- Your listeners want you to be organized, really organized, because
they want to remember what you said and be able to walk away with something useful after
you're done presenting. So, let's talk about how
to organize a presentation, intro, body, conclusion, and all the component parts, coming up. (bright music) Hello friends, my name is Alex Lyon, and Communication Coach
is here to help you increase your impact to lead your teams to higher levels of excellence. Presentation skills are one of those got to have leadership skills. Most leaders learn how to present well because it's part of their job. You're gonna be doing it all the time, and one of the best things you can do is come in with a really clear structure, so that everybody can
follow what you're saying. So, we're gonna talk about
the introduction, the body, and the conclusion, and
all the parts that you need in those three parts. So, the first section
is your introduction, and this is only gonna be about five to 10% of the time that you devote to your entire presentation. So, let's just assume a
10 minute presentation, you are going to be
doing your introduction for about a minute, not much longer. You want to keep this concise. Most of your time is gonna come out in the body of the presentation, and your introduction needs to do a couple of important things. It needs to, first of
all, follow what I call a funnel philosophy,
where you start general and you narrow down to the specific issues that you're going to be talking
about in your presentation that day, and your introduction
following that funnel should have five main parts. First, you grab your audience's attention. Second, you establish why
your topic is relevant for those particular listeners. Sometimes I call this the
audience benefit statement. Third, you want to establish
your personal credibility. You talk about your
experience on this topic, talk about any research,
and how you first became interested in it, and by
the way, if you're being introduced before you speak,
if it's one of those occasions, make sure that the person
introducing you has all that information and
then you don't have to do it in your presentation in the introduction. You can just move forward. But that's the third part. If you're not introduced,
you have to establish why you're the person
there talking about it. What's your connection to the topic? Fourth, give your thesis statement. We call it a thesis statement in college and academic settings. In business you might
call it your main point, or your central idea, your bottom line, and then the fifth part
of your introduction is your brief preview statement. This is where you give
a very concise road map of the main points to come,
and it has to be concise. You don't want to get
into any detail here, because it's gonna sound like you just started your presentation. So, you want to pare it
down to single words, or really brief phrases with
a little pause in between each of those main points. So, let's say you have three main points. You say, I'm gonna talk
about one, two, three. Talk about tents, backpacks,
sleeping bags, really concise. Now, a couple of other
tips on your introduction. You want to avoid any kind
of chatter beforehand. So, let's say you're being introduced, or you're just about to start. The first thing out of
your mouth should be that attention grabber. You don't want to fill
up with, oh, where's my, is my technology working? Oh, where did I put that stuff? Or, oh, yeah, yeah, and
don't, nothing that distracts from your attention getter. So, as soon as, the first
thing out of your mouth you start with that nice
quotation, that crisp story that you were gonna tell. You ask your rhetorical questions. You go right into the content, and a little bit of showmanship here. You don't want to be messing around with anything that distracts from that. You also don't want to
re-introduce yourself. Most people are gonna know who you are and you don't want to say like they said, my name is Alex Lyon. Skip over all that. If you need to introduce
yourself, or re-introduce yourself you can always establish
that in that third point in that funnel which
is where you're talking about your personal
relevance to the topic. So, you don't want to do any
of these distracting things. You don't want to be long-winded. Really stick to your time there, so you're only speaking for about a minute or about 10% of a 10 minute presentation. Let's now talk about the body. (rock music) You just finished your
introduction, and now you're about to go into the body of the presentation. By the way, once you
preview in your introduction the main points in the
body of the presentation you've got to go to your first main point. There should be no kind
of filler in between your intro and your body. You have to go right to it. It's gonna be very
confusing for your listeners if you preview your main
points and then you do anything other than go
to that first main point. So, the body of the
presentation will take up about 85% of your time. Again, assuming a 10 minute presentation, you're gonna be speaking for
about eight minutes or so in the body of that presentation. All the details come out here. So, you have to have
really clear main points in the body of a presentation. You have to. If you just ramble, people
are not gonna follow you very well, and also you don't
wanna have 10 main points. I would say you need
three or so main points, and you have to work hard sometimes to get it down to three, to
organize it in such a way that you end up with three,
but if you have more than that, people are gonna have a
hard time following you. You don't want to see a presentation with 10 main points, right? You're not gonna remember anything. That's why phone numbers
are grouped in threes and fours that are much easier to remember than a long string of numbers. People remember things in chunks, and a chunk of three is just about right for a presentation. So you have to have clear main points. The next tip is you also want to signal that you're talking
about those main points. So, you want to say first, second, third, when you get to those main points. A lot of times people go, oh,
you really have to say that? Well, you certainly have to say something. I talked in another video
about transition statements. Maybe your points spell out an acronym, a word or something like that, and that's okay, you can do that. But otherwise, you wanna
say first, second, third, so that everybody's really
clear on what you're saying, and if they lose track then
every time you remind them of that main point they
can get back on track. Other people say, well, do you have to say first, second, and third? Can't you say something else
like first, next, finally? Yes, you can, however, I have noticed that when people use first, next, finally when they say the word
finally it sometimes makes people think you're
on your conclusion. So, there's a little
bit of confusion there. So, I just say first, second, third, if I don't have a better way to say it. Now, in your body this is
where you're going to have to figure out how you organize
your main points logically. You have to have some
organizational pattern that makes sense to listeners. So, if you're doing a
persuasive presentation, you're going to do probably
problem, solution, benefit. That's the classic one,
two, three main point for our persuasive presentation. We're not gonna unpack
all of that right now. I'll make a separate video about that, 'cause it's a whole other topic. But you could do that if it's persuasive. Another way to do it is chronological. Sometimes people call it sequential, where you have first step,
second step, third step. Let's say you're teaching
somebody how to do something and there are a few steps to it. That's just chronological. You start at the
beginning, then the middle, and then the end. You might have spatial. This is not typical, but
let's say you're talking about I used to live on the East
Coast and then I'm gonna talk about when I lived on the West Coast, and now I'll talk about
when I lived in the South. That's spatial arrangement,
and sometimes topics make sense to do that way. Other times, you might have,
let's say you're talking about something medical,
and the common way to do things in the medical
world is to talk about the causes, the symptoms,
and the treatments. That's a natural way to
think about illnesses and disease and your physicians will often talk to you that way. You may not be realizing it, but that's what they have been doing. So, there's lots of ways to organize, and if it doesn't fit any of the ways that we're highlighting
here, you're gonna have to go into what's called the topical style of organizing your main
points, and I'll make a whole other video on this
to dig down deeper into it, 'cause it's not the easiest thing to do. But in short, you have
to look at your topic and figure out some logical
way that makes sense for that particular topic. If it doesn't fit the
chronological, so forth, you have to still figure
out a way that people are gonna listen to it and it makes sense. So, let's say you're
talking about camping. I love camping. I talk about it in a few different videos. You might talk about sleeping in a tent. You might talk about sleeping bag, and then the other cooking gear. So, tent, bag, cooking gear. Or if you have a fourth main point, maybe you'd talk about your backpack. So, you have different types
of gear that you're getting at, and that's a logical way to do it, but it's by the topic. And so, every topic is
gonna be a little different. If you're talking about
different styles of martial arts, you might talk about striking styles which are more like punching and kicking. You might talk about
ground fighting styles, which are like grappling
and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. You might talk about more acrobatic styles that involve flips and things. So, those are different topics. They're not chronological. They're not problem, solution, benefit. They're just topics. So again, I'm gonna
make a whole other video and I'll put all the
links to all the videos I'm talking about in that section below, so you could follow up. But that's one of the ways
you might have to do it. So, you've got your main points organized in some logical way. The next thing you need
is supporting details. So, if 85% of your
presentation is in the body, what are you gonna be saying? This is where your examples come out, your data, your statistics, your stories, any kind of quotations or testimony that you're bringing in from
people to build your case. This is where you, this
is where essentially the bulk of your presentation comes out. All of the information rich
content that you want to share comes out in the body. Typically you don't put a
whole lot of new information in the intro and the conclusion. That's just setting up and
finishing your presentation, and by the way, I have a
whole other section that drills down just into how to
open and close a presentation. There's not a lot of new things happening. If 85% of the time you're
talking about the body, then that's where most of
your information comes out. And the last thing you need
is clear transition statements between your main points. People have to know when
you're done talking about A and you're moving on to B. You've got to, and the longer
your presentation gets, the more important these are. Again, a whole other video
in that section below. So, check out those transition statements to add a little bit more style to it, but make sure they're super clear. So, that's how to talk through
the body of a presentation, and speaking of transitions, let's transition to the conclusion. (rock music) So, you've done your introduction,
you've done the body, and now you're into your conclusion. Your conclusion is the
last five, maybe 10% of your presentation. Do not drag out the conclusion. Once you are done, close it
down, and here's how you do it. Here are the parts. You have to signal the end. You have to. You have to say in conclusion, in closing, in summary, something. I don't know why people don't
want to say these things. Perhaps it sounds too
typical, but you must come up with some clear way to
tap those brake lights and let people know you're
coming in for a landing. They want to know that you're ending, because if they missed it in the intro and they missed it in the body now's their last change to get it. It really puts people
at ease when they know you're going to finish. So, even though this is
a short little phrase, in conclusion, it really stands out, in closing, that stands out. You want to tap the brake
lights verbally for people. The next thing you wanna do is reinforce your central idea, your thesis. Restate it in a concise way,
really make it stand out. This is their last chance to hear it. You can also, if it makes
sense for the body points of your presentation,
recap those main points. Sometimes you don't need to. It's already pretty well
captured in the thesis statement, but if your topic lends itself to this, and would benefit from it, very briefly recap your main points. Don't drag it out. The fourth part is a call to action. If you're doing a presentation
that's persuasive in nature, this is really important,
not quite as important as an informative presentation,
but it's really important in a persuasive presentation where you're calling people to action. You want them to sign that petition. You want them to donate money. You want them to commit a
certain action in the workplace. Whatever your call to action
is, this is where it goes, and you have to be really
clear and ask them directly for what they, you want
them to do right there. They're probably not gonna get a hint if you just beat around the bush. Now, the very last thing
you do is sometimes called a clincher, that's what I call it. This is where you actually
close the presentation. It's the last thing you
do, and you want to echo the attention getter that you did, the attention grabber in the introduction. So, if you started with a quotation, then you can bring that
quotation back around, and remind us of it, and wrap it up. If you started with a story
maybe finish the story right there in that clincher. If you started with some illustration, bring that illustration back around. You want to add those nice bookends. I talk about this in a whole other video about how to open and close. Very psychologically
satisfying for listeners to hear things come full circle. Now, once you're done with your clincher, you finish with that great
quotation, now you have to zip your mouth, smile,
nod and say thank you, pause for two seconds, and then walk off. Time and time again I
have seen speakers do a great presentation but they
don't know how to end it. They do their conclusion,
but they haven't practiced the actual moment where
they close their mouth. So, the universal signs
for I'm done presenting, now it's time to clap, if that
makes sense for your context, is you close your mouth,
you say thank you, and you nod, wait two
seconds, and you walk off. All right, you're all done. That's how you do it. So, those are the three major sections and how to organize a presentation, your intro, body, conclusion. There are very important
component parts in each of them. I highly recommend you review these steps if you're putting together a presentation. If you have a 10 minute
presentation, you need all of these. If you have a one or
two minute presentation, you can slim it down and
pare it down to the basics. So, question of the
day, what are your tips for organizing a presentation? I would love to hear your
comments in that section below. Until then, thanks, God bless, and I hope your next
presentation goes awesome.
