Engaged Communication

How to prepare

What are my communication goals and challenges and how do I want to work on them?

Giving a presentation may feel challenging for many reasons, whether you are uncomfortable standing in front of a group, challenged by how to convey the essence of complex academic content to others, or nervous about how you speak. Before we get into the specifics of structuring and delivering a talk, let's start with some basics. Consider these foundational points as you prepare to speak in front of a group:

• Know your Audience. To whom will you be speaking? How much will they know about your topic? Begin to craft your presentation with this specific audience in mind. Imagine them listening to your talk. Can you anticipate their responses to your argument? Allow your writing process to begin as an imagined conversation.

• Know your Goal. What is your goal in this presentation? Are you trying to persuade, to clarify, to teach? What do you want your audience to think, feel, or do? Define your goal early and let it guide the development of your presentation.

• Know your Format. What is expected in this presentation? How much time do you have? Are there disciplinary conventions you need to follow? Will you be designing a slide deck, or using a handout or the blackboard? Make sure to understand the parameters of the task before you start planning your talk. 

• Know your Space. Where will you be speaking? Are you speaking online or in a physical space? If you are speaking on Zoom, make sure you have a quiet, well-lit space. Check your sound and the angle of your camera. For an in-person presentation, make sure you are familiar with the room. How large is the space? Where will you stand? Where will you place any visual aids? If possible, practice presenting in the actual physical space.

• Speaking vs. Writing. Effective spoken language is often more conversational than written language. Spoken sentences tend to be shorter. A listening audience also requires more repetition of key phrases and ideas. Use imagery, anecdotes, or questions to keep your audience engaged. Try reading your draft aloud as you write, imagining how it will be heard. 

Special tip: Find speaking mentors. Take note of the way professors or others you admire give presentations or lectures. What do you like about their style? It is a good idea to take note of strategies you see others using, as you become intentional about your own style and how you want to deliver presentations or academic talks. 

Structure

How will you start, how will you structure the body, and what note will you end on? This page reviews foundational structural elements of a presentation. 

Introduction: The introduction is like the roadmap for the talk, or the foundation of the house. If the audience doesn't know where you are starting from and what your plans are, it will be much harder for them to follow your presentation. 

• Hook. You should consider an attention-getting opening. You want the audience to be interested in your talk right away, to help them understand the context of it, and why it matters. Examples of this could include an amazing (or surprising) fact, an anecdote, an interesting (but brief) story, or a famous quote. 

• Context and Purpose. This may come through in the hook, but it needs to be clear at the start of your presentation how you are oriented to the material, what your approach is to it, and what your goals are. 

• Outline. You should identify the 2-3 main points you will cover in the presentation. 

Body: This is the meat of your presentation. After setting up the big ideas in the introduction, you should go through them step by step, using transition words and phrases and other strategies to make sure the audience stays with you. 

Conclusion. In the final part of your presentation, you should summarize the main ideas, and then consider a final thought you leave the audience with at the end. What do you want them to be thinking about as you finish? What is your take-home message? What questions do you want them to ask you at the end?

Special Tip: Watch other presentations, talks, or lectures in your field, and take note of the organizational strategies you notice. Go back to your list of speaking mentors, and notice how they may get the audience's attention in the introduction. Do they use transition words? How do the speakers establish credibility, and connect with the audience?

Story

Effective communicators often include elements from storytelling to make their presentations compelling. The audience needs to be able to follow the organization of your talk, but there may be other ways you can keep the audience with you, the same way an engaged reader may get wrapped up in a story. In some ways, giving a presentation is like taking the audience on a journey.

In her TED talk, The Secret Structure of Great Talks, Nancy Duarte compares presentations and stories with an eye for why presentations can be less engaging. Why might presentations be boring, when the audience will sit with rapt attention to listen to a story? How might we use features of story structures to make our presentations more compelling?  Watch her talk to consider her argument.

There are several key points from Duarte's talk that you should keep in mind, regardless of whether you agree with her ideas about structure. Most importantly, the audience is the hero of your idea. You are not speaking for yourself, you are speaking for the people listening to you, with a specific goal in mind for the audience. What do you want them to think, feel, or do after your presentation? What do you want them to learn from the material you share?

Considering what story-telling elements work with your content can also help you understand your content better. We do not speak static ideas; as we speak, we learn more about what we want to say and what is important about the material we want to share. 

Delivery

A well-designed presentation needs to be well-delivered! No matter how well-structured and compelling the content of your presentation is, if you don't deliver it well and land with the audience, your message will be lost.  Here we discuss a variety of tips and strategies you can use to think about how you deliver a talk. Your presence in the room (even a Zoom room) and how you use your voice can be even more important as the content of your talk.

Physical Communication. Consider these aspects of your presence in the room.

• Take up space. Stand with your feet hip distance apart, fully facing your audience.

• Make eye contact. Spend a few seconds with each person you look at.

• Avoid defensive postures: arms crossed, hands in pockets, hands clasped behind or in front of body.

• Smile. It can help put your audience at ease and soon you’ll feel better!

Vocal Communication. Consider your vocal variety (how you change your pitch, rate, and volume) as well as when you pause when you speak. Pausing at meaningful moments can help you and your audience have time to think. Together these aspects create tone: the emotion, confidence, enthusiasm with which you speak.

• Volume – how loud you speak in relation to size of space and audience

• Pitch – where in your voice you speak (high/low/monotone)

• Rate – speed, how slow or fast you speak

Nerves. Get in touch with what may make you nervous. Do not tell your audience you are nervous. Things are never as apparent from the outside as the inside. Be other-centered: Remember that you are speaking in service of your audience. Everything you do is to help them learn/ remember/ take action. The less you focus on yourself, the less nervous you will be. Build in some meaningful movement (not pacing!) to use some of that nervous energy

Special tip:  Practice speaking the same introduction or chunk of speech, changing how you deliver it. Record yourself and notice how vocal variety can change the way you sound, and how the audience might receive your message. Consider the speaking mentors you identified earlier. Take note of the strategies they use with regard to delivery and how they map on to what you learned on this page.