Effective Presentation Skills Training | The 4P’s of an Effective Presentation
When you decide or find out that you’re going to do a presentation, get all of the details. This advice might seem obvious, but some people immediately start thinking and/or worrying about what they’ll do, getting at least one big step ahead of themselves before they really know where they’re going.
The details that you should get will generally fall into four categories, which you can remember as the four P’s:
Purpose
People
Point
Place
Purpose
Why are you doing this presentation? The full answer to that question is your purpose. And that full answer has two parts. The first part is your subject area, the what of your presentation. What will you be addressing or covering? The proposed changes in the employee manual? The recent negative media reports about the new product? The update of the company intranet?
It’s essential to find out how broad or narrow your scope should be and how deep you should go—aspects that depend to a great extent on the other P’s. It may be just as important to find out if there’s anything that you should avoid, such as a proposal that the board is still debating or a recent resignation in the department that developed the new product.
The second part of your purpose is the reason, the why of your presentation. What are you expected to do? Provide information? Help participants understand? Persuade them to agree on something? Motivate them to act? Entertain them? There may be several reasons for doing the presentation. Unless you know them all, it’s not likely that you’ll balance and structure your presentation appropriately.
The full answer to the why question may not come easily— or at all. Sometimes you have to ask and then ask again—and sometimes you have to figure out the rest of the answer by yourself.
Let’s take an example. The CEO asks you to provide new employees with an overview of the employee manual. It may seem that your reason is simple: to inform. But there may be other reasons behind her request. She may not mention that she’s concerned about low morale in the company and is hoping that you’ll help the new hires understand the reasons behind certain unpopular policies. She may not mention that she suspects that the managers responsible for other aspects of the orientation program may have come across as serious and uncaring and is expecting that you’ll be entertaining enough to change their image of the company.
The why of your purpose is probably as important as the what—and it often may be even more important. If it makes sense to ask, do so. If it’s wiser to find out on your own, do so. You don’t want to find out about hidden agendas or unexpressed expectations too late.
People
To whom are you delivering this presentation? The answer to that question may seem simple enough, especially if you know the target group. But make sure you know how much or how little they know about the subject of your presentation and why they need to know any more.
You might imagine yourself sitting among those people.
Answer the following key questions:
Why are you attending this presentation?
How do you feel about attending it?
What do you expect to get out of it?
If you can’t imagine how those people would answer those questions, maybe you don’t have a good enough sense of who they are. Find out more about them until you can answer those questions with confidence.
Point
What do you want to happen as a result of your presentation? That’s the point, the objective.
How will the participants be different because of your presentation? In other words, what will be evidence that you succeeded, that you met your expectations?
If you know your purpose, why you’re doing the presentation, you should have little trouble figuring out the point. (Now, as for reaching the point, well, that’s where things get more complicated....)
Place
Where are you doing the presentation? And don’t settle for just a room designation—unless you know all about that location. Here some questions to answer:
How big is the room?
What is the layout of seats and other furniture? How much can it be changed, if needed?
Where are you going to be in that room?
What equipment will be in that room? A screen? A microphone? (What kind?) A podium?
Where are the electrical outlets?
Where is the connection for the intranet and/or Internet?
How good is the lighting and how is it controlled?
How well does the heating and air conditioning work?
Are there windows? If so, how many, how big, and where are they? Is the view likely to distract participants? Are there curtains?
Is the room relatively quiet? How likely is it that there will be disruptions?
You may not need to ask all of these questions, depending on the nature of your presentation. You may already have most or all of the answers. But it’s always smartest to make sure.
Finally, a question that’s related to location only in that it’s also a logistics issue: How much time will you have for your presentation?
