Presentation skills are consistently highly ranked as crucial in nearly every industry, yet speaking in public is commonly quoted as 75% of the population’s greatest fear. At this year’s Training Industry Conference and Expo (TICE), I was a returning presenter and attended multiple presentations in which I learned from others. It got me thinking: How can the presentation skills in action at TICE be captured to benefit learning professionals?

I quote William Shakespeare (from the 1998 “Shakespeare in Love,” movie that is) when I say the show must go on. Let’s face that fear of public speaking and turn presentation skills into one of your best assets.

The Difference Between Presentations and Training

Can you tell the difference between a presentation and a training? Every training has presentation elements, but every presentation is not training. To identify a presentation, review its intent, engagement with the audience snd content complexity:

• Intent: Build investment (intellectual and financial) and share supporting information that drives a desired decision, support or action.
• Engagement: Acknowledge audience reactions and foster conversation without testing or assessing knowledge retention.
• Complexity: Include an executive summary and key points designed to convey core information rather than to grow skills.

You know you have a presentation when the point is not to help others gain and practice skills but to convey information, gain support or spark specific action. Another way to tell the difference between a presentation and a training program is that a presentation ends with a recap or next steps, but a training concludes with testing knowledge retention.

How Is Training Also a Presentation?

Unless the goal of your training is to have a group of paid employees spend hours ignoring business-critical information, your training should incorporate best practices for presenting. The best trainers build rapport with learners that enable an environment of trust. Merely reading from the “trainer handbook” is checking the box that the information was delivered. The strength of the trainer’s presentation skills transforms the class into a cohort of engaged learners.

Let’s look at our three components to see how a presentation within training can be identified:

• Intent: Provide learners with a measurable knowledge base and skill set that can be applied to the current job or a future role.
• Engagement: Use a combination of practice sessions, activities, or quizzes to monitor the learners’ progress toward meeting the session goals.
• Complexity: Progressing depth of information coupled with assessments to progress the audience to a predetermined level of comprehension and application.

A training program is carefully designed, building from measurable objectives, to include information delivery, skill development and assessment.

And Now … Welcome Our Next Presenter: You!

Regardless of your role in training, you will be called upon to present at some time. Consider these common business scenarios requiring presentation skills:

• Presenting a proposed training topic to stakeholders.
• Facilitating an in-person or virtual workshop.
• Delivering learning analytics information and insights to management.
• Making the case for additional training support to stakeholders.
• Speaking at TICE!

The ability to convey information and keep your audience’s attention (especially in the age of social media and instant communications in the palm or on the smartwatch!) is a necessary skill. Successful presentations, whether in person, hybrid or virtual, can make the difference in getting budgetary support, role advancement or leadership support.

Presentation Skills of the Stars

An effective presentation has a strong content scaffolding that is brought to life by the energy and charisma of the presenter.

Content Development: The content part of presentation development contains a lot of information. You can see that at training conferences because presenters state their objectives, lay out the session structure, and then give supporting examples for each key point.

Content Delivery: I tap into my background in theater, talk radio, broadcast news and voice work to give you insight into the presenting part of presentation skills. The sparkle brings the presentation to life and has your audience leaning in (or turning up the volume, if virtual) to hear what comes next.

• Find Your Voice: Your voice is an amazing tool, so use it. Pay more attention to podcasts, audiobooks and talk shows, and you will note that the narrator or host does not speak in a monotone voice. Different tones, levels, speeds, inflections, and pauses are used to cue the audience to understand how the information should make them react. Think of that famous movie commercial narration, “In a world.” If you say it going up at the end as if a question mark (“In a world?”), it lacks the gravitas it gets with the final syllable dropping in tone.
• Bring It: Energy level and connections make it a presentation instead of a lecture. Bueller… Bueller…Like the teacher in the Ferris Bueller movie, if you seem bored or uninterested in your presentation topic, your audience will take that cue and ignore it. If you are presenting in a conference room, maybe stand up or move around a little. It will keep the energy higher. If you are online, be sure your audience can clearly see you (which means you are on camera) and that you consistently look at the camera, not at your presentation or notes.
• Be present and be yourself so that your audience connects. I coach my clients to accept that things may go differently than planned. When you can admit a mistake or change to your audience, they will feel more connected to you — because it happens to everyone. For example, “Well, the clicker is not working, so I’ll just jump ahead here….” Or, “I want to check my notes here to ensure I give you accurate information.” And when the examples you share to make your points are personal or spoken from your own experience, they resonate more with the audience.

Welcome to the Show

Learning professionals, like business leaders, are focused on outcomes: Strong presentation skills can ensure strong presentation outcomes, such as budgetary support, resource allocation and career opportunities.

Your audience’s response is one of the best measurements of an excellent presentation. You want people to lean in — to their screen or to you in the room — because they want to hear what you say next, more than checking their inbox or phone. You can achieve that with a shift in mindset, approaching the presentation as a show, not a course.

A show has an opening, audience engagement and a close. It does not have an attendance record or test. When you present, not teach, you want to deliberately bring your expertise and energy so that the audience reflects back with their interest and engagement. You are a star, so get that sparkle to your next show.