Hi everyone, Jeff from the marketing team here.

Before we get started I have to say,

it felt really nice to report in billions

instead of millions for this quarterly review.

(audience laughing)

- Okay, so I added the laugh track in for this video

but doing the actual presentation

that joke got quite a few chuckles

because the audience found it to be very relatable,

which leads me to the first tip

for presenting with confidence in the workplace.

Humor through relatability.

To bring you all into the joke,

a recent project milestone we hit was the $1 billion mark

and it was years in the making.

We were all used to seeing revenue numbers

reported in the millions.

So referencing Bn as a unit of measurement

was a cheeky inside joke on my part.

The good news, this strategy can literally be used by anyone

with the rule of thumb being the more specific the reference

the more likely your humor will resonate with the attendees.

To give an extreme example,

let's assume a fresh graduate is giving a presentation

with senior leaders in attendance.

- [Student] "Hey, everyone,

although I just joined last week,

even I know how extremely fun performance review season is

for managers.

So I'll keep this short and I'll try to let everyone go

a few minutes early today.

- Here that handsome new hire brought up a topic

all employees can relate to regardless of title and tenure.

Earning him some quick brownie points

right at the beginning of the presentation.

By the way, welcome back to channel,

if you're new here, my name is Jeff.

Come for the career tips and stay for the excessive amount

of self-admiration.

Moving onto workplace presentation tip number two,

keep your slides clean.

Da Vinci once said,

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

And here it means the more visuals

and text you cram into your slides,

the more distracted your audience will be

and the less likely they are to understand your key message.

A great rule of thumb, is to only include the primary points

which are the key takeaways that are short and memorable

as texts on your slides.

And leave the secondary things like background

and rationale in the oral part of your presentation.

Here's a simple test I learned

back in my management consulting days.

If you share slides with a stranger

and they're able to make sense of it

by just clicking through the slides

there's too much information.

Because the slides themselves should not make sense

without you, the presenter.

The one caveat to this rule as Heinrich

over Firm Learning has nicely summarized

is business presentations created specifically

for top level management that are meant to be standalone.

But look at any popular TED Talk over the past 10 years

and you'll see that the speaker slides rarely make sense

without the speakers themselves.

By the way, this video is more about the soft skills

required to present confidently in the workplace.

So let me know if you'd like me to share some hard tips.

Heh, hard tips.

Hard presentation skills, like how to structure slides

and write action oriented titles, stuff like that.

Tip three is to assume something

I call lowest common language.

Let's see a quick example.

- [Student] In particular,

I like to point everyone's attention

to the second step here

because it's really thanks to the analyst team

that we were able to filter out a 90% of irrelevant leads

resulting in a much higher conversion rate.

- Let's pause right there.

You watching, probably understood the point

I was tryna make, even with no context,

because I specifically said the analyst team

instead of the acronym DMS

and I mentioned the implication of this step,

we're able to filter out irrelevant leads

instead of repeating the technical phrase,

scrubbing process efficiency.

This intentional use of wording is important

because if there are any meaning participants unfamiliar

with your specific terminology,

you just failed to get your message across

because no one wants to look stupid and ask what you meant.

It's like if you imagine concentric circles,

you can use acronyms and specific technical phrases

in your core working group.

But when you're presenting to a larger audience

you wanna use language everyone definitely understands.

We hear about effective communication skills all the time.

And I would argue this is a concrete example of that.

In order to convey our message effectively

to everyone in the room,

we should always assume the lowest common language.

For number four,

I put together a few presentation etiquette tips and tricks.

First down three to five minutes before the presentation

is scheduled to begin and present your screen.

This helps you avoid any technical surprises

and the extremely frustrating.

- [Student] Oh, is everyone here?

Should I start presenting?

Okay.

No, not this one.

(mouse clicking)

This one, okay, cool, cool, cool,

we can finally get started.

All right.

Can everyone see my screen?

Can everyone see it?

No.

- Second, since people are usually still dialing in

during the first five minutes,

prepare a holding slide to set clear expectations

on when you will start speaking and stick to it.

Third, engage intentionally.

More interactive elements do not automatically mean

a better experience,

it's best to only include a poll, quiz, or game.

If it can help elevate your message

or help convey your key points in an even better way.

I've left the most boring tip for last

but in my personal opinion, it's the most important.

And that is to practice, practice, and practice again.

According to Harvard business review,

we should treat business presentations like a performance

and rehearse out loud.

Melodramatic exaggeration aside.

This is solid advice

because it's only when we say our lines out loud,

we know when to pause

and when to speed up the pace to make a point.

HBR also mentions each slide should take

between 30 to 60 seconds to present,

so the audience is engaged with fresh new visual content.

For me, I usually take

between one and one and a half minutes per slide

but I think the key takeaway here

is to actually time yourself when you're practicing.

And of course gotta end with a very practical tip.

And that is, if you click the dropdown arrow

next to slideshow in Google slides,

you can choose presenter view,

allowing your speaker notes to appear in a separate window

and you can then press L to enable the laser pointer.

If you enjoyed this, How to Present with Confidence video,

you might wanna check out My Data Storytelling Tips next.

See you on the next video.

In the meantime have a great one.

(logo whooshing)