Interacting with such a complex species such as the human race isnt a simple thing. While the act of communicating can be broken down into the fundamentals of writing and speaking, there are hundreds of small social cues that build upon those fundamentals that make us such effective communicators. Tone and body language play an enormous role in communicating to others while word choice and even the way we write our letters can convey an unspoken message. Underneath all these subtleties though there are a handful of very effective presentation skills. These effective presentation skills are a subset of good communication skills. While all effective presentation skills are good communication skills, not all good communication skills are effective presentation skills.
The first and foremost effective presentation skills are how one speaks. Tone has as much if not more impact on the way people interpret what you are saying, as your word choice does. Any message said in an inappropriate tone can quickly lead to confusion and your audience reads into what you are saying and derives a mistaken meaning. Being able to not only select what you say carefully to avoid any double meanings, controlling how you say them is one of the major effective presentation skills. Effective presentation skills should not only help you communicate with the people around you but they should do so in a way that is appropriate for presentations, which can be very different from casual conversations or intimate exchanges which all have a set of skills themselves.
The second most important communication is body language. Many recent studies have shown that people react most positively when a message is delivered alongside good body language. On the other side of the issue, poor body language can send mixed messages and turn off an audience to what youre trying to convey to them. Effective presentation skills dictate that while a little body language helps the audience follow what you are saying and keeps their attention, too much becomes overly confusing and annoying at times. In order to master effective presentation skills that involve your body, its a great rule to make natural movements and anything that does not come or feel naturally should be avoided.
The third and final set of critical presentation skills is appearance. Its a sad fact that even today everyone makes judgments and decisions based upon how something or someone looks. If your fail to dress the part it will take even more work on your part to win back the audience and starting at a disadvantage is not a good idea. While its important to be able to relate to the audience and the topic of your presentation, its also important to always dress up just a bit more than necessary. While youd never want to wear a suit and tie to a presentation about surfing, you also dont want to show up wearing swim trunks. Finding a good middle ground between the two extremes is part of the appearance presentation skills and it will help your presentation be taken more seriously.
There you have it, the top three effective presentation skills. While there are more nuances to communication and giving a great presentation than is humanly possible to cover, these three sets presentation skills will help build a great foundation that can be continually added upon to improve ones ability. While the subtleties of speech are important, the basics and core presentation skills need to come first. Without them there is nothing to rest the subtleties upon.
The first and foremost effective presentation skills are how one speaks. Tone has as much if not more impact on the way people interpret what you are saying, as your word choice does. Any message said in an inappropriate tone can quickly lead to confusion and your audience reads into what you are saying and derives a mistaken meaning. Being able to not only select what you say carefully to avoid any double meanings, controlling how you say them is one of the major effective presentation skills. Effective presentation skills should not only help you communicate with the people around you but they should do so in a way that is appropriate for presentations, which can be very different from casual conversations or intimate exchanges which all have a set of skills themselves.
The second most important communication is body language. Many recent studies have shown that people react most positively when a message is delivered alongside good body language. On the other side of the issue, poor body language can send mixed messages and turn off an audience to what youre trying to convey to them. Effective presentation skills dictate that while a little body language helps the audience follow what you are saying and keeps their attention, too much becomes overly confusing and annoying at times. In order to master effective presentation skills that involve your body, its a great rule to make natural movements and anything that does not come or feel naturally should be avoided.
The third and final set of critical presentation skills is appearance. Its a sad fact that even today everyone makes judgments and decisions based upon how something or someone looks. If your fail to dress the part it will take even more work on your part to win back the audience and starting at a disadvantage is not a good idea. While its important to be able to relate to the audience and the topic of your presentation, its also important to always dress up just a bit more than necessary. While youd never want to wear a suit and tie to a presentation about surfing, you also dont want to show up wearing swim trunks. Finding a good middle ground between the two extremes is part of the appearance presentation skills and it will help your presentation be taken more seriously.
There you have it, the top three effective presentation skills. While there are more nuances to communication and giving a great presentation than is humanly possible to cover, these three sets presentation skills will help build a great foundation that can be continually added upon to improve ones ability. While the subtleties of speech are important, the basics and core presentation skills need to come first. Without them there is nothing to rest the subtleties upon.