Presentation Skills for IT Professionals

PT2398
Training Summary
Fear of public speaking often needlessly prevents people from effectively presenting their ideas to others. Being able to present with confidence and purpose to an audience of any size is an essential skill for IT professionals who interact with business partners and others. This course offers participants maximum opportunity to build presentation effectiveness and gain confidence in presenting to an audience of any size. Participants learn how to organize and plan for a presentation to achieve maximum effect, and are individually coached on how to maximize preparation time to achieve positive results. Course participants receive individual feedback and coaching to improve their skills, as well as a DVD record of their progress. Participants are encouraged to bring a presentation they are preparing to workshop in the course.
Prerequisites
There are no prerequisites for this course.
Duration
2 Days/Lecture & Lab
Audience
This course is designed for any IT professional who wants to improve their public speaking and presentation skills.
Course Topics
  • Defining clear, measurable objectives for a presentation.
  • Preparing for your presentation - essential steps to take in preparing for success and "knowing your audience."
  • Creating effective presentation support - how to develop handouts and other materials to effectively support your presentation.
  • Using presentation tools effectively - when to use PowerPoint, flipcharts and other media to help others understand your presentation, and when not use PowerPoint and other media that might distract your audience.
  • Principles of communicating information to a large group - how many points to cover and how to organize your information in a presentation
  • Organizing your material for maximum effectiveness and cohesiveness - know the difference between nice-to-know and need-to-know information and how to blend the two depending on the audience
  • Handling difficult audience members - strategies and tactics for handling disruptive audience members
  • Handling audience questions - when to allow questions and how to handle questions, including questions you can't answer on the spot as well as off topic questions.
  • Maximizing audience retention of your presentation - strategies and tactics to maximize audience retention of the material presented.
  • Preparation strategies and tactics - effective ways to handle presentation anxiety and stress both before and during a presentation.
  • Extensive practice giving presentations

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