on, work on and improve presentation skills. Very useful and interactive.’
  • ‘Good course for any skill level.’
  • ‘Really useful, helps you seriously improve and notice what works and does not work in others too.’
  • Susie was amazing, she knew what she was talking about and provided solutions to issues I face when presenting. She is a credit to your organisation.’
  • ‘This workshop helps improve your preparation for presentations & boosts your confidence in presenting.’
  • ‘Put aside any reticence you may have about having to give presentations and use this course to develop the skills but more importantly the belief that you can deliver a quality presentation.’

To discuss which management and personal effectiveness modules would best suit you, just give us a call on 01582 463460 and we’ll be happy to talk you through the options.