I deliver corporate and open enrollment workshops on presentation structure, slides and narrative/moral leadership. The workshops can be delivered either offline or online over the course of two days, one day, 3-4 hours or as a 1-2 hour interactive lecture. Below are the most popular programs. If you're looking for a comprehensive end-to-end colution for all presentation skills, here's a very detailed course plan .
Presentation Structure
Symptoms Presentations seem endless, lacking energy and engagement, presenters failing to make eye contact, often speaking with their backs to the audience, looking at a screen full of text and figures, sometimes even reading the text aloud word for word. There is no takeaway or summary, the main point is either not made or obscured by too many irrelevant details. There is no flow to the narrative, points are not connected.
Solution These are all problems of structure, even the question of eye contact. Designing structure requires clarifying objectives. If the objectives aren't clear, the presenters won't look at the audience because they don't need to. They don't want anything from the audience. Structure is like a tree, it has a core idea linked to the goal (trunk), a few supporting key points (large branches) and many details (smaller branches and leaves). Finding the core idea and supporting it with a few key points streamlines the whole experience for both speaker and audience.
Designing a structure involves answering questions such as Who are the people in the audience and how do I connect with them? What is their key concern, problem, pain point? What is my solution plan? What evidence do I have that it will work? What's the key takeaway and call to action?
Value Clear, engaging presentations, delivered with intention, maintaining both verbal and non-verbal contact.
Designing Slides
Symptoms Too much text, endless tables of numbers instead of charts and graphs. Cheesy, tasteless illustrations. Confusing headings. Overall impression that the slides have been put together haphazardly, which undermines the speaker's credibility.
Solution Design is an analytical art. Each slide is part of a story, communicating an idea that is essential to the overall flow. Each slide needs a purpose, expressed in a clear and compelling headline, and the rest of the design should support the headline. A slide is a miniature presentation, it should have few key points, usually no more than five. Once the structure is in place, the design is easy. We need to learn design tools that help us communicate the relative importance of points (design communicates priorities) using visual language: colour, size, position on a page and different font styles such as bold or italic. Once you know a few tricks, what used to look like too much text doesn't look like too much text anymore.
Value Slides that communicate ideas in a clear and compelling way, supporting rather than distracting from the presentation.
Narravite Leadership
Symptoms Mediocre organisational or team morale. Leaders who lack distinctiveness, character and charisma, who rely on carrots and sticks rather than the power of inspiration.
Solution Developing a personal narrative through the Hero’s Journey Framework. This involves answering questions and discussing answers in a peer group in 4 key categories:
Personality: What are my personality strengths and weaknesses? What are my values and how do they relate to my strengths and weaknesses? Purpose: Based on my personality, what is my personal quest, my purpose? What is the problem I want to solve for my clients and followers and how does it relate to my own weaknesses? What is the opportunity I'm seizing? What is my vision? Principles: What are the core principles of my modus operandi? What are the guardrails, the red lines, that neither I nor those around me must cross? Practices: What are the key behaviours I want to express, how do I train myself to master them? What are the institutions, the processes that I leave behind so that my followers don't become too dependent on the power of my personality?
Value Better morale through better moral motivation. Greater clarity of 'why', clearer vision, more transparent principles, improved decision-making processes, better business results.
Open-Enrollment Training
If you want to organise an open-enrollment seminar, please contact me. Here is the sample flyer.