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Powerful and Effective Presentation Skills: More in Demand Now Than Ever

When we talk with our L&D colleagues from around the globe, we often hear that presentation skills training is one of the top opportunities they’re looking to provide their learners. And this holds true whether their learners are individual contributors, people managers, or senior leaders. This is not surprising.

Effective communications skills are a powerful career activator, and most of us are called upon to communicate in some type of formal presentation mode at some point along the way.

For instance, you might be asked to brief management on market research results, walk your team through a new process, lay out the new budget, or explain a new product to a client or prospect. Or you may want to build support for a new idea, bring a new employee into the fold, or even just present your achievements to your manager during your performance review.

And now, with so many employees working from home or in hybrid mode, and business travel in decline, there’s a growing need to find new ways to make effective presentations when the audience may be fully virtual or a combination of in person and remote attendees.

Whether you’re making a standup presentation to a large live audience, or a sit-down one-on-one, whether you’re delivering your presentation face to face or virtually, solid presentation skills matter.

Even the most seasoned and accomplished presenters may need to fine-tune or update their skills. Expectations have changed over the last decade or so. Yesterday’s PowerPoint which primarily relied on bulleted points, broken up by the occasional clip-art image, won’t cut it with today’s audience.

The digital revolution has revolutionized the way people want to receive information. People expect presentations that are more visually interesting. They expect to see data, metrics that support assertions. And now, with so many previously in-person meetings occurring virtually, there’s an entirely new level of technical preparedness required.

The leadership development tools and the individual learning opportunities you’re providing should include presentation skills training that covers both the evergreen fundamentals and the up-to-date capabilities that can make or break a presentation.

So, just what should be included in solid presentation skills training? Here’s what I think.

The fundamentals will always apply When it comes to making a powerful and effective presentation, the fundamentals will always apply. You need to understand your objective. Is it strictly to convey information, so that your audience’s knowledge is increased? Is it to persuade your audience to take some action? Is it to convince people to support your idea? Once you understand what your objective is, you need to define your central message. There may be a lot of things you want to share with your audience during your presentation, but find – and stick with – the core, the most important point you want them to walk away with. And make sure that your message is clear and compelling.

You also need to tailor your presentation to your audience. Who are they and what might they be expecting? Say you’re giving a product pitch to a client. A technical team may be interested in a lot of nitty-gritty product detail. The business side will no doubt be more interested in what returns they can expect on their investment.

Another consideration is the setting: is this a formal presentation to a large audience with questions reserved for the end, or a presentation in a smaller setting where there’s the possibility for conversation throughout? Is your presentation virtual or in-person? To be delivered individually or as a group? What time of the day will you be speaking? Will there be others speaking before you and might that impact how your message will be received?

Once these fundamentals are established, you’re in building mode. What are the specific points you want to share that will help you best meet your objective and get across your core message? Now figure out how to convey those points in the clearest, most straightforward, and succinct way. This doesn’t mean that your presentation has to be a series of clipped bullet points. No one wants to sit through a presentation in which the presenter reads through what’s on the slide. You can get your points across using stories, fact, diagrams, videos, props, and other types of media.

Visual design matters While you don’t want to clutter up your presentation with too many visual elements that don’t serve your objective and can be distracting, using a variety of visual formats to convey your core message will make your presentation more memorable than slides filled with text. A couple of tips: avoid images that are cliched and overdone. Be careful not to mix up too many different types of images. If you’re using photos, stick with photos. If you’re using drawn images, keep the style consistent. When data are presented, stay consistent with colors and fonts from one type of chart to the next. Keep things clear and simple, using data to support key points without overwhelming your audience with too much information. And don’t assume that your audience is composed of statisticians (unless, of course, it is).

When presenting qualitative data, brief videos provide a way to engage your audience and create emotional connection and impact. Word clouds are another way to get qualitative data across.

Practice makes perfect You’ve pulled together a perfect presentation. But it likely won’t be perfect unless it’s well delivered. So don’t forget to practice your presentation ahead of time. Pro tip: record yourself as you practice out loud. This will force you to think through what you’re going to say for each element of your presentation. And watching your recording will help you identify your mistakes—such as fidgeting, using too many fillers (such as “umm,” or “like”), or speaking too fast.

A key element of your preparation should involve anticipating any technical difficulties. If you’ve embedded videos, make sure they work. If you’re presenting virtually, make sure that the lighting is good, and that your speaker and camera are working. Whether presenting in person or virtually, get there early enough to work out any technical glitches before your presentation is scheduled to begin. Few things are a bigger audience turn-off than sitting there watching the presenter struggle with the delivery mechanisms!

Finally, be kind to yourself. Despite thorough preparation and practice, sometimes, things go wrong, and you need to recover in the moment, adapt, and carry on. It’s unlikely that you’ll have caused any lasting damage and the important thing is to learn from your experience, so your next presentation is stronger.

How are you providing presentation skills training for your learners?

Manika Gandhi is Senior Learning Design Manager at Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning. Email her at [email protected] .

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Increased confidence among presenters when using a well-designed slide - TechSmith

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What It Takes to Give a Great Presentation

• Carmine Gallo

Five tips to set yourself apart.

Never underestimate the power of great communication. It can help you land the job of your dreams, attract investors to back your idea, or elevate your stature within your organization. But while there are plenty of good speakers in the world, you can set yourself apart out by being the person who can deliver something great over and over. Here are a few tips for business professionals who want to move from being good speakers to great ones: be concise (the fewer words, the better); never use bullet points (photos and images paired together are more memorable); don’t underestimate the power of your voice (raise and lower it for emphasis); give your audience something extra (unexpected moments will grab their attention); rehearse (the best speakers are the best because they practice — a lot).

I was sitting across the table from a Silicon Valley CEO who had pioneered a technology that touches many of our lives — the flash memory that stores data on smartphones, digital cameras, and computers. He was a frequent guest on CNBC and had been delivering business presentations for at least 20 years before we met. And yet, the CEO wanted to sharpen his public speaking skills.

• Carmine Gallo is a Harvard University instructor, keynote speaker, and author of 10 books translated into 40 languages. Gallo is the author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman  (St. Martin’s Press).

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6 presentation skills and how to improve them

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What are presentation skills?

The importance of presentation skills, 6 presentation skills examples, how to improve presentation skills.

Tips for dealing with presentation anxiety

Learn how to captivate an audience with ease

Capturing an audience’s attention takes practice. 

Over time, great presenters learn how to organize their speeches and captivate an audience from start to finish. They spark curiosity, know how to read a room , and understand what their audience needs to walk away feeling like they learned something valuable.

Regardless of your profession, you most likely use presentation skills on a monthly or even weekly basis. Maybe you lead brainstorming sessions or host client calls. 

Developing effective presentation skills makes it easier to contribute ideas with confidence and show others you’re someone to trust. Although speaking in front of a crowd sometimes brings nerves and anxiety , it also sparks new opportunities.

Presentation skills are the qualities and abilities you need to communicate ideas effectively and deliver a compelling speech. They influence how you structure a presentation and how an audience receives it. Understanding body language , creating impactful visual aids, and projecting your voice all fall under this umbrella.

A great presentation depends on more than what you say. It’s about how you say it. Storytelling , stage presence, and voice projection all shape how well you express your ideas and connect with the audience. These skills do take practice, but they’re worth developing — especially if public speaking makes you nervous. 

Engaging a crowd isn’t easy. You may feel anxious to step in front of an audience and have all eyes and ears on you.

But feeling that anxiety doesn’t mean your ideas aren’t worth sharing. Whether you’re giving an inspiring speech or delivering a monthly recap at work, your audience is there to listen to you. Harness that nervous energy and turn it into progress.

Strong presentation skills make it easier to convey your thoughts to audiences of all sizes. They can help you tell a compelling story, convince people of a pitch , or teach a group something entirely new to them. And when it comes to the workplace, the strength of your presentation skills could play a part in getting a promotion or contributing to a new initiative.

To fully understand the impact these skills have on creating a successful presentation, it’s helpful to look at each one individually. Here are six valuable skills you can develop:

1. Active listening

Active listening is an excellent communication skill for any professional to hone. When you have strong active listening skills, you can listen to others effectively and observe their nonverbal cues . This helps you assess whether or not your audience members are engaged in and understand what you’re sharing. 

Great public speakers use active listening to assess the audience’s reactions and adjust their speech if they find it lacks impact. Signs like slouching, negative facial expressions, and roaming eye contact are all signs to watch out for when giving a presentation.

2. Body language

If you’re researching presentation skills, chances are you’ve already watched a few notable speeches like TED Talks or industry seminars. And one thing you probably noticed is that speakers can capture attention with their body language. 

A mixture of eye contact, hand gestures , and purposeful pacing makes a presentation more interesting and engaging. If you stand in one spot and don’t move your body, the audience might zone out.

3. Stage presence

A great stage presence looks different for everyone. A comedian might aim for more movement and excitement, and a conference speaker might focus their energy on the content of their speech. Although neither is better than the other, both understand their strengths and their audience’s needs. 

Developing a stage presence involves finding your own unique communication style . Lean into your strengths, whether that’s adding an injection of humor or asking questions to make it interactive . To give a great presentation, you might even incorporate relevant props or presentation slides.

4. Storytelling

According to Forbes, audiences typically pay attention for about 10 minutes before tuning out . But you can lengthen their attention span by offering a presentation that interests them for longer. Include a narrative they’ll want to listen to, and tell a story as you go along. 

Shaping your content to follow a clear narrative can spark your audience’s curiosity and entice them to pay careful attention. You can use anecdotes from your personal or professional life that take your audience along through relevant moments. If you’re pitching a product, you can start with a problem and lead your audience through the stages of how your product provides a solution.

5. Voice projection

Although this skill may be obvious, you need your audience to hear what you’re saying. This can be challenging if you’re naturally soft-spoken and struggle to project your voice.

Remember to straighten your posture and take deep breaths before speaking, which will help you speak louder and fill the room. If you’re talking into a microphone or participating in a virtual meeting, you can use your regular conversational voice, but you still want to sound confident and self-assured with a strong tone.

If you’re unsure whether everyone can hear you, you can always ask the audience at the beginning of your speech and wait for confirmation. That way, they won’t have to potentially interrupt you later.

Ensuring everyone can hear you also includes your speed and annunciation. It’s easy to speak quickly when nervous, but try to slow down and pronounce every word. Mumbling can make your presentation difficult to understand and pay attention to.

6. Verbal communication 

Although verbal communication involves your projection and tone, it also covers the language and pacing you use to get your point across. This includes where you choose to place pauses in your speech or the tone you use to emphasize important ideas.

If you’re giving a presentation on collaboration in the workplace , you might start your speech by saying, “There’s something every workplace needs to succeed: teamwork.” By placing emphasis on the word “ teamwork ,” you give your audience a hint on what ideas will follow.

To further connect with your audience through diction, pay careful attention to who you’re speaking to. The way you talk to your colleagues might be different from how you speak to a group of superiors, even if you’re discussing the same subject. You might use more humor and a conversational tone for the former and more serious, formal diction for the latter.

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses when it comes to presenting. Maybe you’re confident in your use of body language, but your voice projection needs work. Maybe you’re a great storyteller in small group settings, but need to work on your stage presence in front of larger crowds. 

The first step to improving presentation skills is pinpointing your gaps and determining which qualities to build upon first. Here are four tips for enhancing your presentation skills:

1. Build self-confidence

Confident people know how to speak with authority and share their ideas. Although feeling good about your presentation skills is easier said than done, building confidence is key to helping your audience believe in what you’re saying. Try practicing positive self-talk and continuously researching your topic's ins and outs.

If you don’t feel confident on the inside, fake it until you make it. Stand up straight, project your voice, and try your best to appear engaged and excited. Chances are, the audience doesn’t know you’re unsure of your skills — and they don’t need to.

Another tip is to lean into your slideshow, if you’re using one. Create something colorful and interesting so the audience’s eyes fall there instead of on you. And when you feel proud of your slideshow, you’ll be more eager to share it with others, bringing more energy to your presentation.

2. Watch other presentations

Developing the soft skills necessary for a good presentation can be challenging without seeing them in action. Watch as many as possible to become more familiar with public speaking skills and what makes a great presentation. You could attend events with keynote speakers or view past speeches on similar topics online.

Take a close look at how those presenters use verbal communication and body language to engage their audiences. Grab a notebook and jot down what you enjoyed and your main takeaways. Try to recall the techniques they used to emphasize their main points, whether they used pauses effectively, had interesting visual aids, or told a fascinating story.

3. Get in front of a crowd

You don’t need a large auditorium to practice public speaking. There are dozens of other ways to feel confident and develop good presentation skills.

If you’re a natural comedian, consider joining a small stand-up comedy club. If you’re an avid writer, participate in a public poetry reading. Even music and acting can help you feel more comfortable in front of a crowd.

If you’d rather keep it professional, you can still work on your presentation skills in the office. Challenge yourself to participate at least once in every team meeting, or plan and present a project to become more comfortable vocalizing your ideas. You could also speak to your manager about opportunities that flex your public speaking abilities.

4. Overcome fear

Many people experience feelings of fear before presenting in front of an audience, whether those feelings appear as a few butterflies or more severe anxiety. Try grounding yourself to shift your focus to the present moment. If you’re stuck dwelling on previous experiences that didn’t go well, use those mistakes as learning experiences and focus on what you can improve to do better in the future.

Tips for dealing with presentation anxiety 

It’s normal to feel nervous when sharing your ideas. In fact, according to a report from the Journal of Graduate Medical Education, public speaking anxiety is prevalent in 15–30% of the general population .

Even though having a fear of public speaking is common, it doesn’t make it easier. You might feel overwhelmed, become stiff, and forget what you were going to say. But although the moment might scare you, there are ways to overcome the fear and put mind over matter.

Use these tactics to reduce your stress when you have to make a presentation:

1. Practice breathing techniques

If you experience anxiety often, you’re probably familiar with breathing techniques for stress relief . Incorporating these exercises into your daily routine can help you stop worrying and regulate anxious feelings. 

Before a big presentation, take a moment alone to practice breathing techniques, ground yourself, and reduce tension. It’s also a good idea to take breaths throughout the presentation to speak slower and calm yourself down .

2. Get organized

The more organized you are, the more prepared you’ll feel. Carefully outline all of the critical information you want to use in your presentation, including your main talking points and visual aids, so you don’t forget anything. Use bullet points and visuals on each slide to remind you of what you want to talk about, and create handheld notes to help you stay on track.

3. Embrace moments of silence

It’s okay to lose your train of thought. It happens to even the most experienced public speakers once in a while. If your mind goes blank, don’t panic. Take a moment to breathe, gather your thoughts, and refer to your notes to see where you left off. You can drink some water or make a quick joke to ease the silence or regain your footing. And it’s okay to say, “Give me a moment while I find my notes.” Chances are, people understand the position you’re in.

4. Practice makes progress

Before presenting, rehearse in front of friends and family members you trust. This gives you the chance to work out any weak spots in your speech and become comfortable communicating out loud. If you want to go the extra mile, ask your makeshift audience to ask a surprise question. This tests your on-the-spot thinking and will prove that you can keep cool when things come up.

Whether you’re new to public speaking or are a seasoned presenter, you’re bound to make a few slip-ups. It happens to everyone. The most important thing is that you try your best, brush things off, and work on improving your skills to do better in your next presentation.

Although your job may require a different level of public speaking than your favorite TED Talk , developing presentation skills is handy in any profession. You can use presentation skills in a wide range of tasks in the workplace, whether you’re sharing your ideas with colleagues, expressing concerns to higher-ups, or pitching strategies to potential clients.

Remember to use active listening to read the room and engage your audience with an interesting narrative. Don’t forget to step outside your comfort zone once in a while and put your skills to practice in front of a crowd. After facing your fears, you’ll feel confident enough to put presentation skills on your resume.

If you’re trying to build your skills and become a better employee overall, try a communications coach with BetterUp. 

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Elizabeth Perry is a Coach Community Manager at BetterUp. She uses strategic engagement strategies to cultivate a learning community across a global network of Coaches through in-person and virtual experiences, technology-enabled platforms, and strategic coaching industry partnerships. With over 3 years of coaching experience and a certification in transformative leadership and life coaching from Sofia University, Elizabeth leverages transpersonal psychology expertise to help coaches and clients gain awareness of their behavioral and thought patterns, discover their purpose and passions, and elevate their potential. She is a lifelong student of psychology, personal growth, and human potential as well as an ICF-certified ACC transpersonal life and leadership Coach.

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Activities to Improve Presentation Skills: Training Exercises and Practices

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Ever wondered what sets a great presentation apart? It’s more than just the words you use. Think about this, voice modulation, or how you say things, plays a substantial role at 38%. Your body language like hand gestures or eye contact, or how you carry yourself, takes a commanding lead at 55%.

Surprisingly, the content—the words you speak—only contributes 7% to a successful presentation. This interesting fact reveals that being an impressive presenter is like having a special recipe. It’s not just about what you say but how you present yourself. 

In this blog, we’ll dive into the world of presentation skills, and here’s the exciting part—we’ll make the learning process enjoyable by exploring games and activities that can transform you into an outstanding communicator even in front of a large group. Let’s explore the elements that can make you a standout presenter on your professional journey!

Importance of Presentation Skills

In the professional world, the ability to deliver a compelling presentation goes beyond sharing information; it’s about creating a memorable impact on your audience.

Here’s why presentation skills are important:

1. Communication Mastery

Presentation skills are at the forefront of effective communication. It’s not just about what you say; it’s how you say it. A well-delivered presentation ensures your message is heard and understood, fostering clear and meaningful communication.

2. Professional Credibility

A skilled presenter commands professional credibility. The ability to articulate ideas with clarity and confidence instils trust and respect from colleagues, superiors, and stakeholders. Credibility is a cornerstone for career advancement and building strong professional relationships.

3. Influence and Persuasion

Presentations are powerful tools for influencing and persuading others. Whether pitching a proposal, leading a team meeting, or advocating for a project, effective presentation skills enable you to sway opinions, gain support, and drive initiatives forward.

4. Career Advancement

Professionals with polished presentation skills often find themselves on a fast track to career advancement. The capacity to deliver compelling presentations positions you as a valuable asset to the organisation, setting the stage for leadership roles.

5. Confidence Building

Mastering presentation skills significantly contributes to building confidence. The more skilled you become at presenting, the more confident you feel in expressing your ideas. Confidence is contagious and can inspire confidence in others, creating a positive and dynamic work culture.

Now that we understand the pivotal role presentation skills play in professional success, let’s dive into engaging activities that can serve as effective tools for improvement.

Activities To Enhance Presentation Skills

These activities go beyond traditional training methods, offering a dynamic and enjoyable way to refine your presentation prowess.

Explore the following activities to elevate your skills:

Activity 1: Pecha Kucha

Pecha Kucha is a unique presentation style that challenges individuals to communicate their message with precision and impact. Originating from Japan, the term “Pecha Kucha” translates to “chit-chat” in English, and the format was first introduced in 2003 by architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham . Here’s how Pecha Kucha works:

20 Slides, 20 Seconds Each: 

Presenters create a slideshow with precisely 20 slides. The catch? Each slide is displayed for only 20 seconds. This strict time constraint adds an element of urgency, compelling presenters to deliver their message succinctly.

Concise and Focused Content

With only 20 seconds per slide, presenters must convey their content in the most essential and impactful points. This format discourages information overload and encourages a clear and focused presentation.

To excel in creating a Pecha Kucha presentation, consider the following tips:

Thematic Consistency: Maintain a consistent theme or message throughout your 20 slides to ensure coherence and a unified presentation.

Powerful Visuals: Prioritise impactful images, diagrams, or concise text on each slide to enhance the visual appeal and complement your spoken content.

Scripted Timing: Practise your presentation to synchronise with the 20-second time limit per slide. This ensures a smooth and well-timed delivery during the actual presentation.

Succinct Messaging: Craft concise and memorable messages for each slide, focusing on the main points to avoid overwhelming the formal audience with information.

Engaging Transitions: Plan smooth transitions between slides to keep the audience engaged. The rapid pace should feel natural and purposeful.

Feedback Seeking: Seek feedback from peers or mentors to gather insights on your Pecha Kucha presentation’s clarity, impact, and effectiveness.

Activity 2: Gush About Something You Don’t Like 

In this unconventional activity, participants are tasked with passionately speaking about something they don’t like. The challenge lies in transforming a negative subject into a positive and engaging presentation.

The objective is not to dwell on criticism but to practise the art of constructive communication and find positive aspects even in seemingly unfavourable situations.

Key Elements of the Activity:

Positive Framing: Participants must employ positive framing, emphasising constructive aspects or potential solutions related to a disliked subject. This requires creative thinking and the ability to reframe perspectives.

Expressive Communication: The activity encourages a person to maintain a passionate and expressive tone while discussing a disliked topic. This helps develop spontaneity and enthusiasm, key elements of engaging communication.

Audience Engagement: Engaging the audience is crucial in this activity, which also acts as an ice breaker. Participants must capture attention by injecting humour or providing relatable anecdotes, ensuring the presentation remains interesting despite the negative subject.

Improvisation Skills: The unpredictability of this activity fosters improvisation skills. Participants must think on their feet, respond to potential audience questions or objections, and navigate the presentation with adaptability.

Benefits of Gushing About Something You Don’t Like:

Participating in this activity provides several benefits. It cultivates the ability to find positives in challenging situations, fostering a constructive mindset. Expressive communication skills are honed through the challenge of maintaining enthusiasm, even when discussing a disliked topic. Engaging the audience under these circumstances enhances overall presentation skills, and the fun exercise sharpens improvisation skills by navigating unexpected turns.

Ultimately, this activity transforms negativity into an opportunity for growth, allowing participants to develop a positive and adaptable approach to communication challenges.

Activity 3: Photo Story

The Photo Story storytelling activity is a creative and engaging way to enhance presentation skills by incorporating visual storytelling. Participants are tasked with creating a presentation using a series of carefully selected photos as visual aids.

Each image becomes a piece of the narrative puzzle, and the presenter must seamlessly articulate the story, connecting each photo to the overarching message.

Visual Narrative Building: Participants select a sequence of photos telling a story. The challenge is to ensure that each image contributes meaningfully to the narrative, creating a cohesive and interactive visual journey.

Storytelling Skills: The activity focuses on developing storytelling skills. Presenters must describe the images and weave them into a compelling story. This enhances the ability to convey messages in a narrative format, making presentations more memorable.

Emphasis on Visual Communication: Photo Story underscores the importance of visual communication. Participants learn to use visuals effectively, recognising the impact of images in conveying emotions, themes, and key points. This skill is transferable to other aspects of presentation design.

Audience Engagement through Imagery: Engaging the audience is achieved through the power of imagery. Participants must captivate their audience by explaining the significance of each photo, fostering a deeper connection between the audience and the presented content.

Benefits of Photo Story:

Engaging in the Photo Story activity yields numerous benefits. It enhances storytelling capabilities, making presentations more engaging and memorable. The emphasis on visual communication contributes to creating visually appealing presentations in various professional contexts.

Additionally, the activity cultivates the ability to structure information coherently and captivate audiences through compelling visuals and narrative elements.

Overall, Photo Story is a versatile tool that improves presentation skills and promotes creativity and effective visual communication.

Activity 4: 30 Seconds Without Filler Words

The “30 Seconds Without Filler Words” activity is a great exercise designed to enhance public speaking skills by promoting clarity, coherence, and the elimination of filler words. Participants are challenged to speak on a random topic for 30 seconds without using common filler words such as “um,” “uh,” or “like.”

This activity aims to sharpen communication skills, encourage mindful expression, and minimise distractions to create a more impactful and engaging presentation style.

Elimination of Filler Words: The primary focus is on eliminating filler words that often diminish a presentation’s impact. Participants are encouraged to speak fluently and confidently, avoiding unnecessary pauses or distractions.

Mindful Communication: The activity cultivates mindful communication by prompting participants to recognise their speech patterns. This heightened awareness contributes to more intentional expression.

Pacing and Time Management: Participants must effectively manage their time within the 30-second limit, emphasising the importance of pacing in public speaking. This skill is transferable to various presentation scenarios where time constraints are a factor.

Enhanced Message Impact: Presenters create a more polished and professional impression for the whole room by eliminating filler words. The message becomes clearer, and the overall impact of the presentation is heightened, contributing to a more effective communication style.

Benefits of 30 Seconds Without Filler Words:

Engaging in this activity yields several benefits. It fosters an awareness of speech patterns, enabling participants to identify and eliminate filler words from their presentations. The emphasis on fluent and coherent expression enhances overall public speaking skills along with nonverbal communication, making presentations more impactful and engaging.

Moreover, the activity instils valuable lessons in time management and pacing, crucial elements in delivering concise and effective presentations. Ultimately, “30 Seconds Without Filler Words” is a targeted exercise that empowers participants to refine their communication style and deliver presentations with increased clarity and confidence.

The Power of Presentation Skills Training

Starting a presentation skills training course is like discovering a secret weapon for professional success. A skilled trainer can guide you through the intricacies of effective communication, helping you harness the true power of your voice.

Practice speaking under the guidance of experts allows you to refine your delivery, build confidence, and captivate your audience with every presentation.

Most people may underestimate the impact of a well-delivered presentation, but with the right training, you can elevate your skills to new heights.

In a presentation skills training course, you’ll discover the art of engaging an audience through various mediums. A seasoned trainer will train you on different types of presentations, teaching you to adapt your approach based on the context and audience.

Whether you write a speech, deliver a pitch, or participate in a video conference, the course equips you with the skills to excel and make your presentation successful.

A great trainer understands that effective communication goes beyond words. They emphasise the importance of non-verbal cues, teaching you to read and respond to your audience in the session. For example, when you actively listen, you can tailor your presentation to address the specific interests of your audience, ensuring they not only listen but also relate to your message.

Good presentation involves understanding these two truths: the significance of non-verbal communication and the importance of audience engagement.

In presentation skills training, every session is an opportunity to refine your abilities and unlock your full potential as a communicator.

So, if you’re interested in making a lasting impression and mastering the art of persuasive communication, a presentation skills training course is your pathway to success, offering opportunities for public speaking activities and discussion.

By Rishabh Bhandari

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13 Reasons To Offer Your Employees Presentation Skills Training

Your employees may be subject matter experts in their field, but do they know how to communicate their ideas well? Public speaking, communication, and presentation skills are unfortunately not skills taught in school. So many of us grow up being experts in our domain but not having the skills to actually present our work (not to mention, likely having tons of fear around public speaking and presenting). 

In this article, I’ll take you through key reasons why you should offer your employees presentation skills training. Within this list, there are 3 tiers I’ll address: the employee or individual level, the team level, and the organizational level.

Shatter the Glass Ceiling

Public speaking allows employees to flourish in their careers. Lack of public speaking skills is usually a glass ceiling in the organization. You see competent and smart professionals being held back at their roles, and not get the opportunities they deserve because they can’t communicate well. This adds unnecessary stress, resentment, and politics to the workplace and does not help anyone.

Public speaking training will unlock your employee’s career potential. It will allow them to sell themselves and sell their ideas better in the organization. Therefore people feel appreciated and expressed – leading to a more able workforce.

The public speaking training you provide will shatter yet another glass ceiling creating a healthier workplace for all.

Go From Professional to Leader

I always thought that “leadership is a moral obligation.” I say it because I noticed in my career that so many smart professionals hide in the shadows and complain and never take charge and change things. Because of that, things hardly improve in specific work environments.

It’s not that those professionals lack intelligence, or ideas, or moral code. Usually, it’s a lack of communication skills and confidence that prevent them from leading. Fortunately, arming smart professionals with the communication tools they need can create massive initiatives inside of companies for the better.

Give Them What They Want

Employees nowadays are asking for interactive, fun, and pragmatic training. Employees are busy doing their work, and the last thing they need is a theoretical framework that has no ties to their daily job. They want something easy to implement that delivers results. 

The good news is that a small interactive public speaking training fits the bill. Notice I said small and interactive. The small class size allows for direct feedback from instructors and for more practice time. The “interactive” part provides for the participants to be engaged while putting what they learn into practice.

Competitive Advantage

Unfortunately, we, as a society, still judge a book by its cover. We also judge information on how it’s presented. We are biased towards the packaging of information rather than the substance. That’s why we still fall for scams, conspiracy theories, and corrupt politicians. I don’t think there is a cure for that bias anytime soon. So the next smart thing to do is arm bright ideas with a beautiful book cover and arm presenters with excellent public speaking skills. 

Reduce Stress

You need the right amount of stress in your work to perform well. Understress and employees don’t feel challenged – Overstress and people get overwhelmed. 

Unfortunately, public speaking is a very stressful activity for a lot of professionals. It exerts an overbearing pressure on a lot of individuals in organizations and leads to excessive anxiety and lack of productivity. 

We have a lot of clients who, due to public speaking fear, left their jobs, are afraid of applying to specific jobs, are on anxiety meds, drink, and even take sick leave regularly. These professionals come to us seeking help because they know that their career is unsustainable if they continue without dealing with their public speaking fear.

For every person that seeks us out, I estimate that there are five more who are suffering silently. It could be because they don’t have the time, resources, or they are still in the denial stage. What a shame! It does not have to be this way for them. 

Imagine how much stress relief you could provide your employees if public speaking training was part of your culture at work. People could get the skills and confidence they need and go back to a healthy stress level so that they can perform at their best.

Now that I’ve covered reasons to offer your employees presentation skills training that benefit the individual, I’ll move into the next tier which benefits employees at a team-level.  

Employees Can Influence Clients More Effectively

When employees learn the skill of being able to present and communicate better they can influence more effectively. They can do this by sharing concise messages that are relevant to the client, telling customer success stories, knowing when to use data/graphs and how to set up their presentation to tell a story. 

If it’s the first time an employee is giving their sales pitch to the client then it’s crucial to have that person as fully trained as possible. Having the sales professional do an excellent job will bring in more money to the organization which will in turn help it grow, open new training opportunities and take the company to the next level. If teams are being trained to present their best at an organizational level then the company will be putting its best foot forward through their employees, every time. 

Presentation Skills Training Supports Team-Building

Offering your employees a group presentation skills training brings the team together and takes them through a shared experience they can bond over. This is especially true for presentation skills and public speaking because it’s interactive, and can feel more personal by nature. In the training they will have to share and open and authentically show their personality through fun and dynamic speaking exercises.

When team members show vulnerability to one another, trust is built. Jeff Polzer , Harvard Professor of Organizational Behavior, explains the concept of “vulnerability loops” and how when someone lets their guard down, it signals a green light to others to do the same, and a norm of openness and trust is built.  

Saves Time In The Long Run

Presentation training will help save time for the team in the long run because they’ll be more efficient in how they prepare and present. For example, if they learn messaging and get a blueprint for how to put together a killer presentation, then they can quickly and easily plug in the relevant content.

The training may also help with reducing employee procrastination and anxiety with putting together a presentation. Often when people procrastinate it’s because some negative emotion is being built up in their mind about the task at hand. Studies show a correlation between fear of failure and procrastination.

Whether the negative emotion is fear , feeling of incompetence or something else, by equipping employees with the tools (and thus confidence) in their ability to put together an influential presentation, you’re doing employees a favor. 

Training can also help save time because employees will learn how to present more concisely. Therefore when employees present internally they’ll be able to have more impactful presentations in less time. 

Relevancy To Their Job

In almost any professional role in varying careers, employees will have to present and speak in front of everyone. The more they want to progress in their career and shift to leadership the higher the expectations will be around their abilities to present well and speak confidently to an audience. 

For example, if a software engineer has been working on new features for an application and wants to show why it’s important to add, then she needs to convince leadership of its value. This may be done through a conversation initially but if the feature is big enough and starts to gain momentum that engineer will likely have to present to executives and colleagues to showcase its importance. If the engineer can’t convince others that it’s worth it, then it doesn’t matter how beneficial that feature might be or how much extra money it might bring in. 

Leadership Already Values Public Speaking

By now you should be clear on many of the reasons why an individual and a team would benefit from a presentation skills training. There are 4 other reasons to consider when thinking about it from a company leadership perspective. 

The first is that leadership already values public speaking! When asked about what soft skills they wanted L&D to focus on, executives and people managers ranked communication and leadership as the top 2 . They know it makes employees more effective and saves the organization’s time. 

From their own leadership roles, they understand that it’s a huge part of their role. From media interviews, panels and all-hands meetings, the leadership of any company has to consistently speak. And they understand that a huge part of their role is effectively communicating and influencing. Because of this, there’s less convincing you need to do about whether it’s generally valuable. 

Of course, if leadership doesn’t easily see this, you can always refer to the individual and team reasons. 

Common Language Within the Organization 

Whether it’s a sales, brand, engineering, etc., employees are going to be presenting their work to their managers. Something we hear about from leaders and managers is that they struggle with not having a common framework and language to coach everyone. 

With a cohesive, end-to-end presentation training, managers would be sharing the same language with their teams and even across teams. Feedback would be more precise and actionable, and managers would have an easier time evaluating how each of their team members are doing with their presentations. 

After our trainings, some managers have even been inspired to take on the training and coaching of the team themselves because they have a reliable framework to work through. Imagine the impact of every manager in the organization being able to coach their teams on presentations! Presentations would be efficient and influence more easily, saving more time in the long run. 

Aligns With Long-Term Development

Speaking of the long run, another perspective that leadership holds is long-term development (and therefore retention) of employees. 

Are employees growing and learning each year at the organization? Are they being challenged to learn new skills? 

As we mentioned earlier, this type of training will always be relevant to their role. With a long-term view, it will be relevant to any role they’ll have in the future. That’s undeniably powerful. 

And employees understand this. In the LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report, 94% of employees said they’d stay at a company longer if the company invested in their career. What better way to invest than to give them skills they’re going to use for the long-term? 

More Clear When Presenting to Leadership/Cross-Functional Teams 

With QBRs (Quarterly Business Reviews), project updates and company events (just to name a few), your company’s leadership is constantly listening to presentations. And I’d venture to say that many of these presentations don’t end up being a good use of their time. The content is either too detailed or doesn’t have a strong narrative that makes it easy to understand. 

It’s no one’s fault – presentation skills are just a different skill than their domain expertise. 

By offering presentation training, employees will save leadership’s time and be clear on the value their projects are providing to the company. And if they’re in cross-functional meetings, employees will be trained to speak to different types of audiences effectively and get their message across. 

Conclusion 

So there you have it. Whether you’re thinking about individual employees, managers or leadership, there’s many reasons why you want to offer presentation skills training. It’s a practical investment that everyone in the company will appreciate and continue to reap the benefits from years later.  If you’re convinced that it’s the right step for your teams, consider our Messaging Training , where we teach professionals how to construct a presentation from beginning to end with a 7-step “Blueprint System.”

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10 Benefits of Presentation Training for Your Employees

Are your staff members, business teams, and salespeople solid presenters? Here are 10 benefits of presentation training for your employees. 

Are your employees well trained to deliver your company's key presentations? Whether you're pitching new business, delivering your value proposition, or speaking to investors at your annual meeting, your business success depends upon high-caliber presentations.

So why do so many organizations fail at speaking with power and persuasiveness? A lack of attention to high-caliber presentation training may be the cause. Or if training is provided, it may be based only on information delivery, rather than laser-focused on effective  performance.

Learn the key ingredients of successful pitches, speeches, and presentations! Download my free presenters guide,  "7 Key Components of Successful Presentations."

The Value of Theater-Based Techniques. It's not surprising that theater-based techniques are the best ones for showing your staff how to reach and move audiences. Your customers, clients, and prospects respond best to speakers who use all of their communication tools to gain influence. One of those tools, of course, is the information you convey. But the power of performance is at least as important in gaining the impact you're looking for. 

Still, there are many reasons for employee training in public speaking and presentations that go beyond sheer performance. Below are 10 such reasons. Together, they will go a long way toward making your company a more cohesive and effective unit where your all-important business presentations are concerned.

Speaking with clarity, for instance, is vital for every client-facing employee! Find out more in my Free resource , "How to Be a Clear, Concise, and Compelling Speaker."

10 Reasons to Provide Training for Your Employees

• Build Morale. Just as the famous saying tells us that most men live lives of quiet desperation, many employees are dissatisfied with their speaking prowess. Most of us get ahead professionally by learning our business, working hard, and making helpful connections. Typically, however, presentation skills training isn't part of the mix. Yet forward-thinking companies know to seek performance-based training by professionals. "I'm no longer avoiding presentations on my job . . . I'm seeking out opportunities!" is often the comment from someone who has received such training.
• Increase Retention . Professional development is no longer a nice perk for key employees to learn and grow; it is expected. Sales people, members of leadership teams, marketing professionals, financial and healthcare executives, human resources professionals, government staff, and all other managerial-and-above levels want and need their organizations to invest in their development. These key employees need to learn the rules of effective presentations ! If the desire of these key personnel for communication skill improvement is not met, they will look elsewhere. A client pointed this out to me concerning my pitch, and mentioned that I should include this in my discussion of ROI. I took the suggestion!
• Shared Skill Set . Even in work environments where collaboration is strong, employees often must think and work on their own. Communicating with others on one's team also doesn't mean that individuals learn and progress at the same level and are focused on the same material. In group training in company presentation skills, however, they do. On-site corporate workshops are usually carefully planned with the company's goals and objectives in mind, along with pertinent issues and personalities. There is simply no substitute for all key employees being in the same room, learning the same skill set at the same time. The result is truly greater than the sum of the parts involved.
• Professionalism. When it comes to reaching a higher level of communication effectiveness and influence, the right type of training is essential. Workshops open to the public must aim for a low denominator given the wide range of knowledge and experience represented. Corporate workshops in presentation skills don't have that limitation. Whatever level the organization wants to reach in terms of speaking success is where such a training starts. Add on-your-feet presentation practice and videotaping, and the results can really allow a company's impact and influence to soar. 
• Team Impact. Presentations by a team may be a group activity, but more often they involve individual team members presenting one by one, as though they were accidentally thrown together on stage. A common scenario, for instance, is for individuals to present in a string of meetings with a prospect or client when that team member's particular expertise is needed. A team weak in its presentation abilities will announce itself with either a collective failure or a drip-drip-drip of ineffective appearances. In both cases, that team needs to be trained to present as a team , with a clear purpose coupled with memorable skills. Your team absolutely needs to know how to speak with presence and charisma ! Recently, I trained the global marketing team of a pharmaceutical company for an important marketing effort. The polyglot nature of the team showed. It was only in the two-day training that The Genard Method provided for them, that the members not only burnished their own skills, but started to genuinely work together in a collective effort. 
• Ability to Sell. Another interesting effect can sometimes announce itself when a team hasn't been receiving timely sales presentation training. When a "capabilities" presentation in PowerPoint  is used by the entire sales staff, for instance, the fact that the deck is dated or no longer accurate may not be perceived. (Knowing how to use PowerPoint effectively in every presentation is also a key skill set.) A "we've always done it this way" mentality may be harming the company. Sales presentation training workshops--often done at annual sales meeting--can bring this problem to awareness. Partly it's due simply to a fresh set of eyes from outside seeing the problem. But a skilled trainer will also be able to connect the company's stated goals for influencing an audience, with what that audience is actually seeing and hearing. That's part of his or her job, and it's actually not rare that we see this need among the sales staff emerging in a workshop.
• Internal Speakers Bureau . Does your company maintain an internal speakers bureau? It's a terrific way to keep the learning going for your employees who speak frequently after the on-site workshop is over. And it's custom-made to increase your employees' comfort level and eagerness to speak on behalf of your organization.
• Create Your Own Coaching Staff. This is one of those under-the-radar benefits of presentation skills training for your employees. Often a human resources executive or Chief Learning Officer will bring this up in their initial discussion with us concerning a training. That executive is interested in learning how it's done, i.e., how she or he can coach key executives on an ongoing basis once our workshop has concluded. Usually this person will ask if they can attend the seminar themselves so they can learn. We are very happy to say yes.
• Build Stronger Customer Relationships. As I say to clients and trainees, your competitor's product or service is probably very close to yours, and the price is also usually in the same ballpark. So what makes that customer or client decide to do business with you? The answer is that they want to! That usually means they enjoy communicating with you and conducting business together. Are your employees skilled, for instance, in knowing how to captivate a business audience ? How about how to overcome audience resistance ? One of the ways customers decide that you will probably be a good fit for them is that they see who you really are through your presentations. Trustworthiness and honesty are the bedrock of successful talks with stakeholders. Of course, these qualities only emerge when presenters' confidence and comfort level are high. That's a key reason to give your employees presentation skills training that meets that need.
• Be Recognized as an Industry Leader. Isn't it time your organization left Presentations 101 behind? The competition is stiff; and in the 21st century, it's truly global. When your employees present, they represent everything you offer and everything you are. Audiences always equate the messenger with the message! If you want to be recognized as an industry leader, your business presentations must go beyond good, and beyond effective. They need to be memorable, perhaps even extraordinary. Give your employees the right level of presentation training to aspire to that goal.

Interested in  live virtual presentation training  for your team? Click on the image below for my Speaking Virtually online workshops!

You should follow me on Twitter   here .

Gary Genard  is an actor, author, and expert in public speaking training and overcoming speaking fear. His company, Boston-based The Genard Method offers  live 1:1 Zoom executive coaching   and  corporate group training  worldwide. In 2022 for the ninth consecutive year, Gary has been ranked by Global Gurus as  One of the World’s Top 30 Communication Professionals .  He is the author of the Amazon Best-Seller  How to Give a Speech . His second book,  Fearless Speaking ,  was named in 2019 as "One of the 100 Best Confidence Books of All Time." His handbook for presenting in videoconferences,  Speaking Virtually   offers strategies and tools for developing virtual presence in online meetings.   Contact Gary here.  

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10 Tips for creating an effective training presentation

Creating a training presentation is not a simple task. Unlike your usual PowerPoints, a training deck should convey work-related information in a way that keeps your team engaged and creates a positive learning experience. Quite a challenge, if you ask me - especially in online environments.

That’s why today I’ve got a little help from the 24Slides presentation designers . They work on thousands of eLearning slides for companies every month, so they pretty much know what it takes to create an impressive training deck.

By the end of this post, you’ll have learned:

• What exactly a training presentation is
• The benefits of corporate training
• 10 training presentation tips you can execute right now

Let’s begin!

What's a Training Presentation?

A training presentation is a corporate learning material that helps build the right skills employees require to perform their jobs. For optimal results, ideal training presentations showcase the specialized knowledge in well-structured, easy-to-read slides, and encourage active participation during the whole learning experience.

To give you an idea, common training presentation topics include company policies, safety and health at work, cybersecurity, industrial processes , and more.

Why Should Businesses Provide Employee Training?

Employee training is a business investment, and as such, it’s normal for higher-ups to question whether some corporate learning and development activities are needed. However, as Henry Ford said, “ The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay! ”

And if that’s not enough reason, here are some long-term benefits you can list to show the value of employee training in your organization:

• Training sessions leverage new employees’ productivity faster
• Employee training reduces the chances of errors and accidents on the job.
• Well-trained employees need less supervision, which translates into more time for managers to dedicate to their own tasks.
• Learning and development activities help increase employee retention and job satisfaction.
• Constant employee training makes it easier to identify the team’s weaknesses and creates improvement opportunities for the whole organization.

Now that we understand why staff training is important, let’s see how to create a good training presentation.

Top Tips for Creating an Effective Training Presentation

What we commonly call “effective presentation” is the right balance of two elements: the content you provide and how you deliver it. The first part is on your expertise and every piece of information you can share. But the second part is where the real magic happens .

How do you convey your knowledge? How can you make the online learning experience one to remember? Well, a lot relies on the way you present that information. In this section, we’re going to cover both sides through 10 training presentation tips:

#1 Showcase the knowledge of your company’s experts

Internal expertise is a top learning resource many companies fail to see. Just think about how much your sales head or finances specialist can say about the best practices and workflows from their respective areas. Or the industry trends and developments they experience in their day-to-day activities. You don’t need to look outside the office when you already have expert sources that can provide you with valuable know-how for your training slides.

And don’t curb to technical topics. If the training is on leadership or negotiation skills, why don’t you invite a project manager or sales rep to talk about their experiences? This is a fantastic way to recognize employees as experts and promote team engagement at the same time.

#2 Use your visuals wisely

Visual content is ideal to catch your audience’s attention in a matter of seconds. Plus, studies confirm that visuals help process information faster and facilitate learning . However, this doesn’t mean we should plaster graphics and illustrations all over our slides. Instead, use your visuals strategically only for what’s relevant.

It’s like highlighting a textbook. A mark signals the main idea from the hundreds of words in every chapter. But what’s the point if you’re going to highlight the entire page? It would lose its whole purpose!

As Benny Prasetyo, Design manager from 24Slides , says:

So keep that in mind. Your images, icons, and other graphics are not merely decorative devices. They tell people where to look and have the power to amplify your key messages.

#3 Appeal to different learning styles

According to the VARK model , there are four main learning styles: visual, auditory, reading/writing, and kinesthetic. And people tend to prefer one or two modalities over others. The good thing is that you can appeal to the four of them within your training PowerPoint presentation. Here’s how:

• For visual learners, maps, flow charts, and process diagrams are the way to go. They respond better to all these devices that explain something graphically instead of words.

• Auditory learners make the most out of synchronous training because they learn by hearing and discussing ideas. However, you can also adapt your PowerPoint materials to them. Think about adding audio files or linking to podcasts that further expand the main topic. Another great way to appeal to aural or auditory learners is using a conversational style in your slides, so they can read your PPT as if you were talking directly to them.
• People who process information through reading and writing will appreciate text-based explanations and assignments. Lists, quotations, and case studies are ideal for this type of learner.

• For the kinesthetic modality, you can showcase personal experiences or feature practical exercises that allow students to apply what they’ve learned. We’ll talk more about this kind of content in the following sections. But bear in mind that kinesthetic learners are “tactile” and prefer to assimilate new information by exploring it in the real world.

To sum this point up, add elements in your presentation that respond to the four learning styles, and you’ll get an immersive and more dynamic training session.

#4 Keep it real

Want to make your corporate training relevant to your team?

Include scenarios from real situations - extra points if these examples come from their actual work. Here’s the thing: People are more perceptive to things that make an impact on their lives. So, if you connect your session to what they go through in their daily tasks, you’re adding emotion and making your training 10x more relatable.

Ideally, your presentation gives solutions to an issue the business has identified. In this case, you need to explore a little: What has changed or happened in the company that employees require training? How’s the day-to-day of the areas involved? What’s the ideal scenario the company expects?

Now, use your findings to integrate realistic situations as examples or exercises that show trainees the value of your session. The key to an engaged and motivated audience is to keep things real.

#5 Make use of storytelling

Effective training is more than informative sessions. The real objective is to spur change. You want to take employees from point A to point B in their development, and one of the most powerful tools to inspire action is storytelling.

In a few words, storytelling is the art of using a story to communicate something. It might not sound like a big deal, but stories speak to the emotional side of humans, and that’s how you can start building a connection that makes every session memorable.

Some ways the 24Slides designers help incorporate storytelling into training presentations is through comics, animated slides, and PowerPoint illustrations.

If you’re keen to challenge the status quo in your team, check out these 7 storytelling techniques to create a compelling training deck.

#6 Take every chance to engage with your audience

Getting active participants during online training is like finding the saint grail nowadays. With muted mics and off-cameras, sometimes you don't even know if someone is listening on the other side. But hang in there.

In this section, I will show you some interactive elements you can use to boost your audience engagement.

Usually, the host would end the presentation with an “Any Questions?” slide, but what about you asking the questions? Inquiry your audience’s minds and create open questions for anyone to share their opinions. This is a good old trick with the potential to spark great-in-class discussions. You can even transform it into a gamified experience with slides like the one you see above.

Online audience engagement tools such as Slido , Mentimeter , or Kahoot make it super easy to create interactive quizzes and polls. The cool thing about them is that they give you a presentation code, which allows your audience to send their answers and see the team's results in real-time.

But if you prefer a more traditional approach, there are PowerPoint slides that can do the trick too. Take this multiple-choice quiz template as an example. It comes with a wide array of designs to hold your participants’ attention while assessing their knowledge. You just need to insert questions and alternatives regarding your topic, and voilá!

Self-assessment activities are a great way to engage with your audience - even when you’re not there to guide them! Here’s a creative quiz template in PowerPoint you can use to add fill-in-the-blank exercises, short-answer questions, and multiple-choice tests to your training deck.

#7 Brand your corporate training deck

Considering that training presentations talk to one of the company’s most important stakeholders (the employees), it should be a no-brainer to keep them on-brand.

But it’s more than giving a professional look to your slides. Adding the company’s brand to training materials shows your team that you care. You’re making the same effort to deliver a polished product to them as the company does to the customers. And that speaks volumes!

Plus, keeping visual consistency across all materials helps your team become familiar with the brand and reinforce that they’re part of the company's activities.

We’ve got a whole article on why branding is essential in presentations , but at this point, it’s clear that spending some time on the aspect of your slides provides more benefits to the business than not. So, remember to inject the brand’s identity into your training decks.

#8 Close with summary slides

How often have you seen participants more worried about taking notes from your slides than actually following your speech? This is a common situation in learning scenarios, and it’s not because your participants don’t care about what you’re saying. Quite the contrary, they want to take it all in.

And you can make their learning experience easier by simply adding summary slides . These final slides contain the key points from your lesson and help viewers retain the essentials.

This way, you ship away your participants’ worry of missing something important, and you get another chance to reinforce your main messages. Everybody wins!

#9 Make your presentation accessible

“Accessibility” is a term that has gained popularity in the last few years, and it refers to the practice of ensuring people with disabilities can access the same information fully and independently as people without disabilities. This is extremely important in eLearning because you want everyone in the organization to benefit from your lessons.

For instance, employees with hearing difficulties might have a hard time watching an instructional video with no captions. Likewise, participants with visibility issues might need an easy-to-read font size in the slides or color contrast in your presentation visuals.

If you want to start now, PowerPoint has an accessibility checker that gives you a detailed report on what you can do to improve your slides. To activate it, follow this route: File tab > Information > Check for issues (next to Inspect Document) > Check Accessibility

You might be surprised by all the details we take for granted, but they make a huge difference to people with different abilities.

#10 Don’t Underestimate The Power of Your Presentation Design

All these good practices confirm that a good design can enhance any corporate learning experience. It helps your employees better comprehend information. It signals the importance of each item in your slides and how they should be read. A good design provides structure and visual flow. And the list can go on, but I prefer you see for yourself.

Damilka Rojas, Design manager at 24Slides , gives us expert input on the right design approach for effective training presentations:

Plus, many training slides are stand-alone materials with the task of conveying information without a live instructor. That’s when you can rely on a good design to deliver a coherent interpretation of your lessons.

Upgrade your training presentations today!

Now, it’s time to put these training presentation tips into practice. Whether you apply one or all of them together, I’m sure you’ll see a marked difference in your new slides. But if you have several presentations to upgrade or designing in PowerPoint is not exactly the most productive way to spend your time, let the 24Slides team handle it for you !

Our expert designers can create stunning slides to draw your audience’s attention while keeping the professional look your training decks deserve. They provide presentation design support to some of the biggest companies worldwide , so rest assured your slides will be in good hands. Ready to take your presentations to the next level?

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Employee Training & Development

Many employees will eventually be in a position where they need to present information to a group of people. Whether it's a casual presentation in a small update meeting or a more formal presentation on a stage or in front of a large group of people, presentation skills training will be helpful.

According to The Chapman University Survey on American Fears, public speaking is consistently ranked as one of the most common personal fears for Americans. This illustrates the need for more organizations to provide training for the employees on presentation skills.

There are many public speaking gurus who will teach you techniques to “trick” yourself into feeling less anxious. This makes me think of the Brady Bunch episode where Jan was nervous about the school debate. Mike Brady shared his sage advice to picture the audience in their underwear!

Perhaps a better way to tackle the anxiety of presentations and public speaking is to be properly prepared and properly trained. Being prepared helps calm your nerves and gain confidence. It also ensures that your information is accurate and materials reliable. Preparation also enables you to handle mistakes if and when they occur.

Presentation Skills Training and Preparation

In addition to rehearsing or reviewing presentation materials, it also helps to ask yourself some basic questions about your presentation. The answers will help you understand your presentation in a wider context and manage a smoother process.

Who is Your Audience?

Before you begin writing your presentation, you need to understand who the audience is. (You can watch our course on this topic here .) Not every presentation is suitable for every audience. You may have to have different versions of your presentation based on the audience you are talking to.

Is your audience all from the same industry? Are they senior leaders or front-line employees?

What are the demographics? If you use a Brady Bunch reference like I did above, will they understand it? How diverse is the audience? Different nationalities understand different references so keep that in mind if you use slang.

How Many Attendees Do You Expect?

Is this a group of ten in an office meeting room or a group of 100 in an auditorium? Get a feel for the number and plan accordingly. With a small group, you can have more of a conversation, make eye contact and work the room. With an audience of 500, you need to set the pace with pre-planned remarks and slides. If you are speaking to an audience in the thousands you will have to consider your stage presence and the use of video and IMAG screens.

Why Are the Attendees There?

Why are they there? Are they required to attend or is this a voluntary session at a conference? Is your presentation required, or did the audience just sign up? Is it the only presentation that will be given or are you one among a group of speakers? Did the attendees have to pay a registration fee? Different contexts set up different expectations. So knowing the situation will help reveal those expectations, and you can prepare your remarks accordingly.

What is the Goal of the Presentation?

As Yogi Berra once quipped, “If you don’t know where you are going, you might end up someplace else.” When your attendees leave your presentation, what are the key takeaways you want them to remember? What action do you need them to take?

• A presentation at a trade show may have several goals. First, you want to share information or helpful tips that the attendees may be able to execute on their own at home. Second, you want to entice the attendees to learn more about your company to consider hiring you in the future.
• The goal of a company update presentation might simply be to keep employees informed on the health of the business and understand how their work contributes to the larger goals.
• In a meeting led by HR with a presentation on a new 401K provider, the goal is for employees to understand their options, risks, and costs of the plan so they can make the best choice for their family.

How Should You Structure Your Presentation?

The structure of your presentation is also referred to as the backbone. There are a variety of backbones you can use and they tie back to the goal of your presentation.

• Process backbone: follows a series of steps. This might be helpful if your presentation is about operating a new software.
• Chronological backbone: items follow a particular order. An employee onboarding presentation might use this backbone walking through the first 90 days.
• Topological backbone : follows the layout of a space. This would make sense for explaining the manufacturing plant layout: ingredients are received and quarantined here; then stored in sections of the warehouse here; then staged for production here, etc.

Our course on structuring your presentation goes into more detail on other backbones you might consider.

What is the Presentation Environment?

If your presentation is onsite in your own offices, this will be an easier question to answer. You should be familiar with the various meeting rooms in your office or on your company's campus. If you are speaking at an industry event you might be in a ballroom with more unknowns. Or will the presentation be made via a webinar or video chat platform?

• Will you use a hand-held microphone or a lavalier? This changes how you might use your hand gestures for emphasis.
• Will you be on a stage or ground level? This may limit your ability to walk around among the audience.
• Will you have professional lighting or are you at the mercy of the fluorescent overhead lighting in the room. This might affect what you wear and what graphics you include in your slides.
• Is this a "lunch and learn" presentation? Will people be eating while you speak and you have to deal with the clinking noises of silverware on the plates?
• If it is a video presentation, do you have good lighting over your webcam? What is in your background on the walls? Will your pets and family be in another room if you are presenting from home?

Is Your Presentation Time-Bound?

This may sound like a silly question but you need to consider how much time you are allowed for your presentation. Are you part of a panel with each panelist speaking or 15 minutes? Are you sharing a time slot at an industry event and only have 20-30 minutes? Is this a quarterly update to senior management and you have a full hour?

The other aspect of the time limits is whether or not you are able to allow for questions from the audience. If this is a formal presentation at an industry conference, the attendees expect to be able to ask questions. If you are speaking to a small, internal group, the meeting may be more of a conversation throughout your presentation. If you are hosting a webinar, the Q&A may be limited to the features in the technology.

Running through your script or speakers notes multiple times will help you measure the length. In the moment you may speed up because of adrenaline or you may add more color commentary on the fly. Practicing your content in front of a friendly audience of your inner circle of co-workers will help to relieve your nerves and give you confidence in your presentation skills.

Will You Be Able to Set Up Your Presentation?

We always suggest you arrive in the room early to assess the situation. You may or not be able to change things but here are some considerations:

• Hook up your computer to the projector or screen and click through your slides before people enter the room.
• View your slides from the back of the room so you can see what you might need to explain differently, for example, if your chart or data is not legible.
• Test your microphone and slide clicker.
• Test the lighting. Can you adjust it if it is too bright and people can't read your slides or if it is too dim and people can't see you?
• Can you distribute handouts in advance on their chairs or on the conference room table?
• Are you planning to use a whiteboard or flip chart? Is it in the room?

Presentation Skills Training from HSI

We offer a full series of training for your employees on presentation skills basics that includes the following courses:

• Know Your Audience
• Structuring Your Presentation
• Setting up Your Presentation
• Setting the Stage
• Punching up Your Presentation
• Creating Slides
• Designing Handouts
• Closing and Q&A
• Psyching Up, Not Out
• After the Presentation
• Handling Distractions

Additional Resources

• Watch two of our presentation skills training courses.
• Confidence Training for Managers: How to Build Confidence in Teams
• Communication Skills Training in a World of Emojis, YOLO, and Ghosting
• Practical Nonverbal Communication Tips

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in January 2016 and has been updated for freshness and comprehensiveness.

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10 Presentation Skills Techniques For Corporate Trainers

Practical and effective.

As far as essential skills for corporate trainers go , presentations are about as integral and essential as they come. They’re front and centre, they’re focused and they’re the main part of the job, too.

They can help show off your skills and act as a motivator when it’s challenging, difficult, or a little bit of hard, they can help develop balance from productivity drops, low morale, and they look great when done right.

Corporate trainers play a vital role in the professional development of employees. And, delivering effective presentations is crucial to engage learners and ensure the transfer of knowledge.

This guide aims to equip corporate trainers with 10 essential presentation skills techniques , along with practical examples, and tips to create impactful training sessions and foster a positive learning environment.

• Understand Your Audience: Before planning your presentation, take the time to understand your audience’s needs, knowledge level, and learning preferences. Conduct a training needs analysis or survey to gather information about the participants. Tailor your content and approach to match their specific requirements for a more meaningful learning experience. Example : Before conducting a sales training session, conduct a training needs analysis or survey to understand the sales team’s specific challenges and skill gaps. This insight will help you tailor your content to address their needs and make the training more relevant and effective.
• Set Clear Objectives: Define clear and measurable learning objectives for your presentation. This helps you stay focused and ensures that learners know what to expect from the training. Make your objectives concise and aligned with the organization’s overall goals to enhance relevance and effectiveness. Example : For a leadership development workshop, a clear objective could be, “By the end of this session, participants will be able to identify and apply three key leadership styles to enhance team performance.”
• Structure Your Presentation: Organize your presentation into logical sections or modules. Use a clear introduction to capture participants’ attention, followed by the main body of the presentation, and conclude with a strong summary and key takeaways. This is something we frequently hear from clients looking for  leadership skills training materials. A well-structured presentation keeps learners engaged and enhances retention. Example : Organize a customer service training into three sections: “Understanding Customer Needs,” “Effective Communication Techniques,” and “Handling Difficult Situations.” Each section should flow logically and support the overall theme of providing exceptional customer experiences.
• Utilize Visual Aids Effectively: Incorporate visual aids such as slides, videos, and infographics to support your message. Use high-quality visuals that enhance understanding and avoid overcrowding slides with excessive text. Visual aids should complement your spoken words and serve as a reinforcement of key points. Example : In a new software training session, use annotated screenshots and short video demonstrations to guide learners through various software functionalities. This visual aid enhances understanding and reinforces key learning points.
• Master Non-Verbal Communication: Your body language and gestures can significantly impact your presentation’s effectiveness. Maintain eye contact with participants, use open and welcoming body language, and vary your voice tone to keep the audience engaged. Confident and positive non-verbal cues can create a rapport with learners and foster a comfortable learning environment. Example : During a conflict resolution workshop, maintain friendly and approachable body language while demonstrating active listening. Make eye contact with participants when addressing their concerns to build trust and create a safe learning environment.
• Encourage Audience Participation: Engage your audience throughout the presentation by encouraging questions, discussions, and interactive activities. This active involvement boosts learner engagement and facilitates better knowledge retention. Use polling, group exercises, role-playing, or real-life scenarios to make the training more interactive and relevant. Example : In a team-building training, organize group activities like a problem-solving challenge. Divide participants into teams and give each team a scenario to resolve collaboratively. This hands-on activity promotes teamwork and interaction.
• Practice and Time Management: Rehearse your presentation multiple times to refine your delivery and ensure smooth transitions. Pay attention to timing to cover all essential points within the allocated time. Practice also helps build confidence, reducing the chances of nervousness during the actual presentation. Example : Before a compliance training for managers, rehearse the presentation multiple times to ensure that all legal requirements are adequately covered. Time management is crucial to allocate sufficient attention to each topic without rushing.
• Adapt to Feedback: Be open to feedback from participants, colleagues, or supervisors. Constructive feedback can help you identify areas for improvement and refine your training approach. Continuously adapt and enhance your presentation techniques based on the insights gained from feedback. Example : After conducting a communication skills workshop, review the feedback forms from participants. If some learners found certain concepts confusing, adapt your approach for future sessions, making the content more accessible and engaging.
• Handle Questions and Challenges: Expect and prepare for questions and challenges from the audience. Stay composed and answer questions thoughtfully. If you don’t have an immediate answer, promise to follow up later. Address any conflicts or challenging participants with patience and professionalism. Example : During a cybersecurity training, anticipate questions about specific cyber threats. Prepare informative answers to instill confidence in learners and demonstrate expertise in the subject matter.
• Evaluate and Reflect: After each training session, take time to evaluate its effectiveness. Business trainers will reflect on what worked well and what could be improved. Use participant feedback and performance metrics to gauge the impact of your training. Continuous evaluation and self-improvement are essential for becoming a more effective corporate trainer. Example : After delivering a project management training, assess the participants’ performance on real or simulated projects. Use the results to identify areas for improvement in the training material or delivery for future sessions.

Conclusion: Mastering these 10 essential presentation skills techniques and tips will empower corporate trainers to deliver engaging and impactful training sessions.

By understanding the audience, setting clear objectives, using effective visuals, and encouraging interaction, trainers can create a positive learning experience that drives professional growth and development for employees.

Regular practice, advanced presentation skills training , adaptation to feedback, and self-reflection are key elements for continuous improvement in the art of presentation.

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11 Tips for Improving Your Presentation Skills (& Free Training)

Written by: Heleana Tiburca

Are you looking for ways to completely level up your presentation skills? We’ve rounded up a list of the 10 best tips to help you deliver and create an effective presentation .

Here’s a sneak peek at some of the tips you’ll find inside:

• Create an audience journey roadmap
• Use proper and confident body language
• Meet your audience before presenting to better connect with them
• Focus on your presentation design to engage your audience

... and a whole lot more!

So, if you want to take your presentation skills to the next level, then this list will show you exactly how to do so.

Let’s get into it.

Table of Contents

Tip #1: define the purpose of your presentation., tip #2: create an audience journey map., tip #3: keep your slides short and sweet., tip #4: focus on your presentation design., tip #5: visualize boring numbers and data., tip #6: practice in front of a live audience., tip #7: meet your audience before presenting., tip #8: channel nervous energy into enthusiastic energy., tip #9: use proper and confident body language., tip #10: allow your personality to shine through., tip #11: take courses to improve your presentation skills., free presentation skills training.

Behind every successful presentation, there was carefully crafted planning that went into it beforehand. To ensure that you’ll have a powerful presentation, you need to consider your message.

The very first step to any good presentation is to define its purpose. This goes on in the very beginning during the planning process where you consider your message.

Your presentation’s end goal can be any of the following:

• To entertain
• To persuade

Your presentation’s end goal might even be a combination of the four purposes above. Consider the fact that you may need to inform buyers of your product and what problem it solves for them, but you also need to persuade them into buying it.

This is where engaging storytelling and proper visual aids will come into play to help you achieve your goal, and will either make or break your presentation.

Once you pinpoint the purpose of your presentation, you can then begin to work on the subject matter and your audience journey map.

An audience journey map is a visual representation of all the steps you need to take your audience members through, from first to last and everything in between, to achieve the goal of your presentation.

There are a few steps to creating your audience journey map.

First, you need to start your explanation at a low point — the current state of an issue. Maybe there’s a problem that you are able to solve. Describe the current situation before you lay out the undertaking ahead.

Once you lay out the problem, you can then start showing your audience the process of solving this problem. To not overwhelm your crowd, give them an actionable roadmap to follow.

With great verbal communication skills, you can tell them how you plan to take the first step.

This is many times the hardest part of the presentation, but once you have the foundation for your first step, you can easily lay out the next stepping stones and take them to your end goal with ease.

Creating an audience journey map will be a major success factor in a compelling presentation and needs to be done before writing and creating your slides.

Having a clear audience journey map will also help ensure you take your audience on a smooth journey with all your main points in line and achieve your end goal with no bumps in the road.

When giving a presentation, make sure that you keep it short, sweet and as informationally-condensed as possible. All of your slides should be easy to digest and understandable at a glance.

Let's take a look at an example. The slide below is part of Visme's simple presentation theme , which is designed to have maximum impact with minimal text.

You can customize this slide and others like it in Visme's presentation software . Or, you can apply the same concept of minimalism to any other presentation tool, such as PowerPoint.

To make sure that you stay on topic and won’t overwhelm your crowd with too much information, you need to have a plan. When you have a solid plan to go by, you won’t go off track and begin rambling about things unrelated to your presentation.

Another practical way you can stay on topic and not overwhelm your audience with too much information is to have your main points written in bold somewhere on your slides.

Here's another example of a Visme slide template that does that well:

As you can see above, you don’t need to write out all the information surrounding the main points, as this will cause your audience too much confusion.

An experienced presenter will be able to quickly glance over at their own presentation slides, see the main points and continue on with their presentation, engaging their audience without going off course.

This, of course, comes with a lot of rehearsing out loud, which we will cover more in tip number six .

Another great way to keep your presentation short is to set a specific time for asking questions.

By reserving a few minutes during your presentation for your audience to ask questions, you can present your main points and achieve your goals, without going into too much detail.

Your audience can then ask for clarity on anything that interests them and you can answer their questions in however much detail you need.

Picture this: you’re gathered around the conference table with all your colleagues early Monday morning and your manager pulls up a lifeless, colorless, text-filled Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.

You’re trying your best to pay attention and understand what he’s trying to convey, but staring deep into your coffee cup seems much more interesting at this point.

Sound familiar?

This is why it’s so crucial to understand how your presentation design will affect the outcome.

By having a messy and overloaded presentation, you’ll lose your audience almost immediately. On the flip side, if it’s so mundane and boring, you will also lose their attention.

One design presentation tip that we suggest you implement is to make sure you don’t overcrowd your slides with too much text.

This is a risky thing to do because the moment you flip to the next slide, your audience’s attention goes from what you’re saying, to your slide.

They’ll begin to read everything presented on the slide and completely tune you out. This is why a minimal text approach with a maximum of 2-3 different yet complementary fonts on your slides will be ideal, like in the example below.

You can use visual aids like images, animated graphic design elements, videos and more to convey the same message that boring text would.

It’s not everyone’s cup of tea to design a presentation from scratch, and that’s why it can be incredibly helpful to use a tool that offers presentation templates to help you get started.

Visme has hundreds of handcrafted presentation templates for public speakers to use for any occasion. Each presentation template is fully customizable and you’ll be able to add your branded content to your slides to make it your own.

Presenting your data can be an incredibly tricky and difficult task.

Instead of adding a bunch of tables and numbers to your slides, try switching things up by using charts, graphs and other data visualization types .

When creating a chart for your presentation, you need to be mindful of several things.

First, you need to choose the right chart to begin with. Not every type of graph is suitable for all data sets. The chart you choose will depend on the nature of your data and your unique purpose of using that chart.

Here's an infographic to help you understand what type of chart to use depending on your unique needs and nature of data.

Image Source

For example, if you're drawing a comparison between two or more items, a bar graph might be suitable. But if you're breaking down composition, a pie chart might be a better idea.

Also, make sure that you can fit all of your information into a chart without overcrowding the visual and also have your audience understand that information at a glance, like in the example below.

Other data visualization tips to keep in mind include choosing a pleasant, cohesive color scheme, sticking to max 2-3 fonts, incorporating a legend, and keeping your data as simple as possible.

Learn more about data visualization best practices to help you create engaging charts for your presentations and reports.

If you're using Visme, you can also import your data directly from Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, Survey Monkey, Google Analytics and more.

Practice, practice and practice again.

Some would argue that writing up and designing a presentation from scratch is the easiest part. Delivering the presentation in a way that it engages your audience — that's the tricky part.

When it comes to public speaking, it’s only natural that one would get a little nervous and stumble upon their words.

That’s why practicing your public speaking skills in front of others will be vital to how well you present and connect with your crowd during your actual presentation.

It’s one thing to practice in front of the mirror, but it’s something completely different when people are waiting for you to deliver information that will improve their business or life.

So gather up some friends, family members or even your pets, and present your presentation from start to finish as many times as you need.

By presenting your slides out loud, you might even catch some mistakes in your presentation or find you need to add in some missing information.

By shaking your attendee’s hand before a meeting, you’ll begin to make connections and become more approachable and likable by your audience.

Meeting your audience will help break the ice and make them more likely to listen to what you have to say. They will also feel more comfortable asking you questions later, which will increase the value they get out of your presentation.

Plus, you’ll also feel more relaxed speaking to your audience if you've met them already. When you can put a name to a face, you’ll automatically feel a sense of comfort when you make eye contact with them while presenting.

Even the most famous movie stars and popular public speakers will still get nervous before a public presentation.

It’s human nature to get butterflies and perspire a bit before having tons of eyes on you, critiquing every word you have to say.

So, if you’re feeling nervous before a presentation, instead of emotionally shutting down, take that nervous energy and transform it into enthusiastic energy.

Before getting up on stage, listen to your favorite hype music, maybe have a coffee (if it won’t make you jittery) or get a pep talk from a friend.

By being confident and using your enthusiasm to your advantage, you’ll have your crowd on the edge of their seats, completely engaged, following every word you say.

Enthusiastic presentations will much better received by listeners, rather than monotone informational presentations. So, as important as your presentation design is, the way you present it will determine a big part of the outcome.

According to Allan Pease , an Honorary Professor of Psychology at ULIM International University, you can convince almost anyone to do anything for you if you use proper body language.

He has an entire Ted Talk dedicated to the subject, which you can watch below.

The proper use of hand gestures, a power stance, a confident smile and an authoritative yet kind voice are all techniques that you can leverage to get your crowd listening to and agreeing with what you’re saying.

According to Allan Pease, when using hand gestures, you’ll want to make sure that you’re using open palm gestures. This makes you look like a great leader that is right there with the team, ready to lead and take charge.

By using open palm gestures, people will automatically be inclined to listen to you.

The moment you turn your hand over and start using your pointer finger, you will lose your audience. They won’t accept any information from you and they will believe you have an authoritative and hostile attitude.

Body language is everything, so make sure to use open hand gestures, smile, take a deep breath and believe that you’re not nervous, even if you are.

As soon as you believe that you’re not nervous, your brain and body will follow suit and you’ll feel more confident on stage with your presentation, which will make your audience trust you more.

We’re convinced that with the right tone of voice and allowing your personality to shine through, you can take any boring presentation, and turn it into an entertaining and engaging one for your audience.

While it is good to meet your audience where they are, it’s never good to fake your personality for the sake of a presentation.

Everyone can tell when someone isn’t genuine, and if you’re trying to suppress your personality, you’re only hurting yourself and your presentation by doing so, as what you’re saying can then begin to sound disingenuous.

So, don’t be afraid to use your personality to your advantage. Let a joke out and entertain your audience. By making your audience laugh, you’ll have them more in tune with what you’re saying.

Chances are if you’re giving a business presentation, many of your peers will be there and they'd want you to let your personality show. So, be yourself and use that to your advantage!

Finally, our best tip that we can offer you in all areas of life is to never stop learning.

The only way to improve is to continue learning and practicing. That’s why we recommend you take presentation courses that will help improve your communication skills and presentation skills.

You can brush up on your presentation, communication and public speaking tips by taking online courses on Udemy or Coursera . Look for specific courses on storytelling, body language and more to focus on your problem areas.

Or, if you're looking for a free course that packs all the good stuff at zero cost, our team at Visme has put together an incredible presentation course that will help you smash your next presentation!

When it comes to creating and giving presentations, many times it seems like it’s just something that’s expected of us to do, without receiving any type of proper training or qualifications.

Here at Visme, we want to see everyone succeed.

That’s why we combined our years of knowledge and experience to create a free course to give everyone the tools and confidence they need in order to create effective and successful presentations.

There are dozens of benefits and skills you’ll gain in these training sessions. You'll learn how to:

• Effectively brainstorm and create audience personas and audience journey maps
• Use visual communication to inform, engage, inspire and persuade your audience
• Design your presentation as a professional designer would in minutes
• Use colors, fonts, pictures and videos to increase the impact of your speech
• Present your data through compelling charts and graphs that tell a story

You’ll also receive a Visme Versity certificate of completion once you complete the online course — you can add this to your LinkedIn profile to set yourself up for success.

If any of these benefits sound like something you want to add to your tool belt, then you can take our free presentation skills course for professional development right now.

This course is broken down into easily digestible sections, yet it’s jam-packed full of readily applicable information. The best part is you can take the course and complete it at your own pace.

There are engaging educational videos for you to watch and learn from, informational content for you to read and at the end of each session, there is a quiz for you to take to assess your progress.

By the end of this course, you’ll have an abundance of skills that will help you succeed in all types of presentations.

Sign up today and learn how to become a great presenter in no time!

Level Up Your Presentation Skills

You’ve now learned 11 amazing tips on how to improve your presentation skills, but there’s still so much more to uncover and learn in the realm of presentations skills.

If you want to overcome your fear of public speaking, improve on your business presentations, become a better communicator and transform good presentations into great presentations, then this free presentation course by Visme is for you.

Want to create stunning presentations of your own? Sign up for our presentation software and start using hundreds of pre-made slides, animated effects, free graphics, charts and more.

Create beautiful presentations faster with Visme.

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I’m Heleana and I’m a content creator here at Visme. My passion is to help people find the information they’re looking for in the most fun and enjoyable way possible. Let’s make information beautiful.

Home Blog Education How to Create and Deliver Training Presentations That Make an Impact

How to Create and Deliver Training Presentations That Make an Impact

Blended learning and hybrid workplaces have improved how employees train and optimize their work output. Corporate training is now a rich combination of in-person group sessions, live online lessons, and SCORM courses that employees can follow at their own pace. 

Are your training presentations up to the challenge?

Learning & Development strategists, HR, and performance management managers take note. In this guide, we’ll show you how to create a training deck from start to finish . Plus, some template examples and optimization tips for creating training presentations that make learning more effective.

What is a Training Presentation?

A training presentation is a set of slides created to teach a skill or increase knowledge of a topic. They’re used in training and development strategies in companies worldwide. Across the slides in a training presentation, employees learn essential information and skills to do their jobs better and grow in their careers.

Types of Training Presentations

Training presentations form part of all L&D initiatives in an HR department. They have one of two purposes; to train employees for the job at the present moment and to train them for growth and the future. 

Training for the job instructs employees on how to carry out their assigned tasks and responsibilities . The skills they learn follow guidelines from the company’s brand, processes, and structure.

Examples include:

• On-the-job training
• Practice simulations
• Orientation
• Skillbuilding 

To train for growth , employees are given resources to increase their capabilities, like learning new technology or methodology. They learn skills that will help their career future, preparing them for a promotion within the company or for changing teams laterally in a new role.

Growth training includes topics like:

• Soft skills
• New technology
• New processes or methodologies
• Job rotation
• Personal development
• Career expansion

Why Are Training Presentations Important?

High-quality training and development initiatives in a corporate setting offer many benefits. Three of the most relevant are employee buy-in and retention, company culture, and professional development.

Employee Buy-in and Retention

When training presentations are achieved at a high standard, team members in People Management, Human Resources, Learning & Development, and DEI feel confident and proud of their work in training fellow employees. 

They accompany employees along training paths, so it’s better if they’re invested in what they’re sharing. For a solid brand identity —and clear company culture—thorough training helps with buy-in straight out of the gate with an onboarding strategy. Then continues with regular training initiatives that lead to retention, satisfaction and loyalty.

Company Culture 

The role of company culture in an organization has a lot of weight towards brand equity. But a strong culture doesn’t happen overnight; it’s instilled in the employees’ minds through team-building activities, motivational seminars, and equitable training in all aspects of work.

Company culture flows through the ongoing interaction between trainers and trainees. Group sessions and training days help build relationships between teams and employees. Feeling invested is a trait developed through the right type of training. 

Professional Development

High-quality training for professional development is essential in every organization. On-the-job training for daily tasks is only part of the puzzle; employees also need to train for growth.

In-company training for professional development includes training for higher—or lateral—positions. Offering training for the future not only heightens professional development for individual employees but also carves a strong culture.

How to Create a Training Presentation

Let’s create a training deck together. We’ll use a case study to guide us along.

You and your L&D team at an IT Company are preparing a company-wide training session about the SCRUM framework before implementing it in more aspects of the business. The Training presentation is titled “Understanding the SCRUM Framework. Agilizing our productivity, together.” Sessions will be blended/hybrid to accommodate both in-office and remote employees. There will be a camera recording the instructor, and remote employees will see the presentation and the video of the instructor talking side by side on their screen.

1. Plan and prepare

Planning and strategizing are as important in training as in other business areas. Your training presentation already has a purpose, company-wide training about the SCRUM framework. But if you aren’t sure what employees need to learn to increase productivity and employee satisfaction, you’ll have to do some research. 

Figuring out your people’s learning and development needs takes some work. Are you using a performance management system? What does the reporting reveal? Where are employees failing to set goals? How can training presentations help? 

Analyze the reports, and you’ll see where they’re lacking. Plan upskilling strategies around those topics. With a clear objective, start preparing the training, presentation, and conversation points for group sessions. 

Put together a lesson plan covering the main characteristics of your presentation. Use it as a foundational reference during the production of the training presentation slides .

2. Create a basic structure 

Creating a structure for a training presentation is a critical step before designing slides or even writing the content. Training presentations with a set structure are more impactful than ones without. 

Following a structure makes the transference of knowledge much simpler. Write an outline that follows that structure. Do it on a document or use a visual tool like a storyboard to overview the full presentation deck .

The main structure for any training presentation has three parts; beginning, middle, and end. Yes, it’s that simple.

• Start with an agenda slide that covers the contents of the training presentation and builds a framework of what to expect out of this training program. Follow by listing the syllabus for the course and required learning material that will be accessible, and where students should download/access such content.
• Inform learners that at the end of the presentation, they will have all the basic and practical knowledge to understand and begin working with a SCRUM framework. 
• Explain (if necessary) what they need as a prerequisite to get the most out of the training.
• Any instructions they need to follow during the session, such as how to approach practical exercises or instructions for deliverables expected. 
• Share all supplemental material through links they can download or access from. This should also include any book chapter mentioned, video resources, photos, etc. Cloud-based storage accessible from the Company’s intranet tends to suit all needs.

• Throughout the meatiest slides of the presentation, teach them about the SCRUM framework. Then share how their team will use it to agile production and work in general.
• Use visual training techniques to explain themes and topics clearly.
• Create interactive moments for learners to imprint information. 
• Incorporate a variety of teaching formats to cover all learning styles; video, text, images, infographics, interactive activities, etc.

• Craft a few slides summarizing what they learned using a highlights list.
• Have learners take a quiz to test their knowledge and offer results that include the right answers to the questions they got wrong.
• Share references to supplemental material where learners can get more information on the topic.

The Middle Structure

In the middle is where most of the magic happens. A training presentation is much like a lecture in its purpose. Therefore, using teaching and lecture techniques in your presentations can only be a good idea.

Here are six lecture structures that you can apply to the middle of your presentation. For the SCRUM Framework training, we’ll use the first example .

• Start with what students can be expected to know to what students don’t know.  
• Proceed from reality to abstract ideas, theories, and principles.
• Begin with generalizations and continue with particular examples and applications.
• Open with simple ideas and round them up with complex ones
• Start sharing common misconceptions and then explain the truth.
• Go from a whole view to a detailed view. 

3. Gather resources

Organize all the content you’ll need for the presentation in a folder on the cloud or your team’s content library. Browse the SlideModel template collection, where you’ll find plenty of slides, full decks, and cut & copy elements to include in your training deck. For the slides to describe the SCRUM framework, we used this 3D PPT template of how the parts of the framework are interconnected.

Resource checklist for any training presentation:

• All visuals, videos, and PowerPoint slides add value to the training. 
• Case studies and examples support your points.
• Your company has the appropriate licenses to use the resources that are included in the final design.
• All references, citations and attributions are gathered for inclusion in the training documentation. 
• Your templates are from Slidemodel. 

4. Design the slides

Now, it’s time to put it all together and design the slides. Get all your resources ready, a list of all the templates you’ll use, and start a new project on PowerPoint.

Have your outline and/or storyboard open and start designing slides. Start with the cover and then follow the structure you decided on. Work your way through to the end and add a quiz. Here are some instructional presentation design best practices to help you along.

• Create visual unity and balance by choosing a color theme and font pairing that supports the brand message and purpose of the training.
• Mind the flow between slides from beginning to end. Use subtle transitions that don’t distract from the learning.
• Use a table of contents, section dividers, and interactive slide menus for easier navigation.
• Ensure each slide has a focal point and a visual hierarchy between all other elements.

All training material emulates the company brand, its values and vision. As marketing material follows visual and messaging brand guidelines, so should internal development content. 

Rather than mix & match slide templates, you can try a really fast method to create an entire training presentation by stating its topic, checking the suggested content, and selecting the desired slide design. This is possible thanks to the SlideModel’s AI Presentation Maker .

5 Training Presentation Slide Examples

Are you looking for inspiration to create a training presentation? SlideModel has numerous designs suitable for explaining, visually dissecting, and analyzing the material. Likewise, you’ll find templates that help L&D strategists communicate with instructors during the planning phase and beyond. 

Here are five templates that can help with your training presentation design.

Employee Onboarding

First, this multi-slide ppt template for training is an employee onboarding presentation . Use it to cover all characteristics of a corporate onboarding process. Slides include;

• Pre-boarding
• Training Activities
• Onboarding Roadmap
• Title & closing slides

Managerial Grid

The Blake & Mouton managerial grid is a great way to explain and analyze the different types of management based on production concerns and people concerns. Production concerns are characterized by tasks, and people are concerned with relationships. 

Matrix Grids can be used for other purposes as well. Like stakeholder engagement , talent analysis , and content marketing.

Multichapter Presentation

Does your training content span long chunks of information? Separate it into digestible sections and create a multichapter training presentation. If it still feels very long, separate each chapter into a lesson of a comprehensive digital course. This multichapter presentation template will help you either way. Plus, it will add considerable visual value to the deck as a whole.

SWOT Analysis

Teaching the SWOT Analysis process is best achieved with a “start big and continue into the details” presentation structure. This 5-slide template starts with the main idea and then delves deeper into each section. A visual structure like this also works for any concept that needs explanatory simplification. Simply separate the main concept into four parts and create a further slide for each.

5Cs of Customer Service

Nothing exudes versatility as much as infographics. This template has one function, to describe and analyze the 5Cs of customer service . Nevertheless, you get six visually different infographic compositions for the same topic in one template. How else can your content be separated into five sections with the same first letter? This—all words with the same first letter—is a mnemonic technique that will help your learners absorb and retain information.

How to Deliver Your Training Presentation

How will you deliver the training presentation to your learners? Depending on the company culture and working model, your training presentation will appear in any of the following scenarios.

1. As visual support to your In-person group training session.

The in-person group training session is the most common—until the pandemic changed many things. Your training presentation is the visual support during the event. 

Here are some tips for delivering a presentation during a group training session.

• Practice your ability to talk to a group. Notice your voice inflections or lack thereof. Practice the lesson with the training slides to support your spoken or activity-based teaching material.
• Remember that presenting a business presentation and teaching with a training presentation aren’t the same. If you’re new to in-person group training, research to learn and practice instruction skills.
• While training, maintain constant interaction with the learners. Ask them questions, and let them ask you questions. Invite anyone interested to join the online whiteboard for notetaking and mind-mapping the lesson.

2. As Part of a Live Online Session for Hybrid Teams.

Online, blended learning is quickly becoming popular with L&D teams. But how does it work? And why is it so special?

When you have hybrid teams with some employees in-office, others at home, and even more in other parts of the world, you need training solutions that work for everyone.

For the SCRUM training, we’d do the following:

• Prepare the training presentation slide deck.
• Organize a space for the in-person group and plan the event.
• Set up a camera to record the lesson or training session.
• Invite all employees to the session and offer them options of attendance; in-person, online, and live, watching the event recording.
• Get set up to stream the session live. You can use a webinar tool like Streamyard or the one inside your LMS platform. Someone might need to help so you can concentrate on the training rather than the technical tasks.
• Stream the lesson live and record it. On Chromecast , choose to use the split screen. One side shows the video of you teaching, and the other is the training presentation you prepared.
• Send the recording to the employees that didn’t attend in person or live online.

3. As a lesson in a digital course

Your training presentation can be its own course or part of a bigger one. In a comprehensive multi-lesson course, each section has its training presentation or a combination of presentations and other material. Use e-learning tools like SCORM and xAPI to create courses learners can do at their own pace, which you can keep track of. 

Create your SCORM and xAPI courses with PowerPoint, SlideModel, and the iSpring PPT plugin . Once finished, upload it all to your LMS platform and enroll employees to learn.

What’s the difference between SCORM and xAPI? The visual below has all the answers.

Read our guide on how to create an online course for detailed instructions and tips to make your course stand out.

3. As a PDF document

Delivering a training presentation as a PDF document shouldn’t be your first choice, but consider it for those employees that prefer learning that way. The same training presentation you create for in-person training, online learning or hybrid sessions can be downloaded as a PDF and shared via email or through the learning portal.

Takeaways for how to create successful PowerPoint Training Presentations

Optimize your training presentations to be as efficient as possible using instructional design techniques from the pros. Start with your trusty authoring combination of PowerPoint and SlideModel, and add an iSpring design plugin to complete the toolkit. Follow the steps in the sections above and then some.

Implement Interactivity 

Add interactivity to your training presentations to make them more engaging while touching on more learning styles. Interactivity can be as simple as a navigation menu between slides, dialogue simulations, and quick in-slide quizzes. Use xAPI and an LMS to create interactive training presentations for any topic.

After discussing the importance of interactivity, take a look at our 5-topic training presentation template showcased in the following video. With a tabbed menu, this training PPT template is ideal for presenting the agenda of your training session and delivering it in a streamlined manner. Each tab can represent a unique topic or module, making it easier for your audience to follow along and understand the progression of your training. The slide layout not only enhances visual appeal, making it more engaging than traditional slides, but also promotes organized content delivery.

Animated presentation templates, such as the one shown, are an effective way to captivate your audience and make the learning experience more memorable. This kind of animations add an element of surprise and engagement that static slides might lack. When paired with interactive elements mentioned earlier, such training templates can transform your training presentations into immersive learning experiences.

Add In-Slide Video

Hybrid learning and online learning have a wide berth of possibilities. One is in-slide video recordings of you—the training presenter—talking to the audience on the other side of the screen. 

This is especially practical for digital training presentations that never had an in-person session and instead are all done online. Use tools like Loom and Camtasia to record yourself speaking as you flip through the training slides, then download the Loom video . Then share the final video output on your company’s learning platform.

Offer Supplemental Material

Regardless of how you deliver your training deck, it’s always a good idea to offer supplemental material for the learner. Let’s look at some ideas:

• If you deliver the training presentation as a video with much narration, offer a PDF transcript for download. 
• On an LMS platform, add printable PDF worksheets and further reading material.
• Before or during an in-person session, give handouts and worksheets.
• In a hybrid webinar, share links to online games that help reinforce the topic.
• In any scenario, offer further resources for self-paced learning.

Incorporate Gamification

One of the best teaching techniques for turning training presentations from meh to memorable is gamification. Using games and game-like visual qualities helps learners capture and retain information better. Gamification techniques like badges, challenges, and competition elevate the learner’s feeling of happiness and contentment. They enjoy the process more and therefore learn more effectively.

Cover Multiple Platforms

Reach all employees where they are by creating and delivering versatile training presentations that are viewable on any device, from wall projectors to mobile phones. Create interconnectivity between them with downloads, digital whiteboards for notetaking, online chatrooms, handouts, etc.  

Don’t forget also to follow accessibility standards. For example, closed caption subtitles on videos and e-reader-compatible text. 

Share Questionnaires And Surveys At The End

Do you agree with the business notion that nothing in business is worth it unless you can track it? If so, then your training presentations must have a callback. Shortly after the learner has attended, watched, or listened to your training presentation, send them a short survey to gauge their satisfaction. Combine this with testing and quizzing results, and over a short time; you’ll have a good grasp on the effectiveness of your training.

Give a Certificate of Completion

Offer your learners a certificate of completion. As its name indicates, a certificate is essential for certifying that a person has taken your course. Create a visual certificate that you can send as a pdf in an email. Include all the necessary information for the learner to mention the completed course on their LinkedIn profile.

In less than three thousand words, you learned why training presentations are important for business, how to create and deliver them, plus tips on how to make your training presentations amazing.

Your L&D team and all your trained employees will benefit from optimized training presentations that use SlideModel templates for PowerPoint and Google Slides. Support your learners with visuals and instructional infographics. Start downloading educational templates today.

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PRESENTATION SKILLS TRAINING FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION

Looking for employee training content for your team browse the topics and courses available in the bizlibrary collection, our award-winning content library for organizational learning & development, types of presentations.

• Providing information, which encompasses team meetings, project updates, and demos.
• Teaching a new skill such as how to use a new program or implement a new process.
• Selling a product or service includes a recap of what the product is, next steps, or enhancements that need to be made.
• Reporting progress speaks to implementing new services or processes and reporting on how everything is working.
• Problem solving involves addressing a problem and working through various causes and solutions.
• Decision making could play a role in planning events and deciding what is needed, what is wanted, and finding a middle ground between those.

Presentation Delivery

• Manuscript - The presentation is written out and the speaker reads it to the audience word for word.
• Memorized – The presentation is recited from memory and delivered to an audience.
• Impromptu – This presentation is usually a short speech given on the spot with little to no planning or preparation.
• Extemporaneous – This presentation styles combines memorized and impromptu as it is not entirely written out, but instead has notes or reference points to keep the presentation moving along.

Preparing for a Presentation

Presenting in the digital age, overcoming the fear of presenting.

No training on presentation skills would be complete without addressing those pesky nerves. Many people face stage fright or feel “butterflies” before having to speak publicly. Their palms sweat; their throat dries up; and some even begin to feel sick. While that is a totally normal feeling, there are things you can instruct your employees to do to help ease those symptoms.

Before the Presentation

• Practice taking deep breaths. This helps get oxygen flowing and tricks the body into thinking it is calmer. This can also help with voice inflections and intonations.
• Drink water. It’s hard to speak with a dry mouth, so encourage workers to take sips of water before and during a presentation.

During the Presentation

• Pause. Taking a moment to collect their thoughts can help employees feel less rushed and more poised.
• Smile. Smiling helps people feel at ease and in turn causes relaxation.
• Speak slowly. Nerves cause people to rush through things, so slowing down can keep nerves at bay.
• Move around. Standing in one spot can keep nerves bottled up, so instruct presenters to move around a bit to release any nerves or tension.

How Online Training in Presentation Skills Can Help Employees

Online training is quickly becoming the best way to teach employees skills they need to do their jobs. Numerous studies have shown that online training is often more effective, and learners retain more information than with classroom training alone.

BizLibrary curates a large and diverse video training library  with numerous courses focused on developing presentation skills. Our micro video format breaks content up into smaller, more manageable chunks, making it easier for employees to learn and apply this knowledge when they need it.

Explore more of our business skills topics.

BROWSE LIBRARY

These online courses can be viewed on an individual basis – where an employee learns by themselves at work or at home – or as part of a group training environment or discussion.

Help your employees be better presenters by utilizing modern, engaging training content in an easy-to-use platform. Talk with an expert to learn how our online learning solutions can transform training in your organization.

Learn how BizLibrary’s online learning solutions can transform training in your organization.

REQUEST A DEMO

Ready to see more of our online training library? Request a demo to learn how our solutions can help you deliver engaging and impactful learning to your employees!