Merge's Blog

Tag Archives: presentations

Build a stronger working relationship with your boss by tailoring your presentations

Woman Making A Business Presentation To A GroupIn September 2013, I wrote a series of three blog posts focused on how to build a stronger working relationship with your boss.  Specifically, I covered keeping your boss informed, learning more about his style, and finding out her objectives.  So I thought I’d take another look at this important topic in the next three blog posts.  And today, I want to address the importance of tailoring your presentation approach so that it matches your boss’s.

Some senior leaders are detail people who appreciate in-depth background information, and others are big-picture thinkers who value concise recommendations.  The former usually expect full contextual data, but the latter just want a “one-pager” that gives them everything they need to know at a glance.  Take the time to understand which one your boss is, or at least what end of the continuum s/he tends towards.  You can do this in a couple of ways.  Continue reading →

Taking PowerPoint presentations from hell to heaven!

Regular readers of this blog will recall that I’ve said this before – people judge you based on your writing skills. Turns out they judge you based on your PowerPoint presentations as well! If you’ve ever sat through the PowerPoint presentation from hell (and we’ve all been there), then you’re going to love today’s guest blogger! Dave Paradi is a presentation expert who helps professionals and executives turn confusing, overloaded PowerPoint presentations into ones with a clear message, focused content, and effective visuals. And (fortunately for all of us) he’s my friend. Which is why he has very graciously agreed to author today’s instalment on the blog by asking (and answering) this key question: “When asking your staff to prepare slides for you, which type of leader are you?” And here is his response.

When it comes to requesting slides from their staff on different topics, I see two types of leaders in the work that I do with organizations: the typical leader and the top performing leader. Here are the differences. Think about where you are and what you can do in order to move from typical to top performing. Continue reading →

If you want to make an impact, prepare and practice first

“How was your fitness class?” I asked my husband as he walked in the door and dropped his gym bag on the floor.

“Frustrating,” came the response.  My eyebrows rose with the unspoken question.

“The instructor decided to introduce some new routines today.  But she clearly hadn’t practiced them herself.  It seemed as if she was formulating them in her mind while she demonstrated them!  So she kept getting confused and missing steps; then she would correct herself as she went along and sometimes start from the beginning and other times pick up where she left off.  It was a mess; all in all, a very confusing and exasperating experience!  If only she’d thought it through and practiced it at least once on her own before she presented it in front of a group of people, it would have been much better.”

Hmm!  My husband’s experience at the gym got me thinking about some of the business presentations I’ve observed over the years.  I have seen very intelligent people unable to communicate their message to others, primarily because they haven’t taken a few minutes to formulate their thoughts and practice what they wanted to say.  Because they are authorities in their areas of expertise, they feel that they can improvise or present off-the-cuff.  Yet what you know is not necessarily linked to how well you can communicate it to others.  There are very few people who are able to successfully cobble together a business presentation “on-the-fly”; the rest of us must put at least some preparation and practice into it.  If you don’t invest at least some time in laying out an outline and practicing key components of what you want to say, you run the risk of confusing and perhaps even annoying your audience, something you definitely don’t want to do if your objective is to persuade and convince.

So, do you agree?  Do you normally invest time in preparing and practicing before you present, or are you one of those lucky people who can “wing it”?