PowerPoint Presentations Course

PowerPoint Presentations Programme

We tailor all our courses to reflect the needs of the delegates on the day. The course content may include many of the exercises listed below, and any additional material that the trainers feel is relevant.

PowerPoint Presentations Day One

Basic Principles

How do you feel about presenting by PowerPoint?  How much is expected of you? What do you want from the day?

Defining Death by PowerPoint

We’ll look at the sorts of experiences we’ve had as members of the audience or as inflictors. This will be an opportunity to make explicit what makes for the best and worst PowerPoints.

Bringing PowerPoint to Life

Here we unpick what we already know about how communication works and how that applies specifically to PowerPoint communications.

Hands Up!

We will start by acknowledging those things which already work for us in terms of being effective communicators. Things that we can use in our PowerPoint presentations.

Here we will ask delegates to put their hands up to the traps we all fall into.

Impact

Why do you want it?   What does it really mean?  We’ll look at how to use PowerPoint to get Impact. 

Structure

We will practice an easy way to kick-start our PowerPoint content and begin to structure our ideas. We may also explore logic trees to consider how best to sell our ideas.

We’ll also explore easy ways to shape our ideas into clear, logical and compelling structures that can be quickly amended to suit professional timing constraints.

Clarity

We have a great exercise to help focus any PowerPoint. Our aim will be to ensure that our audience will receive the key message we intend them to receive. 

Engaging your Audience

How can you engage your audience? We will look at how visuals can help and how we may connect on an intellectual and emotional level with our audience.

Conviction

Without it even the most polished PowerPoints can sink without trace! Where can you inject passion and emotion into your presentation? Where are the moments of excitement, tension and humour that they can exploit? 

Your Audience

Miscommunication, misunderstandings and misinterpretations are often a direct result of the fact that everyone sees the world differently.  We have a great set of visuals which get participants to experience viscerally what they already know on an intellectual level. 

We believe that the ability to see a situation from various points of view is crucial to effective communication, if not the most important key to effective writing.  So part of preparing for your next PowerPoint is to research exactly what’s going on for your audience.

Your Message

You will identify your key message, but on a deeper level what particular brand values your PowerPoint presentation also needs to echo.

This will be an opportunity to reflect upon the drafting of your ideas. How well do they support themselves both through the written word and the visuals of the medium?

We will use storyboards to help shape impactful PowerPoints. In this exercise you will become your own best editor. The analogy of films underlines the fact that PowerPoints offer us a visual medium to enhance our key message

Yourself

We will explore the many ways we can support ourselves through a presentation, from technical to more personal strategies that help to overcome the nerves of presenting.

We’ll look at the role of handouts, pre and post-presentation material.  We’ll consider the role of PowerPoint within the continuum of communication available to most presenters. 

Homework – Redrafting, Refreshing and Polishing

PowerPoint Presentations Day Two

After a quick warm up and refresher we’ll get started on the main business of the day. 

Having a Go

All our participants will present their polished PowerPoints to the group.  There will be an opportunity for intensive and personalised feedback for each delegate.  Constructive and supportive it will naturally reflect upon the mnemonic identified on Day One.

Everyone will also receive written feedback on their strengths and what further options they may use to shiny polish their revamped presentations. 

Troubleshooting

According to their needs, we may also spend time looking at dynamic presentation openings and effective endings.  This optional clinic means that each presenter would enjoy the focussed attention of a trainer and a maximum of 3 of their peers, as we will divide the group of in half.

Self-Editing and Self-Preservation Techniques

We may revise some simple and easy ways to bolster future writing effectiveness and presentation confidence.

Sod’s Law

There’s usually one! We will look at ways to handle difficult or resistant audiences and consider ways to handle the sod’s law of presentation scenarios.

The Future

Participants will identify what specific strategies they will use in the future and how they might further develop their unique presentation style.

What further support might they need or want?  Any further insights will be useful for their development continuum, whether to inform follow-up workshops or in-house mentoring needs.

Our participants will be given a variety of useful handouts as reminders of our top tips.

Participants are given a web link to their videos from the course

They also have access to a course web page containing

• Handouts used during the course
• New supportive material
• Impact Factory PDF documents
• Recommended reading
• Links to our favourite videos
• Photos of the day

to help further their progress.

PowerPoint Presentations Course