Presentation Skills: Everyday Playbook

Points clés

• When handed someone else's slides, find the message, hide what you cannot explain and never present a figure you cannot explain in one sentence.
• If the screen dies, give it sixty seconds, then carry on from your three points and let the slides rejoin you later.
• In a room that knows more than you, name their expertise, bring what only you have and hand field questions back to them.
• When nobody asks a question, wait five seconds, seed one you are often asked, then ask a narrow question before closing.
• For children, bring one object, one surprising fact and one question; for teenagers' group talks, facilitate the plan but never write their slides.

À l'intérieur de ce bit

1. When you are handed someone else's slides

   Sooner or later you will present slides you did not make: a colleague is ill, a committee member steps down, or a manager forwards a deck an hour before the meeting. The play is a thirty-minute rescue.

2. When the screen goes dark mid-talk

   Projectors die, laptops freeze and video links drop, usually at the worst moment. The play has three parts.

3. When the audience knows more than you do

   Sometimes you present to people who know the subject better than you: teachers, doctors, engineers, the committee member who has run the festival for twenty years. The temptation is either to lecture them on their own field or to apologise your way through.

4. When nobody asks a single question

   You finish, ask for questions, and the room goes silent. Silence rarely means your talk failed.

5. When you present to a room full of children

   Career weeks and school visits put parents in front of thirty children, where adult habits fail fast. The play has four parts: one object they can handle, one surprising fact they will repeat at dinner, one question every child can try, and a firm stop before the tenth minute.

6. When your teenager's group talk is falling apart

   Group presentations fail in predictable places: one member vanishes, the slides do not match, and nobody knows who answers questions. The play for parents is to facilitate, never write.