How to prepare a successful presentation

Posted on June 13, 2024 by Martin Hahn, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

When I was making PowerPoint presentations to groups such as management, boards of directors or the public, I studied hard to think of questions I might be asked, as I wanted my presentations to be totally successful in the minds of my audience. I wanted to be fully prepared and impressive with my answers. As it turned out, it was very time consuming and not very productive.

After giving several presentations, I realized I hardly ever got a question ‘out of the blue.’ To the contrary, the vast majority of questions were a result of information I had on one or more of my slides. In other words, the genesis of a given question was right in front of me, and I hadn’t recognized it. As a result, my focus in the wrong area sometimes made me unprepared to give a reasonably good answer. From that point on, I would think to myself, “In looking at this slide as if I were in the audience, what question am I apt to get?” I then either modified my presentation somewhat to take care of that potential question, or I would let the answer away in my mind in order to be better prepared for that potential question.

The methodology of focusing on my PowerPoint slides to anticipate questions served me well. I didn’t have to work so hard at anticipating questions that were unlikely to be asked, my reflections became more focused, and the quality of my answers improved greatly.

Later on, I came up with another valuable process that I began to employ successfully on a regular basis. When I was asked to give a presentation to our company’s board of directors, I would call on various people in my department to listen to and view my mock board presentations. I purposely selected employees who didn’t know much about the subject matter I was about to present to the board in order to put them in the place of a board member who might not be a subject-matter expert.

When we gathered in a conference room for my mock presentation, I would begin by saying, “I’ve been asked to give a presentation to our board. I will appreciate it if you can imagine you are a member of the board hearing my words and seeing my PowerPoint deck for the rst time. I want you to be especially assertive in asking me any questions that come to your mind.

Please don’t be bashful. Be hard on me. If something in my PowerPoint deck doesn’t seem to make sense, or I use words that are not familiar to you, stop me and ask.” Thiis may seem strange to you because you might be assuming our board members know a lot about these topics. But keep in mind that our board members may work in a different industry; they may come from a different educational background than I do; they have other matters on their minds; and they come to our offices for meetings only every two to three months, so they probably aren’t up to date on the issue to which I’ve been asked to speak. Think of it this way: “There are no dumb questions in this room. Each and every question you ask me will be valued and appreciated.”

In the beginning, some employees were reticent because they weren’t sure they could believe I meant what I said. After the ‘word’ got around in our department that I did appreciate their questions and suggestions and didn’t take anyone to task for asking, these teammates looked forward to being added to the next group that would be critiquing my presentations. It turned out they also had a lot of fun taking on ‘the boss.’ I continued to do this for many months. In some cases, it was for a board presentation; in others, it was for a presentation to the public. And it worked very well in both instances.

I came to realize this process was even more effective than I had thought when, at a board meeting, three of us who were company vice presidents gave presentations to the Board. this particular board meeting was held on a Thursday. Our CEO always had a Friday afternoon meeting with all of his officers to talk about the week’s issues and share new information with the officer team. In one particular Friday meeting, he said, “As you all know, we had a board meeting yesterday. Mike again gave a really good presentation. It was on-point and easily understood. It might be a good idea for some of you to meet with Mike to see how you can improve your presentations.” This was high praise indeed, coming from our CEO. Having said that, I didn’t admit to him that I wasn’t the only person behind the good presentations.

To this day, I use the process whenever I am preparing to speak to people on a subject, even if it is only a one-person audience.