Podcast episode 032: Project management presentation skills [30:03m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2277)

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In today’s first of two podcasts in a series on project management presentation skills, we welcome back 

Joe Friedman, of the consulting group Zehren-Friedman Associates, Ltd. 

Joe holds a BSBA and MBA from Ohio State University and has over 25 years of sales, sales management and training / consulting experience.  With many years providing sales and management training programs at Northeastern Illinois University, First National Bank of Chicago, and The Executive Technique, a firm specializing in presentation skills training, Joe teamed up with David Zehren in 1993 to create Zehren-Friedman Associates, Ltd.  Their 13-person firm is entering its 18th year in business and specializes in teaching the “persuasive arts” of selling, presenting, negotiating and influencing.  Clients are in a wide variety of industries, from banking to healthcare to printing to advertising to services to manufacturing and everything in-between.  Joe is responsible for client development, program delivery, people development within the firm, and holds the title of CFO.

Show Commentary

People generally dislike public speaking because it tends to make us nervous; no one wants to look foolish, which creates even more us even more nervous.  With communication being 90% of a project manager’s job, the ability to effectively communicate in front of an audience is a necessity.

Ways of Overcoming Nervousness

There are several things you can do as a speaker to help overcome nervousness.

1. Be prepared! There is no substitution for preparation to help reduce nervousness prior to a presentation. By practicing your presentation, you will reduce the likelihood of tripping over your words and improve the chances of getting your point across to your audience.
2. Understand that nervousness is natural and to be expected. Everyone gets nervous before a presentation to some degree. When it comes to nervousness, you actually are the one in control and you can decide whether you “use it, or whether it uses you.”
3. Try talking a little bit louder than you normally would. This will help “burn off” some of the nervousness and allow you to come across as more confident. Speaking louder than you normally would at the beginning is also a easy psychological trick to pull on your brain since if you hear yourself better, you will quickly hear the power in your voice and start to relax.
4. Look at the entire audience one person at a time. Speak to the group, but make eye contact one person at a time just as if you were talking to each person individually. Most of us are more comfortable with one-on-one dialog than speaking in front of a group. Frequently when we are nervous, instead of focusing on conveying our presentation to each individual in the audience, we quickly scan the audience as we speak, and start wondering how our audience perceives us. Then the worry begins and we start making up stories about what the audience must be thinking about us. By not focusing on connecting with each individual, we start to spend too much time thinking about “us” rather than about conveying the content of our presentation. Then we start getting nervous. By spending 3-5 seconds “speaking to each person” in the audience we can come across as more comfortable and become less nervous at the same time.

Preparing for Your Presentation

Although content is the most important part of you presentation, style closely follows it.  If you don’t deliver the content well, we will likely fail in persuading or informing our audience based on our content.

The following are the recommended steps in preparing for a presentation:

1. Understand the time requirements that you have been given. Once you know the amount of time you will be given for your presentation, prepare just enough to cover one-half of the time allotted. When we speak live, we are more likely to elaborate or go into side tangents than what we typically plan for up front. By cutting your content in half, you will have time to successfully cover your material despite questions or other potential delays and interruptions during your presentation.
2. Do an audience analysis:
   • What is your objective for this presentation? Is your presentation persuasive or informative? What do you want your audience to do with the information you provide once your presentation is done?
   • You want to do as much upfront analysis of the audience as you can since it will help drive how you are going to give your presentation. What do you know about your audience and do you as a result need to change your content of your presentation? Are there “hot-buttons” with your audience that you can influence, or “land mines” that you want to avoid? Are there attitudes or biases that you need to confront or avoid? Perhaps there are certain examples that you want to address or avoid; like mentioning a past failed project. How does the decision process with your audience get made? Are there key stakeholders that you need to approach prior to giving your presentation in order to get their support? What is the audience’s level of understanding of your topic? Should your presentation be at a 30,000 foot level or a 50 foot level?
3. The next step is putting your content together. The general structure of your presentation should be in the form of the Introduction, the Body, and then the Close. In other words, “tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them.”

• For persuasive presentations:
  • The Introduction includes the greeting, the rapport, and what is the benefit of the presentation to the audience
  • The Body includes the problem and solution
  • The Close includes your call to action for the audience
• For informative presentations:
  • The Introduction includes the greeting, the rapport, and what is the benefit of the presentation to the audience
  • The Body includes the agenda of the presentation
  • The Close is the summary and call to action

And that’s part 1 of 2 on Project Management Presentation Skills.  In Episode 033 we will cover the second half of our conversation with Joe.

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