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Leadership Presentations Think about a leadership presentation that you witnesse

ID: 397926 • Letter: L

Question

Leadership Presentations Think about a leadership presentation that you witnessed You may havo wtressed a presentation conducted by a boss, co-worker, mento guest speaker, or another student What quailties does a good presentation have? Think about the worst presentation that you have ever witnessed. What could the presenter do to improve their presentation for communication? This initial post should be made by Wednesday, at 11:55 pm of this week. Then, before Saturday at Midnight, please read and comment on at least two other students posts

Explanation / Answer

Presentation is essentially a means of communicating important data to the target audience. Therefore, it is essential that the communication be precise, accurate, easy to comprehend and assimilate, as well as, visually pleasing. An effective presentation should therefore be able to achieve, the required goal of connecting with the audience in a manner so as to efficiently convey the core message that the presentation is made for. As the audience is etarget recipient of such a message their absolute engagement is essential for achievement of this goal. Engaging means to have the complete attention of, and ensure the involvement of the target audience, through empathetic and inclusive approach. Engagement of the audience ensures interest and attention for a relatively lengthier time period and not just for the moment. For involvement of the audience it is important that the presentation create a direct relationship with them by involving them as a part of the presentation. The beginning of the presentation is similar to the first impression we make as individuals and needs to be strong and impressive. The main body of the presentation should be simple short and focused on and around the message to ensure that the audience remains captivated. The needs and requirements of the audience should be addressed adequately by maintaining eye contact, smiling keeping it light hearted and the content simple, easy to understand and assimilate. It is important that the messages effectively communicated rather than the use of impressive vocabulary and language. the presentation is about the message and the audience not about the speaker as a person who is the medium delivering the message.

It is necessary that slides in a PowerPoint presentation follow some basic guidelines for the communication to be successful and impressive resulting in achievement of the desired goal, through the presentation. Text on each slide should be precise and short preferably not in the form of sentences simple rules such as 5/5/5, meaning restrict words per line to file form lines per slide to 5 and text filled slides to 5 in a row. Kind of images utilised would be appropriate for the target audience, it is essential that one knows the audience as comical images main work well for school students but be unprofessional and embarrassing in a formal business presentation. Another important factor is the colours and fonts used, nice day control the entire look of the slide. The colors should be pleasant and the background color should enhance visibility of font color not smother it, the fonts need to be large enough to be visible to all people even at a distance, with the type of font being simple with good impact and easily readable. Animations should be resorted to only when accessory especially in professional presentation overall utilisation of animations and effects should be minimal, subtle and sophisticated. Good animation would be a bullet points to appear one at a time while you are explaining.

The background of the slides shunt be crowded to take attention of the audience away from the content. The background colour enhance the text colour so it needs to be in contrast. The space utilised for text should be more than the background.

The worst presentation I have witnessed was by a manager for updating the rest of the staff about the organisational achievements of the previous month. Entire presentation became an event for self-appreciation and self-proclaimed achievement award. The presenter was unbearably pompous and self obsessed leading to the audience disengaging from the word go. Once an audience is lost it is difficult to include them and engage their interest at a later stage within the presentation. We almost expected him to have replaced the data of the sales figures with his pictures on the slides, he disappointed us there. If the presentation had even few of the above mentioned essential elements of a presentation it would have been bearable.