How To Improve Your Presentation Skills

From communication to IT skills, public speaking to being well prepared, learning how to give an excellent presentation can help you succeed in your career, and more. 

Learn how to engage a room, hall, or theatre full of people with your own ideas, and give the presentations you never thought you would be able to do.

With such a considerable portion of the working world crediting good presentation skills as a critical factor in career success, it is no wonder that improving presentation skills should be on everyone’s agenda.  

Although good presentation skills are essential within careers, even if you don’t conduct presentations at work, the skills needed to give presentations are necessary for daily life. 

Having excellent presentation skills is essential in careers that require you to be able to give engaging and informative presentations, not only for your current role but also for progressing in your career and demonstrating what you can bring to the table. Giving presentations is all about discussing your ideas, results, and observations and engaging others in discussion. 

Presentations are a large part of many people’s working life, and even if it isn’t, the skills needed to produce good presentations are essential in several other elements of life. Effective communication and good public speaking techniques can help to ensure that you get your point across effectively and form a convincing argument to provoke discussion amongst colleagues and managers.

If you are confident in what you are saying, have studied effective communication, and have learned how to make the most of PowerPoint, you are set to give the best presentations possible and take your career to the next level.

Developing good presentation skills is relevant to all careers, believe it or not, as it encompasses vital skills which are needed in everyday life, such as communication skills, IT skills, and confidence in public speaking. But how do you go about improving these skills in the first place? Here are some of our top tips for improving these universal presentation skills.

Microsoft Powerpoint is the leading platform used for presentations in the workplace, so becoming a pro in PowerPoint is a must. Although most people have a basic understanding of using PowerPoint, learning how to make the most of this platform through templates, graphs and transitions ensures that you can create the most engaging presentations. 

Online Microsoft Office courses are a great way to improve your PowerPoint skills, with step-by-step guides to using every aspect of Microsoft, including PowerPoint. Aspects such as the ‘notes’ feature enable you to give seamless presentations, and when your efficiency in using PowerPoint increases, so will your confidence in giving effective presentations. 

Suppose you are able to use all aspects of PowerPoint confidently. In that case, you can focus on the contents of your presentation without having to worry about technical issues or spending hours trying to find out how to add that all-important infographic to your slide.

Being able to speak in front of an audience confidently is key to a good presentation. Once you have a professional PowerPoint presentation with supportive visual aids, you will then need to work on what you are going to say and how to get across your points in a succinct, engaging, and informative manner within the time limit. 

Being a public speaker in front of a large or even small group of people can be daunting, especially if you have a fear of public speaking. However, there are things you can do to improve your public speaking skills for your own presentations. First of all, make sure you fully understand and are confident in the subject matter by preparing your speech and rehearsing it out loud, preferably to friends or family who can help you improve your technique. 

It is also a good idea to research general presentation tips such as taking deep breaths and ensuring you have a bottle of water with you, which are simple elements that are easy to overlook. With online Public Speaking courses, you can also get expert public speaking tips, methods of reducing anxiety, and presentation advice, helping you to bring out your confidence for a five-star presentation.

Presentations are all about communication. What you want to do during your next presentations is effectively communicate your ideas, projections, theories, and observations to audience members so that they can see where you are coming from, engage in further discussion on the topic, and take away new ideas. 

There are a variety of courses in Business Communication that can help you effectively communicate in a corporate setting both on an individual basis as well as in a room full of people through a well-constructed presentation. Having excellent communication skills is all about getting your point across, and this comes into every aspect of a presentation, from the slides to the speech, and depends on a well-structured presentation as well as engaging content.

Practices such as maintaining eye contact, having confident body language, and emphasising key points are explored during these courses and can help you keep the audience’s attention and engagement during your presentation. 

Practice giving presentations in small groups to friends, co-workers, and family members. You can learn effective communication through business communication courses and observe in your own life what type of communication is most effective in helping you see the other person’s viewpoint.

This final step in developing your presentation skills is perhaps the most important, getting feedback. Recognising what areas you need to improve and which areas you excel in will help you to upskill faster.

Any time you give a presentation, make sure to ask for feedback from colleagues and managers at the end of your presentation and note down which main points they think were well made and which areas they think could be improved. As well as having pinpointed which areas you can work on, this also opens the door for others to give you helpful advice that they might have learned during their professional careers. 

This feedback process is also helpful when practising your presentation in front of friends and family, as they can give advice on how you might improve your public speaking or communication.