Employing a proven five-step method

• Hooking the audience
• Identifying the critical need
• Presenting the key ideas concisely
• Explaining the payoff
• Calling for action

Identifying your goal

• Informing
• Persuading
• Motivating
• Entertaining

• Determining your baseline public speaking skills
• Taming fears and increasing confidence through practice and preparation
• Leveraging your own personality and style
• Increasing your awareness and abilities by evaluating other speakers
• Integrating audience feedback to fine-tune your delivery

The construction and design process

• Setting objectives
• Assessing and addressing the needs of your audience
• Matching purpose and point to the audience
• Creating the storyboard model

Mind mapping as a presentation design tool

• Rapidly capturing presentation ideas
• Structuring content for clarity
• Converting mind maps into presentations

Shaping the presentation

• Applying learning theory for optimal information transfer
• Employing 7+/-2 rule to aid comprehension
• Volume vs. retention
• Identifying the key points

Designing high-impact slides

• Making text, color and graphics work together
• Limiting content to increase effect
• Employing information graphics to simplify complex data
• Avoiding visual traps

The speaker as a visual aid

• Directing the audience's natural eye movement
• Moving dynamically within the presentation space
• Engaging the entire audience with effective eye contact
• Synchronizing gestures to the verbal message

Animating your speech with vocal variety

• Adding pitch modulation and dynamics
• Reinforcing points with pauses and silence
• Reducing verbal distractors

Delivering memorable openings and closings

• Five opening strategies to spark interest
• Motivating the audience with a call to action

Drawing the audience

• Stimulating participation with preplanned questions
• Conveying content through topical questions
• When to ask rhetorical, group or targeted questions

Handling questions from the audience

• Reward, restate and respond
• Keeping your answers short and simple
• Getting back on track after an unplanned interruption

Managing the post-talk Q&A session

• Pre-empting "hot-button" questions
• Staying aware of the message you are conveying
• Priming the pump when there are no questions

Building confidence with practice

• Effective rehearsal techniques
• Incorporating audience feedback to improve a presentation
• Staying within your time limit

Delivering your presentation

• Opening dynamically to create a winning first impression
• Applying your public speaking toolkit