The importance of presentations

好的演讲技能能改变你的职业

This is about what it takes to be a brilliant presenter, how much work you will have to do and why it matters. 

Being a good presenter has never been more important. Being abrilliant presenter can transform your career.

It isn’t easy–but you can do it

好的演讲不易但是并非不可学

Being a brilliant presenter is not easy. 

Being a brilliant anything isn’t easy. 

You need some talent, a huge desire to get better, a practical tool kit, a great deal of practice and a lot of hard workand discipline. 

Becoming a brilliant presenter is not easy.

But this book gives you the basic tool kit, some critical pointers and a lot of words of encouragement. 

Read it and apply it and I guarantee you will be a good if not brilliant presenter in a few months provided you are prepared to be honest about where you stand in the league table of presenters now and provided you are prepared to put in the hours of practice and homework you will need to help move you up that league table. 

It should also make you feel relaxed about your quest for excellence and make you realise you start in very good company.

What is a brilliant presentation?

一个精彩绝伦的演讲是什么样子的？

What, in simple terms, is a brilliant presentation? 

If you have only five minutes to get your act together, then read this. 

It tells you how to achieve radical improvements.

This is what they call the ‘executive summary’.

Fires

FRESH

INFORMATIVE

RELEVANT

ENTHUSIASTIC

STORY

Fresh.新颖性

Whatever else you do, make your material sound new,original and fresh. 

Try to find a couple of interesting insights.

Most of all, in saying ‘fresh’ I’m demanding an attitude of mind that leads to every show being seen as a new show and every audience being regarded as a new audience.

Informative.丰富性

There are many occasions (such as in a wedding speech) when good-natured entertainment is the limit of most people’s ambitions. 

But in a business environment any presentation that doesn’t provide new information, or a new interpretation of existing information, isn’t doing its job. 

Our jobin business is to change things and move them on. There’ll be a lot to read about the power of clear and powerful delivery and dramatic slides in this book but, when it comes to the crunch,content is what makes the difference, not spin（有倾向地陈述〔尤用于指政客和商人所做的事〕）.

Relevant.相关性

Don’t give a presentation that is not relevant to the audience or to the circumstances in which they and the company find themselves. 

Examine what you are going to say with utter ruthlessness. 

Keep on asking ‘is this relevant?’ If itisn’t, bin it.

Enthusiastic.热情

The word ‘passion’ is overused in business because it makes people who should know better behave with inappropriate zeal and with excessively evangelical（狂热宣传自己的主张和信仰的）language.

This is not a church outing. 

This is a business. 

We are selling cough drops（止咳药）or whatever, we are not selling salvation. 

But we should enjoy what we do. 

It makes us a better company. 

Being enthusiastic is more appealing to an audience. 

It also improves the pace and vitality of communication.

Story.故事性

We can argue that there are many types of presentation, but really there is only one–the one that tells a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. 

The context in which that story is told will vary, as will the audience and their expectations, but without a story to tell you shouldn’t be presenting at all. 

I chair a charity organisation and I have banned the use of ‘mission statement’ and had it replaced by the simpler ‘our story’. 

It’s easier to spin a mission statement (incorporate speak) than it is to spin a story because stories are told to seven-year-olds and they won’t put up with（容忍）nonsense and prevarication（支支吾吾、推诿、支吾、搪塞）.