The Manager's Guide to Presentations: Ace the first presentation you deliver as a new manager and make your mark as a rising star in your organization with this book and ebook.

As we discussed in Chapter 1, Planning Your Presentation, a successful presentation accomplishes its purpose by getting the audience to hear, receive, and act on its message. That means the purpose and the audience must be your focus as you prepare your content.

As a new manager, you have to communicate in ways that resonate with your team members and bosses. As you develop your presentation content, think about everything from their perspective. What do they already know about your topic? What do they need to know? What will they find most persuasive? How do they process information? How do they prefer to be engaged?

Take a look at the Content Development Worksheet below. We'll be using this to work through the process of drafting your presentation. As you can see, purpose and audience(s) are at the top. Fill in those blanks with the purpose and audience(s) you defined and identified in the last chapter.

We'll work on filling in the rest of the worksheet...

A concise review of relevant factors such as data points, key players in the organization, or project history is crucial to establishing context and driving action. However, deciding how much background information is necessary or how many basic facts to include can be tricky. This first presentation lets your team and bosses know what to expect from future meetings and group interactions. You don't want to talk down to your audience or waste too much precious time on material that is already familiar. On the other hand, you don't want to talk over their heads and lose them by assuming knowledge they don't have.

Assume your presentation purpose is to convince your audience to make a change to a product design. How do you know how much information to provide and what topics to cover?

Facts and information aren't enough to convince an audience to listen and act. The same motivational skills that help you manage your team will help you show the audience why they should care about your message. How does the topic of your presentation impact the audience personally?

Positive reasons are usually more compelling than negative ones. Sure, you may be able to frighten your audience by pointing out that their jobs depend on their response to your presentation, but in the long term, building camaraderie, ownership, and a sense of pride in one's work will not only result in a more enthusiastic presentation response, but will create a harmonious, productive energy that extends into all your managerial activities. For example, pointing out that the implementation of the proposed product change allows your team to play a key role in organizational success by driving a 30 percent increase in Q3 sales is more effective than forecasting a Q3 loss in the absence...

Consider the "must-know" facts that you will be sharing (the three to six facts you wrote down on your Content Development Worksheet). What values, emotions, or aspirations of your audience can be linked to those facts?

For example, let's say your presentation purpose is to get the organization to green-light your team's plans for a new product. You're planning to share these "must-know" facts: it's made from recycled materials, it's completely unique, and it will cost significantly less than competing products. To convince your audience of the product's worthiness, you need to present reasons that will resonate with them. An audience that values green-technology will be convinced by environmental arguments. An audience that strives for innovation will be motivated by emphasizing creativity and cutting-edge advances. An audience primarily interested in profit will be persuaded by explanations of increased market share and scalability.

Linking "must-know" information...

Have you thought about why you actually care about this presentation? When I ask coaching clients why they care about their presentations, the answer is often, "I don't know" followed by a variation of "It's part of my job." That response will never convince an audience to act.

Audiences can sense a lack of conviction, disinterest, or dishonesty in a presenter. To deliver an effective presentation, you must be convinced of the relevance and importance of the message. As a new manager, this presentation is your first opportunity to showcase your passion and vision for your team, your project, and your organization. Identifying the specific reasons you care about this topic will provide you with conviction as you acclimate to your new role. It's okay to be honest and share with the audience your desire to prove your worth and abilities. Honesty is humanizing and fosters connection.

Look at your list of "must-know" information again. What stories, values, and emotions resonate...

All this thinking and brainstorming has served a purpose. In the midst of all your new responsibilities and activities, you've thought of everything you need to successfully put your presentation together. Take your Content Development Worksheet and write the answers into this simple template:

Some presenters put a lot of pressure on themselves to have a show-stopping opening. However, poorly executed "show-stoppers" alienate the audience instead of engaging them. Unless you are a skilled comedian or showman, skip the jokes and pyrotechnics and opt for the personal touch instead. As a new manager, this is the perfect opportunity to open your presentation with a compelling personal story that explains why you care about its purpose.

Early on in your presentation, you should explain to the audience why the content | should matter to them. Focus on encouraging and empowering terminology.

Now comes the body of your presentation: your key points. These are the audience "must-knows" and the reasons to act (from your Content Development Worksheet) organized into an engaging flow:

With the skeleton of your presentation in place, you now need to put meat on the bones by carefully considering how your audience processes information. Is your new team composed of visual, auditory, or kinetic learners? Do your bosses like to go into the details or do they prefer to see the big picture?

Include content that engages, clarifies, explains, and demonstrates. Avoid anything that isn't geared toward convincing the audience to act.

This presentation is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate that you have listened to your new team members and bosses and that you understand how to effectively communicate with them. Think creatively about the kinds of content that will effectively make your point to this audience. To help you with your brainstorming, here is a non-exclusive list of potential ways of fleshing out your presentation:

Which content types will work best for your presentation purpose and with your specific audience? Go back to your basic outline and expand it to include at least one content type for each section or point. Make sure each addition is targeted to accomplishing...

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned PowerPoint or any other presentation programs yet. There's a reason for that. Despite the near universal rush to start a PowerPoint document when faced with a presentation, slides are not synonymous with presentations. Slides are not content. Slides are merely one method of communicating.

An effective presentation is planned and prepared long before the presenter sits down to create a slide deck. That's why we've walked through the process of planning and developing your first presentation without considering presentation software. By focusing on your audience and purpose (and not the pre-programmed formats and limitations of PowerPoint), you have sketched the contours of a presentation that will effectively fulfill the audience's expectations of you as a new manager. Maybe you've even realized that your presentation will be better without a deck. Slides have become so ubiquitous in presentations that audiences often immediately...

Did you ever sit mindlessly through a classroom lecture, daydreaming and doodling on your notebook as a professor droned on and on? Being talked at is an alienating, boredom-inducing experience that is unlikely to produce understanding or action. Even the most well-planned and well-prepared content can become a monotonous stream of indistinguishable sounds if care isn't taken to include and interact with the audience.

Don't be that professor! Build audience interaction into your presentation to keep people engaged and on track.

Many presenters fear audience interaction because it's unpredictable and unknown. Introducing interaction, though, is a safeguard against your audience tuning out. It also creates trust and encourages audience members to buy into your purpose. Perhaps more importantly, inviting your audience to participate, especially in your first presentation in this new role, invokes a sense of confidence in your position and establishes you as an open and empowering leader.

Let's briefly look at several ways of including an audience in a presentation:

In this chapter, you have:

In the next chapter, we'll talk about ways of practicing your content in order to ensure that your first presentation as a new manager is a success.