Tag Archives: Resources

I Recommend this Presentations Book

A bit of prelude . . .

Presentations Book
The Best Advanced Presentations Book in the World

I teach at a university business school in Philadelphia and have been coaching student presentations for years.

My own book The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting addresses the needs of this particular niche audience.

I own perhaps the largest vintage public speaking book collection in the United States, outside the library of congress – more than 2,000 volumes, going back to 1762.  I buy presentation books even now, to see if there is, indeed, anything new under the sun.

Most often, I am disappointed.

Until now . . .

Again, I say all of this by way of prelude, because I am not given to exaggeration at all.

Presentation Skills 201

What I say next, I utter with the sincerity born of many years laboring in the vineyards of bad presentations – Mr. Steele’s Presentation Skills 201 is, page for page, the finest book on advanced presenting I have ever read.

Surely the most succinct.

It froths with superb and utterly essential advice on every . . . single . . . page.

Distilled into powerful instructional nodes, Mr. Steele’s book is spot-on again and again.  I thought that I had seen and heard it all, given that I view and judge 300 individual and 75 group presentations each year – but not so.

Mr. Steele’s work is a reminder that there is always “one more thing” that each of us can learn to hone and improve our own presentation skills.

Examples?

On rushing through your presentation:

One of the keys to sounding confident as a presenter is acting like you own the time.  If you were told you have 15 minutes to speak, you want to act like you own those 15 minutes.  Rushing makes you sound anxious to the audience.  It undermines the confident image you want to project.  You risk coming across like a nervous stage performer who expects the hook at any moment.  Limiting your content takes the pressure off.

On making slides:

Presenters routinely assign the lowest priority to their live audience when preparing slides.  They create slides to be their notes.  Slides that are speaker notes can be anemic or crammed with too much content.  Some presenters just need reminder notes, so they create slides with cryptic phrases that mean nothing to the audience.  Others need the slide show equivalent of a script, so their bullet points are complete paragraphs in 10-point type.  Either way, the slides are frustrating to an audience.

On handouts:

If you need a handout, realize that a good slide show is not a good handout – and a good handout is not a good slide show.

Money is Precious

I rarely recommend books in the presentation genre.  This is one of those rare times.

I have found wisdom on every page of Mr. Steele’s tome and it holds an honored place at my right hand.  I plan to reference it often as well as consult Mr. Steele’s website.

I recommend this presentations book to anyone who fancies himself or herself an outstanding presenter.  You can do better, and Presentation Skills 201 is the perfect tonic to take anyone to a higher level of performance.

For specific guidance at the Business School level, consult my own Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

Fool’s Gold versus Presentation Wealth

Especially Powerful Presentation WealthHow can you distinguish between Presentation Fool’s Gold . . . and genuine Presentation Wealth?

Can you tell presentation right from presentation wrong?

Good from bad?

Do you know what is a matter of opinion and what, if anything, is carved in stone?

You have lots of questions about business presentations that never get answers except in the vaguest of terms.  Stuff like this . . .

“Make eye-contact!”

“Move around when you talk!”

“Don’t put your hand in your pocket!”

“Practice in a mirror!”

I call this presentation Fool’s Gold.  And it doesn’t do much good.  In fact, it can sabotage your presentation.

So let’s fix that right now.

especially powerful presentation wealth
Time to sort out the Presentation Wealth from the Fool’s Gold

Let’s dip into the treasure chest for some presentation wealth.

The real thing.

Here’s a brief compendium of questions with links to answers you can find right here on this site.

It’s not all you must know . . .

. . . but it’s a great start.

Presentation Wealth!

Have a look . . .

Isn’t that better?  Much better, in fact.

Business School Presentations – this site – opens a entirely new world to you and your presentation endeavors.  Here, we demystify the business presentation, clear away the fog of indecision.

In the process, you can become not just a good presenter, but a great presenter.  An especially powerful presenter who can declaim to audiences of 4 to 4,000 . . . with power, confidence, and competence.

Stay with us . . . come back often . . . check out the many speaking resources I link to in the left-hand menu . . . embrace the cornucopia of Presentation Wealth.

. . . launch your quest to obtain personal competitive advantage to last a lifetime.

And when you’re ready, dive into the Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

Especially Powerful Business Presentations

I hate presentations can destroy your motivation
Develop your presentation skills to achieve a personal competitive advantage . . . and learn not to hate presentations

Here is the key to delivering especially powerful business presentations.

If you already feel reasonably confident, competent, and thoroughly satisfied with your presenting skills, then excellent!

I congratulate you and suggest that you pass Business School Presenting along to a buddy who might profit from it.

But if you are like most of the 1.3 million English-speaking business school population worldwide, you have muttered I hate presentations more than once.

And you probably have issues business presentations.  Which is why you read this right now.

You don’t want to be just average.  You don’t want to be merely good.  You want to deliver especially powerful business presentations.

You’re ready.  Energized.  You’re in the right place — the center of the business presentation universe.

One in 255 Million?

According to NetCraft in its October 2014 Web Server Survey, the internet reached an estimated 1 billion websites worldwide.

Of that 1 billion, this is the only site devoted exclusively to business school presentations.  I could be wrong about that, and I hope that I am.

Even if this is a lonely outpost today, we know that as quickly as the online community responds to the needs of its users, that could change tomorrow.

I trust you’ll let me know, so that I can link to these nooks and crannies of the web that may hold secrets that we all need.  So go ahead.  Check.

But right now, this instant, I do believe that this is it.

Think of this place as your Official College Guide to Business School Presentations.

Don’t hate presentations!

I believe, and you may agree, that business school students need credible, brief, and direct resources on presenting  – solid information and best practices.  Not vague generic “presentation principles” and not “communication theory.”

Certainly not a handful of “tips.”

In short, you want to know what works and why.

You want to know right from wrong, good from bad.

You want to know what is just opinion and what, if anything, is carved in stone.

You’ll find answers here to the most basic of questions.

 2,500 Years of Presenting

Business School Presenting answers every one of these questions and many more that you haven’t even thought of yet.  You may not like the answers.

You may disagree with the answers.

Fair enough.

Let a thousand presentation flowers bloom across the land.  Listen, consider, pick and choose your pleasure.

Or not.

But you should know that I offer here the distillation of 2,500 years of public speaking and presentation secrets, developed by masters of oratory and public speaking and refined in the forge of experience.

Folks who certainly did not hate presentations . . .

Especially Powerful Business Presentation

Cicero, Quintilian, Demosthenes, John Adams, Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama  — all find their places in the pantheon of the most powerful presenters of all time.

They all have drawn upon the eternal verities of presenting.

In turn, they have each contributed their own techniques to the body of wisdom.  You find those verities here.

Especially Powerful Business Presentations
The confidence and surety of President Reagan

On the other side of things, I’d like to hear your own presentation stories from your campus that illustrate challenges particular to your school and academic concentration.

The various subdisciplines in business – finance, marketing, accounting, human resources, and such like – have their special needs, even as they are all tractable to the fundamental and advanced techniques of powerful presenting.

So think deep.

Consider the personal competitive advantage that can be yours when you develop world class business presentation skills and the ability to deliver the especially powerful business presentation.

And learn not to hate presentations by consulting my book The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.

A Treasure of Presentation Wisdom . . .

Especially Powerful Business Presentations
Achieve Personal Competitive Advantage through Business Presentations

You’ve arrived at the most important website on the internet . . .

. . . on delivering the especially powerful business presentation in business school.

In fact, this is the only site in the world in English devoted exclusively to business school presenting . . . and that’s out more than 1 billion sites.

One billion?

Presentation Wisdom Websites

The internet reached the 1 billion website milestone long ago.

And while no other site focuses on the challenges of business school presenting, plenty of other sites offer superb advice on this or that aspect of delivering a great business presentation.

Presentations of all sorts, in fact.

And in this, we should all adopt a position of humility with regard to the enterprise we call “The Presentation.”  We can always learn something new, fresh, different.

Perhaps a much tougher task for us, we can abandon what we thought was true, proper, correct . . . but which sapped our presentations of their energy and brio.

Where can we exercise this attitude of learning and unlearning so that we can become our best, fulfill our presentation potential.

Look Left . . .

I’ve compiled a great many of the best presentation sites that offer a trove of presentation wisdom, and links to them appear on the left of this site’s home page.

Many experts have crafted their own styles of presentation offerings, and you can gain much from exposure to their themes and unique content.

So do have a look at these superb sites to hone your skills.  By doing so, over time you can vault yourself into the top 1 percent of especially powerful business presenters.

This is no idle claim.  It’s a promise.

Most important, you can acquire a personal competitive advantage to last a lifetime.

Go ahead.  Don’t wait.  Plunge into the presentation pool right now!

Click and enjoy . . .

An Interesting Business Presentation Every Time!

Give an interesting business presentation every time
Enlarge your world to give an interesting business presentation every time

How can you enrich your presenting in unexpected and wonderful ways so to give an interesting business  presentation regardless of your audience?

To deepen and broaden your perspective so that it encompasses that proverbial “big picture” we forever hear about?

You must become a 3-D presenter.

Now, this means several things, including how you utilize the stage to your utmost advantage, but a major component is the exercising of your mind.

And I talk about that here.

Three D Presentations

It’s the process of enriching your personal context so that you become aware of new and varied sources of information, ideas, concepts, theories.

Yes, it’s a process of becoming learned in new and wondrous ways.

Think of it as enlarging your world.  You increase your reservoir of material.

And you’re able to connect more readily with varied audiences and deliver an especially interesting business presentation.

You accomplish this in a pleasant and ongoing process – by forever keeping your mind open to possibilities outside your functional area.  By taking your education far beyond undergraduate or graduate school.

And that process increases your personal competitive advantage steadily and incrementally.

Expand Your World to Give an Especially Interesting Business Presentation

By doing something daily, however brief, that stretches your mind or allows you to make a connection that otherwise might have escaped you.

By reading broadly in areas outside your specialty.

By rekindling those interests that excited and animated you early in life.

Read a book outside your specialty.

Have lunch with a colleague from a different discipline.

give an interesting business presentation
Delve outside your specialty to develop an especially interesting business presentation

Dabble a bit in architecture, engineering, art, poetry, history, science, culture.

We sometimes cloister ourselves in our discipline, our job, our tight little world, forgetting that other fields can offer insights.

For myself, while teaching in at Drexel’s LeBow College of Business, I also sit in on other courses such as one sponsored by nearby Temple University:  the History Department’s Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy – “Grand Strategy.”

What a leavening experience: Thucydides, MachiavelliClausewitz, Lincoln, and many others . . .

How does this help in preparing my own classes?  Thoughts, linkages, ideas, concepts, cross-disciplinary leavening.

That’s the beauty and potential of it.

It enriches my store of knowledge so that my own presentations continue in 3-dimensional fashion.  They are connected to the “real world” – textured, deep, and richer than they otherwise would have been.

It will do the same to help you develop your own interesting business presentations, and it will likely aid in your developing into an especially powerful presenter, imbued with professional presence.

For more on how to give interesting business presentations, click HERE.