Things not to do while giving presentations...

[GrendelsMum]

This is just a brief reminder to people - if you are knowledgeable about a subject, have just given a useful and informative presentation on the subject to your colleagues, and they then ask you some questions, do NOT giggle before and after every question,

e.g. "How did you track the data for this project?"
"Giggle, We used a blah blah blah methodology, so we were able to have full information at all times, giggle giggle."

More seriously, I can appreciate that the colleague was nervous about presenting in a different context (she does a lot of presentations in other contexts), but it was a real shame to see her let her knowledge of the subject down by giggling - to make it worse, it was in a really inappropriate context (think public sector, cuts, disadvantaged groups in society, etc).

In case I have a young colleague in the future with a similar problem when giving presentations, are there any useful tips I can pass on? Deep breaths?

"Young colleague". Do you mean inexperienced? Being young doesn't mean you are less able to control yourself during a presentation.

I've seen some shockers in my time (swearing, offensive jokes etc etc as well as the usual poor planning and taking the credit for someone else's work) but nothing to do with age.

That's very true, Katie - but because of the area I work in, in our organisation they are very much young colleagues, some of them really quite young, and there are certain additional expectations around our support of some of these colleagues.

The frustrating thing was this particular colleague was actually very competent and experienced in her field, and I really felt she was letting herself down.

I think you're being a bit hard on her presentations are very stressful things particularly if you've not had much experience and sometimes that stress can result in inappropriate giggling. I'm sure she is totally kicking herself and didn't intend to giggle before and after each question.

Make sure that your lap top doesn't spontaneously produce pop ups of scantily clad ladies.

I suggest that you record the presentation and run it back so they can critique themselves - too late for this time obviously. Hopefully that will be enough for them to make sure they never do it again . If that's not practical then perhaps you could video yourself doing a presentation and include lots of faux pas. You could then get your younger colleagues that you are presumably mentoring to spot the 'things not to do while giving presentations'.

i went on a really good course on presentation skills by Cath Daley - she has tips you can sign up for weekly to your inbox (free of course)
Obviously each week isnt necessarily relevant but worth keeping and dipping into

www.cathdaley.com/blog/

If you're using Powerpoint, please don't just stand there and read exactly what's on the screen. Have been to so many presentations where this is done and it's incredibly boring.

I hate presentations. Am currently in the middle of about 6, all to about 100 people at a time. Nerve wracking.
I think my big tips are

• slow your speech down
• make eye contact with a few different people in the audience every few minutes
• don't just read off the slide but also don't just put the slide up, make a comment and then pull it down before anyone's had a chance to read it - this one is difficult for me

Thanks all - I think those are very useful tips.

Don't read what is on the PPpoint. That is completely pointless.

Don't use those asinine clipart graphics. People aren't children.

Don't have a David Brent joke at the end.

Read a lot slower than feels normal.

Don't have your outlook connected so when an email comes in with the header 'look at the picture of this twat' it is not projected onto the screen.