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Data & Finance for Work & Life

Management Presentation: 8 Tips, Examples & a Template

In a corporate context, presenting works wonders for a career. Most professionals get exposure to presenting to informed colleagues and department managers. It’s an ideal way to get visibility and show value. But a management presentation to senior executives who aren’t familiar department nuances is a different ballgame.

A management presentation is a high-level summary to senior executive that optimizes reports to include only the details relevant to directorial decisions . They are notoriously difficult to navigate for two reasons: 1. most executives do not have working knowledge of the nuances in each department , 2. presenters rarely have time to understand executives’ preferences .

More than anything else, good management presenters learn how to strike a balance in the degree of detail: they provide enough detail so executives make informed decisions, but not so much detail that they cause confusion.

This article explores how to make a good management presentations in PowerPoint using 4 management presenting best practices , 4 management presenting techniques , providing examples for each, and finishing with a management presentation template you can apply in real life. You can use it as a jumping off point for deeper communication curriculum .

5 management presenting best practices are:

• Ask what managers prefer ahead of time.
• Have 1 message, and 1 message Only.
• The only words should be “Thought Starters.”
• Keep it short.
• Practice 7 times in advance.

4 management presenting techniques are:

• Use a CSP model – Challenge, Solution, Progress.
• Begin with a summary of exactly 3 points.
• Use only these 3 chart types: bar, line, scatter.
• Design slides with the company logo.

I will use a financial analyst perspective in this article, but everything here applies to data and business analysts as well.

Ask Executives Their Preference Ahead of Time

If you’ve ever taken a class on presentation techniques, you’ve heard the old adage “know your audience.” It’s true, the best way to deliver a great presentation is to align your message with what your audience already understands. The same applies to a management presentation.

The challenge is that, more often than not, executives are too busy for you to get to know them well. This means you hardly get the chance to understand how they like presentations. So what can you do? Well, ask them! There’s no harm in sending an email to understand better. And what’s more, once you know, you can always defer to their preferences in the future.

For a financial management presentation, common questions to ask include the following:

• Do you prefer to see raw data, or only visualizations?
• Do you prefer charts or table summaries?
• Would you like a written explanation on paper for each slide?
• Do you like averages alone, or do you prefer means, or standard deviation?
• What interests you most in a presentation?

If you gather some helpful insights, then your presentation will be that much better. That said, you may not get a response, or it may be quick and not insightful. But most senior executives will appreciate you asking .

The best part is you will be able to surprise them. Using the best practices and techniques below, in additional to any insights gathered form your email, will work wonders for you.

Have 1 Message, and 1 Message Only

The easiest mistake to make on a management presentation is trying to deliver multiple messages. Senior executives go through loads of meetings every day, and each meeting they have includes a wave of information. Your mission should be to deliver 1 essential message so they can easily understand and compartmentalize it.

This is no easy task. When I try to narrow down the focus of my management presentation message, it seems like I leave out critical information along the way. The key is to tell a story to incorporate critical information as part of a story towards the essential message.

For example, imagine you work for a wholesale watch company called Batch Watch . You want to explain a financing operation in which the company has the option of two loans to fund the initial costs of 10,000 watches. These loans have different interest rates and maturity dates. Loan A is better if the company expects to sell the watches within 3 months, while Loan B is better if the company expects to sell over more than 3 months. Each has cancellation fees and cash flow impacts.

Instead of showing the cancellation fees and cash flow impact of the each loan, all you need to say is “ we expect the company to sell them within 3 months, and we recommend loan A for that reason.” If the executives disagree on the sale timeline, they will ask for more information.

This is how you keep senior executives engaged, by integrating them in the story you tell. Ultimately, the essential message of your presentation should be how much profit the company will make from the watch funding operation. Senior executives should leave feeling like the project is in good hands with you, and they only feel that way when you tell a story around the essential message .

Whatever the Message, Use Data

Whatever message you want to send, it needs to be backed up by data. In the example above the data was financial, but it’s not always that simple. Context may require you to provide KPIs and perform extensive data analysis that culminates in a small output that your viewers can easily digest.

You need to be strong with data to deliver a good management presentation. To get started or refresh your memory, you can read AnalystAnswers’ free Intro to Data Analysis eBook .

The Only Words Should be “Thought Starters”

As a general presentation principle, you should not write many thoughts down on presentation slides. Words have two negative impacts on the audience: they demand energy from the reader, and they make the reader feel compelled to read, lest they misunderstand.

If you can avoid putting text blocks altogether, do. If you don’t need any writing at all, don’t. However, if you need guidance as you speak or want to provide reminders for a later data, use “Thought Starters.”

Thought starters are phrases of 3 words maximum that contain ideas leading to the essential message. People often call them “bullet points,” which is common for list-style thought starters. Personally, I prefer to place thought starters at different places on a slide. When I use a chart, for example, I put thought starters at relevant places on the slide.

Keep it Short

Your presentation should never consume more than 80% of the allotted timeframe. This means that if you plan a 5 minutes meeting, deliver the presentation in 4 minutes. If you’re given 30 minutes, do it in 25 minutes. If you have 1 hour, do it in 45 minutes.

By keeping the presentation short, you relieve the audience and you allow for some question buffer. Have you ever sat in a meeting planned for 1 hour, and at 45m it ends early? It’s a pleasure for everyone. Most of us feel like we’re running behind — when you put us ahead of schedule, we love you!

At the same time, senior executives may bombard you with questions throughout the presentation. If you planned to fill the whole timeframe, you won’t finish. But if you planned to finish early, you still have a chance.

And if you use the rest of these best practices and techniques, those senior executives shouldn’t need to ask too many questions!

Practice 7 Times in Advance

There’s a mix of opinions on the number of times you should rehearse a presentation before doing it live, but most people agree that it’s somewhere between 5 and 10 times. If you take nothing else from this article, take this. To deliver a good presentation, prepare excellent slides; to deliver a great presentation, practice presenting them 7 times.

To deliver a good presentation, prepare excellent slides; to deliver a great presentation, practice presenting them 7 times. AnalystAnswers.com

But just practicing isn’t enough, there are a few criteria you must meet:

• Practice in the room you will present in. There’s something about envisioning yourself live that really makes a difference. When you practice in a space other that where you’ll present, it’s good. But when you practice in the “live” room, you’re able to sensitize yourself to the environment, which calms nerves so you can focus on the message.
• Have an audience. We all behave differently when there’s stimulus of other people around. Whenever possible, get one or two people to whom you can present. In addition to getting used to having an audience, you’ll also get some feedback.
• Use the same volume of voice. When we’re not “live,” we have a tendency to hold back on our voice. This is detrimental to the presentation because you feel taken off guard by your own voice. Make sure to envision yourself in front of the senior execs when you practice.

Best Practices Recap

We’ve addressed 5 best practices — now let’s turn our attention to 4 specific techniques you can easily implement. And when you do, that work wonders for management presenting.

Use a CSP Model (Challenge, Solution, Progress)

Every presentation needs structure, but it’s easy to forget that we need to guide our audience. A great way to structure management reports is using the CSP model. CSP stands for Challenge, Solution, Progress, and it’s exactly what it sounds like.

You need to explain the challenge or goal, explain what the solution to the challenge is (or how to achieve the goal), and show where you are in the steps to completing that goal.

For example, let’s look at our Batch Watch case. Imagine you need to find funding for a new product launch — $100,000 to be exact. A sample CSP model for this would be a slide that shows:

By using the CSP model, you guide the audience. However, it’s important to note that the CSP model is not a summary . It’s an overview of the process, but a summary should always come before. Let’s talk about it now.

Begin with a Summary of Exactly 3 Points

Any good presentation begins with a summary. And a good summary communicates the essential message simply in 3 points. However, the summary is not the same thing as the CSP model. Instead, it provides an alternative view on the challenge and and solution.

For example, using our Batch Watch case of funding a new product, you could address a summary in the following way:

• Challenge, Solution, Progress
• Funding acquisition
• Project Timeline

This provides additional details that are most relevant to the project and carry added value to the CSP model.

Use only Bar Charts (aka Column Charts), Line Graphs, and Scatter Plots

Whether it’s for data, financial, and business analyst topics , management presentations should only ever have bar charts, line graphs, and scatter plots. They are common, rich in information, and well understood. Any other kind of graph is distracting more than anything else.

A bar graph is useful when you want to compare like variables. For example, if you want to show the average size of Canadian trout versus American trout. A common mistake, though, is to use bar graphs to show change over time. While it’s not incorrect to do so, line graphs are better for this purpose.

A line graph is useful when you want to show change in one variable over time (we call this time series data). For example, if you want to show the progression of revenues over time, line graphs are the perfect way to do so.

A scatter plot is best when you want to compare a set of observations of one variable to a set of observations of another. It’s the ideal way to quickly visualize the relationship between two variables. For example, if you want to see how company revenues compare to GDP, you could use a scatter plot like this:

For example, let’s look at our Batch Watch case. If we want to see how our company is performing compared to the economy as a whole, we could use this scatter plot. As you can see, we have a positive (bottom left to top right) relationship, but a weak one (points not clustered closely).

Design Slides Using the Company Logo

When you’re presenting to senior executives, you want your slides to look professional. The best way to do that is by putting your company logo on them, including any corporate design standards (colors, fonts, etc). Show through your presentation that you belong to the same company, and that you’re in it in spirit. For example, let’s add the AnalystAnswers.com logo to our CSP slide:

Techniques Recap

Here’s a sample management presentation template below. I hope you understand after reading this article that management presentation is more about your delivery than it is about the slides you prepare.

Download Management Presentation Template for Free

While the techniques we’ve discussed will help you build a good presentation, your success really depends on how well you deliver the ideas needed to help senior executives make decisions. At the end of the day, it’s all about balance.

If you only remember two things from this article, remember that great management presenters give enough detail to inform senior executive but not too much that they cause confusion, and great management presenters make sure they do so by practicing 7 times in advance. You’ll have to practice, practice, practice.

About the Author

Noah is the founder & Editor-in-Chief at AnalystAnswers. He is a transatlantic professional and entrepreneur with 5+ years of corporate finance and data analytics experience, as well as 3+ years in consumer financial products and business software. He started AnalystAnswers to provide aspiring professionals with accessible explanations of otherwise dense finance and data concepts. Noah believes everyone can benefit from an analytical mindset in growing digital world. When he's not busy at work, Noah likes to explore new European cities, exercise, and spend time with friends and family.

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Develop Your Presentation Skills To Become An Effective Manager

What are presentation skills, why presentation skill is important, how to improve your presentation skills.

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Tell a story

Use tools effectively, presentation skills examples for managers, extempore presentations, impromptu presentations, outline presentations, talk-walk presentations, manuscript presentations, persuasion & negotiation, explanation.

• Practice, practice, practice! This is the most important step in improving presentation skills. Practicing makes you familiar with the material and develops your presentation skills progressively.
• Pay attention to the details – every little detail makes a difference in a presentation. It is essential to focus on the people listening to you and your ideas, not only on the main points of your presentation. As a team member, you should be able to grasp the content quickly and be entertained by the presentation.
• Keep abreast of developments in making good presentations and use them to enhance your presentations further. Besides, use visual aids such as charts, graphs, and infographics to make your points more impactful.
• Use metaphors, stories, and examples to make your points more impactful. These techniques can add meaning and context to your ideas and make them easier to understand for your team.
• Learn about all the top communication skills managers need .

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What Are Effective Presentation Skills (and How to Improve Them)

Presentation skills are essential for your personal and professional life. Learn about effective presentations and how to boost your presenting techniques.

At least seven out of 10 Americans agree that presentation skills are essential for a successful career [ 1 ]. Although it might be tempting to think that these are skills reserved for people interested in public speaking roles, they're critical in a diverse range of jobs. For example, you might need to brief your supervisor on research results.

Presentation skills are also essential in other scenarios, including working with a team and explaining your thought process, walking clients through project ideas and timelines, and highlighting your strengths and achievements to your manager during performance reviews.

Whatever the scenario, you have very little time to capture your audience’s attention and get your point across when presenting information—about three seconds, according to research [ 2 ]. Effective presentation skills help you get your point across and connect with the people you’re communicating with, which is why nearly every employer requires them.

Understanding what presentation skills are is only half the battle. Honing your presenting techniques is essential for mastering presentations of all kinds and in all settings.

What are presentation skills?

Presentation skills are the abilities and qualities necessary for creating and delivering a compelling presentation that effectively communicates information and ideas. They encompass what you say, how you structure it, and the materials you include to support what you say, such as slides, videos, or images.

You'll make presentations at various times in your life. Examples include:

Making speeches at a wedding, conference, or another event

Making a toast at a dinner or event

Explaining projects to a team 

Delivering results and findings to management teams

Teaching people specific methods or information

Proposing a vote at community group meetings

Pitching a new idea or business to potential partners or investors

Why are presentation skills important? 

Delivering effective presentations is critical in your professional and personal life. You’ll need to hone your presentation skills in various areas, such as when giving a speech, convincing your partner to make a substantial purchase, and talking to friends and family about an important situation.

No matter if you’re using them in a personal or professional setting, these are the skills that make it easier and more effective to convey your ideas, convince or persuade others, and experience success. A few of the benefits that often accompany improving your presentation skills include:

Enriched written and verbal communication skills

Enhanced confidence and self-image

Boosted critical thinking and problem-solving capabilities

Better motivational techniques

Increased leadership skills

Expanded time management, negotiation, and creativity

The better your presenting techniques, the more engaging your presentations will be. You could also have greater opportunities to make positive impacts in business and other areas of your life.

Effective presentation skills

Imagine yourself in the audience at a TED Talk or sitting with your coworkers at a big meeting held by your employer. What would you be looking for in how they deliver their message? What would make you feel engaged?

These are a few questions to ask yourself as you review this list of some of the most effective presentation skills.

Verbal communication

How you use language and deliver messages play essential roles in how your audience will receive your presentation. Speak clearly and confidently, projecting your voice enough to ensure everyone can hear. Think before you speak, pausing when necessary and tailoring the way you talk to resonate with your particular audience.

Body language

Body language combines various critical elements, including posture, gestures, eye contact, expressions, and position in front of the audience. Body language is one of the elements that can instantly transform a presentation that would otherwise be dull into one that's dynamic and interesting.

Voice projection

The ability to project your voice improves your presentation by allowing your audience to hear what you're saying. It also increases your confidence to help settle any lingering nerves while also making your message more engaging. To project your voice, stand comfortably with your shoulders back. Take deep breaths to power your speaking voice and ensure you enunciate every syllable you speak.

How you present yourself plays a role in your body language and ability to project your voice. It also sets the tone for the presentation. Avoid slouching or looking overly tense. Instead, remain open, upright, and adaptable while taking the formality of the occasion into account.

Storytelling

Incorporating storytelling into a presentation is an effective strategy used by many powerful public speakers. It has the power to bring your subject to life and pique the audience’s curiosity. Don’t be afraid to tell a personal story, slowly building up suspense or adding a dramatic moment. And, of course, be sure to end with a positive takeaway to drive your point home.

Active listening

Active listening is a valuable skill all on its own. When you understand and thoughtfully respond to what you hear—whether it's in a conversation or during a presentation—you’ll likely deepen your personal relationships and actively engage audiences during a presentation. As part of your presentation skill set, it helps catch and maintain the audience’s attention, helping them remain focused while minimizing passive response, ensuring the message is delivered correctly, and encouraging a call to action.

Stage presence

During a presentation, projecting confidence can help keep your audience engaged. Stage presence can help you connect with your audience and encourage them to want to watch you. To improve your presence, try amping up your normal demeanor by infusing it with a bit of enthusiasm. Project confidence and keep your information interesting.

Watch your audience as you’re presenting. If you’re holding their attention, it likely means you’re connecting well with them.

Self-awareness

Monitoring your own emotions and reactions will allow you to react well in various situations. It helps you remain personable throughout your presentation and handle feedback well. Self-awareness can help soothe nervousness during presentations, allowing you to perform more effectively.

Writing skills

Writing is a form of presentation. Sharp writing skills can help you master your presentation’s outline to ensure you stay on message and remain clear about your objectives from the beginning until the end. It’s also helpful to have strong writing abilities for creating compelling slides and other visual aids.

Understanding an audience

When you understand your audience's needs and interests, you can design your presentation around them. In turn, you'll deliver maximum value to them and enhance your ability to make your message easy to understand.

Learn more about presentation skills from industry experts at SAP:

How to improve presentation skills

There’s an art to public speaking. Just like any other type of art, this is one that requires practice. Improving your presentation skills will help reduce miscommunications, enhance your time management capabilities, and boost your leadership skills. Here are some ways you can improve these skills:

Work on self-confidence.

When you’re confident, you naturally speak more clearly and with more authority. Taking the time to prepare your presentation with a strong opening and compelling visual aids can help you feel more confident. Other ways to improve your self-confidence include practicing positive self-talk, surrounding yourself with positive people, and avoiding comparing yourself (or your presentation) to others.

Develop strategies for overcoming fear.

Many people are nervous or fearful before giving a presentation. A bad memory of a past performance or insufficient self-confidence can contribute to fear and anxiety. Having a few go-to strategies like deep breathing, practicing your presentation, and grounding can help you transform that fear into extra energy to put into your stage presence.

Learn grounding techniques.

Grounding is any type of technique that helps you steer your focus away from distressing thoughts and keeps you connected with your present self. To ground yourself, stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and imagine you’re a large, mature tree with roots extending deep into the earth—like the tree, you can become unshakable.

Learn how to use presentation tools.

Visual aids and other technical support can transform an otherwise good presentation into a wow-worthy one. A few popular presentation tools include:

Canva: Provides easy-to-design templates you can customize

Powtoon: Animation software that makes video creation fast and easy

PowerPoint: Microsoft's iconic program popular for dynamic marketing and sales presentations

Practice breathing techniques.

Breathing techniques can help quell anxiety, making it easier to shake off pre-presentation jitters and nerves. It also helps relax your muscles and get more oxygen to your brain.  For some pre-presentation calmness, you can take deep breaths, slowly inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth.

While presenting, breathe in through your mouth with the back of your tongue relaxed so your audience doesn't hear a gasping sound. Speak on your exhalation, maintaining a smooth voice.

Gain experience.

The more you practice, the better you’ll become. The more you doanything, the more comfortable you’ll feel engaging in that activity. Presentations are no different. Repeatedly practicing your own presentation also offers the opportunity to get feedback from other people and tweak your style and content as needed.

Tips to help you ace your presentation

Your presentation isn’t about you; it’s about the material you’re presenting. Sometimes, reminding yourself of this ahead of taking center stage can help take you out of your head, allowing you to connect effectively with your audience. The following are some of the many actions you can take on the day of your presentation.

Arrive early.

Since you may have a bit of presentation-related anxiety, it’s important to avoid adding travel stress. Give yourself an abundance of time to arrive at your destination, and take into account heavy traffic and other unforeseen events. By arriving early, you also give yourself time to meet with any on-site technicians, test your equipment, and connect with people ahead of the presentation.

Become familiar with the layout of the room.

Arriving early also gives you time to assess the room and figure out where you want to stand. Experiment with the acoustics to determine how loudly you need to project your voice, and test your equipment to make sure everything connects and appears properly with the available setup. This is an excellent opportunity to work out any last-minute concerns and move around to familiarize yourself with the setting for improved stage presence.

Listen to presenters ahead of you.

When you watch others present, you'll get a feel for the room's acoustics and lighting. You can also listen for any data that’s relevant to your presentation and revisit it during your presentation—this can make the presentation more interactive and engaging.

Use note cards.

Writing yourself a script could provide you with more comfort. To prevent sounding too robotic or disengaged, only include talking points in your note cards in case you get off track. Using note cards can help keep your presentation organized while sounding more authentic to your audience.

Learn to deliver clear and confident presentations with Dynamic Public Speaking from the University of Washington. Build confidence, develop new delivery techniques, and practice strategies for crafting compelling presentations for different purposes, occasions, and audiences.

Article sources

Forbes. “ New Survey: 70% Say Presentation Skills are Critical for Career Success , https://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2014/09/25/new-survey-70-percent-say-presentation-skills-critical-for-career-success/?sh=619f3ff78890.” Accessed December 7, 2022.

Beautiful.ai. “ 15 Presentation and Public Speaking Stats You Need to Know , https://www.beautiful.ai/blog/15-presentation-and-public-speaking-stats-you-need-to-know. Accessed December 7, 2022.

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Manager meeting presentation: A comprehensive guide

Learn how to create and deliver effective manager meeting presentations, with tips on structure, content, and visuals.

Raja Bothra

Building presentations

Are you gearing up for another manager meeting?

If you are, you're in the right place.

Manager meetings are crucial in the business world, and how you present your ideas can make or break the outcome.

But fret not; this comprehensive guide will equip you with everything you need to know about manager meeting presentations, from what they are to creating one that's sure to impress your audience.

What is a manager meeting?

A manager meeting is a structured gathering of professionals within an organization to discuss important matters, share updates, and make informed decisions. It serves as a platform for managers and team leaders to connect, collaborate, and align their efforts towards common goals.

Why are manager meeting presentations important?

Effective manager meeting presentations are pivotal because they facilitate clear communication, aid decision-making, and foster team cohesion. In these meetings, information is shared, strategies are discussed, and action plans are formulated. A well-crafted presentation can help convey complex ideas in a concise and understandable manner, keeping everyone on the same page.

What to include in a manager meeting presentation?

Your manager meeting presentation should be well-structured, informative, and visually appealing. Here are some key elements to include:

1. Meeting agenda: Start by outlining the meeting's agenda. Clearly define what topics will be discussed and the order in which they will be covered. This sets expectations and keeps the meeting on track.

2. Graphics and icons: Incorporate graphics and icons to make your presentation visually engaging. Visual aids can help simplify complex data and keep your audience's attention.

3. Timelines and charts: Use timelines and charts to illustrate progress, milestones, and key data. Visual representations can help your audience grasp information quickly.

4. Strategy and goals: Share your team or department's strategy and goals. Discuss how these align with the organization's broader objectives. Emphasize the importance of everyone's contribution.

5. Effective layout: Ensure your presentation has a clean and effective layout. A cluttered slide can confuse your audience. Stick to a simple and organized design.

6. Downloadable templates: Consider using Prezent, powerpoint or google slides templates to streamline your presentation design. It's a time-saving hack that can make your slides look professional effortlessly.

How to structure a manager meeting presentation

Creating a structured manager meeting presentation is key to ensuring that your message is conveyed clearly and effectively. Here's a recommended structure:

1. Introduction

• Greet your audience warmly.
• State the purpose of the meeting.
• Provide a brief overview of the agenda.

2. Agenda review

• Walk through the meeting agenda.
• Set expectations for what will be covered.
• Mention any time constraints.

3. Strategy and goals

• Present your team or department's strategy.
• Share specific goals and objectives.
• Explain how these align with the organization's mission.

4. Progress and updates

• Use visuals to showcase progress.
• Highlight milestones achieved.
• Discuss any updates or changes.

5. Action items

• Outline the action items and responsibilities.
• Specify deadlines and accountability.
• Encourage questions and discussion.

6. Q&A and discussion

• Open the floor for questions and discussion.
• Address any concerns or queries.
• Foster a collaborative atmosphere.

Do's and don'ts of a manager meeting presentation

Now that you know what to include and how to structure your presentation, let's delve into some do's and don'ts to ensure your manager meeting presentation hits the mark.

• Be prepared: Thoroughly prepare your content and practice your delivery.
• Engage your audience: Encourage participation and questions.
• Use visuals wisely: Incorporate visuals to enhance understanding.
• Stick to the agenda: Stay on track and manage time effectively.
• Be concise: Avoid information overload. Keep it clear and concise.

Don'ts:

• Wing it: Don't go into the meeting unprepared. Plan ahead.
• Overcomplicate: Avoid jargon and overly complex visuals.
• Go off-topic: Stay focused on the agenda.
• Dominate the conversation: Allow others to speak and contribute.
• Rush through slides: Ensure each point is understood before moving on.

Summarizing key takeaways

Creating a manager meeting presentation can seem daunting, but with the right approach and tools, you can deliver impactful presentations that engage your audience and drive results.

• Manager meeting significance: Manager meetings play a vital role in organizations, serving as platforms for communication, decision-making, and team alignment.
• Importance of presentation: Effective manager meeting presentations are essential for conveying information, fostering collaboration, and achieving objectives.
• Content inclusion: A well-structured manager meeting presentation should include an agenda, graphics, timelines, strategy, goals, and a clear layout.
• Presentation structure: Follow a structured format, including introduction, agenda review, strategy, progress updates, action items, and Q&A for a successful presentation.
• Do's and don'ts: To excel in manager meeting presentations, prepare thoroughly, engage the audience, use visuals wisely, stick to the agenda, and be concise while avoiding improvisation, overcomplication, going off-topic, dominating the conversation, and rushing through slides.

Remember, a well-structured presentation, complemented by effective visuals and the right templates, can help you convey your message with confidence. So, whether you're an experienced manager or just starting out, make sure your next management meeting presentation is one that leaves a lasting impression.

1. What are the benefits of using a powerpoint template for my manager meeting presentation?

Using a powerpoint template can significantly enhance your presentation. These templates come with pre-designed ppt slides, graphics, and layouts, making it easier to create visually appealing slides. You can customize them to fit your specific needs, saving you time and effort. Additionally, templates ensure transparency in your presentation, helping your audience follow along seamlessly.

2. How can a meeting presentation template help me in managing team meetings effectively?

A meeting presentation template can be a game-changer for team meetings. It provides a structured framework for your presentations, ensuring that you cover all the necessary key points without missing anything important. This makes your meetings more productive as you have a clear business agenda to follow, allowing you to accomplish tasks efficiently.

3. What are some pro tips for delivering an engaging manager meeting presentation?

To make your manager meeting presentation stand out, consider these pro tips. Firstly, customize your presentation to suit your audience and the theme of the meeting. Use visuals like graphs and charts to illustrate your points effectively, and don't forget to engage your team members and stakeholders by encouraging questions and discussion. Lastly, keep it concise and avoid information overload, as you don't want to bore your attendees.

4. Can you recommend some popular templates for manager meeting presentations?

Certainly! There are several popular templates available online that cater to various presentation needs. You can find and download ppt templates for corporate meetings, team meetings, client presentations, and more. These templates often come with pre-set styles and layouts, making it easy to create professional simple presentations that leave a lasting impression.

5. How can I get a head start on preparing for an upcoming manager meeting presentation?

Getting a head start on your presentation is a good idea to ensure a successful meeting. Begin by grabbing a suitable presentation template can help teams or creating your own if you prefer a customized approach. Next, gather all relevant information and data, and start working on your slides. Remember that a little hard work early on can go a long way in ensuring that you accomplish your presentation goals and host a productive meeting.

Create your manager meeting presentation with prezent

If you're looking to create a compelling manager meeting presentation, Prezent, the AI presentation productivity platform for enterprise teams, has you covered. With Prezent, you can elevate your presentations and achieve full brand compliance effortlessly. Here's how you can do it:

• Presentation builder: Use the intuitive presentation builder to craft visually stunning and effective slides that convey your message effectively.
• Tribal knowledge: Leverage your team's collective knowledge and experience to create presentations that are rich in insights and expertise.
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Dec 21 2009

7 Tips for Presenting to Senior Executives

Don't miss an opportunity to impress the execs! (c) Shutterstock

When it comes to presenting, knowing how to present to senior executives within your own company or another company is going to have the biggest impact on your career. Some presenters figure it out to their great success. Other people crash and burn only to lament an opportunity missed.

I’ve compiled a series of tips that will hopefully come in handy the next time you’re going to present to a CEO, CMO, Senior VP, VP, etc. For example, you might be proposing a promising new social media initiative to marketing executives at your company or pitching a prospect’s executives on a new web-based payroll solution. My suggestions will focus on the boardroom situations rather than keynote presentations . Boardroom presentations are typically two-way interactions in smaller, more personal settings (e.g., meeting room, office, etc.) compared to the one-way interactions with large, anonymous groups of executives at business conferences.

You’d be wise to consider the following suggestions:

1. Start strong

A good start is critical (c) Shutterstock

Starting strong is important for any presentation and audience, but you might find senior executives slightly less forgiving. Starting strong with executives means giving them confidence that you’re going to use their time wisely. You gain their confidence by establishing a clear direction for what’s going to be covered and what the desired outcome is.

Executives are frequently going from meeting to meeting — often not always knowing what the exact purpose of the next meeting is. Their admin assistant may have accepted the meeting on their behalf or they may not have had time to review any information prior to the meeting. You need to tell them why they’re there and why your topic is important to them.

2. Use your time effectively

Senior managers’ time is valuable. They have 20+ other things they could be doing in the 10-60 minutes they have given you. Be prepared to cover your content in the time allotted . Also, leave ample time for discussion or questions .

I was recently in a presentation to several VPs where the presenters delivered a great presentation, but left no time for discussion and questions at the end. Unfortunately, they missed an opportunity for the senior executives to discuss the presentation content, buy into the recommendations, and determine a plan of action. The executives had to run to their next meeting.

3. Be flexible while presenting

Be flexible and incredible like Elastigirl (c) Disney

It’s common for senior executives to ask you to jump back to a previous slide or fast forward through your slides to a particular section of your presentation. Don’t be surprised when executives interrupt you as you present a painstakingly crafted slide with “Got it. Next”. Fight the urge to scream “I spent 5 hours on this slide!” and reinterpret those three words as “Great job on this particular slide. I understood its main point. Please move on.”

An extended discussion on a particular slide may mean you need to whip through other less important slides in order to get back on track in terms of covering all of your slides. In some cases, you may even forgo covering all of your slides because the discussion on a particular aspect of your presentation is going really well. The key is to be flexible and cover what they want to focus on — not necessarily what you want to . In order to achieve your objectives (e.g., more resources, budget, executive support, etc.), you may not need to go through every slide. 

4. Be ready with supporting data

Don’t make the mistake of not being able to answer a senior manager’s question during your presentation. Executives are experts at finding holes in your logic or content. They want to be sure you understand the consequences and implications , and that they can trust your analysis and recommendations .

I made the mistake of including some preliminary survey data that indicated that customers felt differently about a particular company practice. I thought the data was interesting, but when the senior VP shouted “bull sh!t” I knew I had made a terrible mistake including it in my presentation. I should have either gathered more information on the surprising insight to verify it or left it out of my presentation entirely.

It’s a best practice to anticipate potential questions by identifying what content could be susceptible to further questioning. Be prepared with additional supporting data on any parts of your presentation that could be viewed as counter-intuitive, unexpected, challenging to current opinion or practices, or result in significant changes. You may need to have additional data at your finger tips, including back-up slides in an appendix section or a spreadsheet ready to go. Senior executives often take comfort in the fact that you have tortured the data.

5. Know your audience

Before you open that door you should know what you're heading into. (c) Shutterstock

It’s always important to know your audience and in the case of senior executives it is imperative.

• How much do the VPs know about your topic? (i.e., how much time should you spend on providing background information?)
• What topics are hot buttons or particularly interesting to the executives based on their current business goals?
• Which executives would be politically threatened by your recommendations?
• What can you find out about their pet peeves or preferences ?

For example, I worked at one company where the CEO hated when people substituted “challenge” or “issue” for the word “problem”. He wanted people to call problems what they were. It’s better to avoid pet peeves such as this one that can unnecessarily sidetrack a presentation.

You need to find an insider who can coach you on how to best present your material to the targeted executive or group of executives. That person could be your executive sponsor, one of the executive’s direct reports, their admin assistant, or another peer/next-level manager who has interacted with your audience on a regular basis. You’re looking for inside information on your audience so that you can avoid derailing your presentation and wasting everyone’s time.

6. Keep it simple

In a study that asked top executives at several large companies how people could present more effectively to them, the overall feedback was to make the presentations shorter and more candid . The researcher found that “Senior people don’t have time to learn about your topic. They just want to know how they can help you.” Remove extraneous information that could take your discussion off track or cloud your main points. You lean towards focusing on the bottom-line in presentations to executives. The more simple and candid your presentation is, the easier it will be for your executive audience to understand how they can help you and move things forward.

7. Be prepared

Be prepared like a Wilderness Explorer (c) Disney

For most of us, opportunities to present to the senior management team don’t happen everyday. A key to seizing the moment is to be prepared, which may mean conducting an exhaustive analysis and review of the topic, carefully building slides that clearly and succinctly convey your message, creating back-up slides with supporting data, rehearsing your slides several times, seeking peer feedback prior to presenting, etc.

Being prepared means that you will be more confident in these intimidating situations. You’ll also be more flexible when executives throw curve balls your way such as switching the focus to a whiteboard instead of reviewing the rest of your slides. Your preparedness and polish will leave a positive impression on your executive audience — one that will benefit your career long-term.

What has been your experience?

I’m sure many of you have had different experiences with senior executive presentations — both good and bad. I’d love to hear your war stories and what valuable lessons you have learned along the way. If you’re a senior executive, I’d love to hear your perspective as well.

While writing this blog post, I found a couple of related articles on this subject which may be helpful to you. Good luck with your senior executive presentations in 2010!

• “ Now That We Have Your Complete Attention… ” (Eric Matson, Fast Company)
• “ Presenting to the Big Dogs ” (Marsha Redmon, Bnet)

No related posts.

Tags: audience , boardroom , clarity , executives , preparation , time , time management

Comments (8)

8 Responses to “7 Tips for Presenting to Senior Executives”

I love the visuals as well as the numbered headed contents. This is my favorite blog of the year. Thanks for the tips!

[…] 7 Tips for Presenting to Senior Executives […]

Great post. I think #3 and #7 particularly go hand in hand. I’ve found that quite often when presenting to senior executives, or at least those who view themselves in a powerful position, you always have to be on your toes and ready to react. It’s not uncommon to be interrupted, challenged, or questioned. Not only do you have to be ready to stop and change directions on a dime, but you must be prepared to back up your statements/facts. And make sure you get to the point, fast, as it relates to them.

Great job putting all of this information together. It’s definitely a great resource.

[…] Powerpoint Ninja includes more detailed suggestions in 7 Tips for Presenting to Senior Executives. My favorite is: Executives are frequently going from meeting to meeting — often not always […]

[…] ‘7 tips for presenting to executives’, viewed 14 September 2011, https://www.powerpointninja.com/presentation-delivery/7-tips-for-presenting-to-senior-executives/ […]

[…] https://www.powerpointninja.com/presentation-delivery/7-tips-for-presenting-to-senior-executives/ […]

Educative,good

[…] 7 Tips for Presenting to Senior Executives – PowerPoint Ninja […]

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Presentation Skills for Managers and Finance Professionals: How to Master This Crucial Skill

The Importance of Presentation Skills for Managers and Finance Professionals

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How to Impress Your Boss With Your Presentation

Last Updated: May 20, 2023 References

This article was co-authored by Chloe Carmichael, PhD . Chloe Carmichael, PhD is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist who runs a private practice in New York City. With over a decade of psychological consulting experience, Dr. Chloe specializes in relationship issues, stress management, self esteem, and career coaching. She has also instructed undergraduate courses at Long Island University and has served as adjunct faculty at the City University of New York. Dr. Chloe completed her PhD in Clinical Psychology at Long Island University in Brooklyn, New York and her clinical training at Lenox Hill Hospital and Kings County Hospital. She is accredited by the American Psychological Association and is the author of “Nervous Energy: Harness the Power of Your Anxiety” and “Dr. Chloe's 10 Commandments of Dating.” There are 8 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been viewed 36,516 times.

Giving a presentation in front of your boss can be a very nerve-wracking experience. Sometimes a raise or promotion might even depend on how well your presentation goes. Using music or sound in your PowerPoint presentation is a good way of livening up your talk. However, this may not be enough or as easy as it sounds. For a truly impressive presentation, you’ll need to take it a step further and consider things like how to dress, how to speak, and how your audience will interpret the content of your presentation. With a little work and planning, you can impress your boss with your presentation.

Creating an Effective Presentation

• This can affect many aspects of your presentation – from the kind of music you choose to the type of clothes you wear.
• A more formal presentation in front of your boss or other executives from your company would require formal business attire (suit for men, business suit or nice dress for women) and more formal sounding music accompaniment (like elevator music), while a presentation in front of students might warrant more casual attire (slacks and button-up shirt for men, slacks and a nice top for women) and even allow for more contemporary/fun music along with your presentation.

• Consider the venue. As it relates to the tips above, a formal setting (like a conference room or auditorium) will require a formal presentation whereas a presentation given more casually in your boss’s office might require fewer formalities. [3] X Research source

• Have your presentation flow in a logical and informative way. Have your notes lined up with you visuals – using clear cues for yourself so you don’t get mixed up.

• Put all of the data into a spreadsheet and make copies for everyone at the meeting. Or create a PowerPoint slide show to go along with your presentation.
• An effective PowerPoint presentation includes high quality visual images instead of cheesy clip-art, works to limit the amount of text that appears on each slide, and presents data in a logical sequence that is easy to follow along with. [6] X Research source

Delivering a Great Presentation

• For men, wear slacks, a suit jacket, and a tie. For women, wear a nice dress or a business suit.
• And remember that you are representing your company, by extension, when you are presenting – so you want to dress accordingly.

• This means that you should use confident body language like not crossing your arms, making eye contact, and standing up straight.
• You can try practicing at home ahead of time and asking a friend to tell you if they think you are speaking with confidence.
• If you make a mistake, just keep going. You can correct yourself, but don’t draw more attention to your mistake by dwelling on it or by being obviously embarrassed. Everyone makes mistakes, but the way you recover from yours will be what your boss remembers the most.

• Speak with a steady pace. Talking quickly can be perceived as a sign of nervousness, so slow your words down during your presentation. If you speak too quickly, you may stumble over your words more frequently as well, so make a conscious effort to slow it down.
• It may also be harder for your audience to grasp and digest the ideas you’re discussing if you say everything too quickly.

• Try to think ahead to what questions people might have about the topic – maybe what questions you had when you first started working on the project – and explain it to your audience from that perspective.
• Try saying things like, “This may seem like an overwhelming amount of information, but I’ll walk you through it.” Or, “Let me take you through the process step-by-step.”

Impressing Your Boss With Your Dedication

• If someone asks a question you don’t know the answer to, give a positive response about how you are going to look into that further – something like, “What a great suggestion. I haven’t fully developed that aspect of the project yet, but I will absolutely consider this as I move forward.”

• This kind of follow through after the presentation will impress your boss with your dedication to the work and doing a good job for the company.

• Take the feedback to heart and implement any helpful changes that you might receive as constructive criticism.

Chloe Carmichael, PhD

Look at criticism as a learning opportunity instead of a negative comment. If your boss gives you constructive criticism, that's a good sign! It means they want you to be better at your job. Reframing what you perceive as negative feedback as a chance to learn will allow you to develop personally and professionally.

• Try saying something like, “I would really love to continue growing and developing my role within the company. If you are open to it, I would like to take on some additional responsibilities around the office.”

Expert Q&A

You might also like.

• ↑ https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/openforum/articles/how-to-keep-your-audience-focused-on-your-presentation/
• ↑ http://www.skillsyouneed.com/present/presentation-method.html
• ↑ http://www.duarte.com/know-the-presentation-venue/
• ↑ https://www.themuse.com/advice/how-to-dazzle-your-boss-and-everyone-else-in-an-important-meeting
• ↑ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/two-genius-ways-impress-your-boss-tracey-harrington-mccoy
• ↑ http://www.garrreynolds.com/preso-tips/design/
• ↑ https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices-careers/2012/06/20/10-smart-tips-to-impress-the-boss-your-first-day
• ↑ http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-make-a-presentation-that-will-impress-your-boss-2015-7

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Write a Winning M&A Management Presentation

February 13, 2023

Are you looking for a new owner, scale-up funding or new financing for your business? If so, you need to invest in creating the best M&A management presentation your prospective investor has seen.

Really effective management presentations are like great cvs. they won’t get you the job, but they make the right impression to get you through the door, into the board room and onto the agenda . great management presentations do this by making your audience want to find out more., every management team and business is different. that means there’s no simple template or formula that you can copy for your management presentation.   don’t believe people who tell you there is.

We’ve pulled these seven tips from the 15+ years’ experience of the team at Benjamin Ball Associates . Our management presentation coaching specialists have reviewed thousands of management presentations, and we know that small changes make a big difference . Incorporating these tips can make the difference between getting relegated to the ‘no’ pile, or having an investor take the next step to investing with you.

How to write a winning management presentation Your management presentation should sell the investment, not your product Keep your M&A management presentation simple Be clear what makes you special in your presentation Don’t let your management presentation be boring Appeal to the heart AND the head in your management presentation Be honest in your management presentation Show, don’t tell

Best management presentation tip #1: Sell the investment, not the product

Investors are selfish. Your product may well change the world, but the investor is primarily thinking about their own risk and reward. This means that when they listen to you, they are subconsciously asking the question: ‘what does this mean for me’?

The best management presentations present everything in an investor-first context.

• So instead of slides that talk about your plans and ambitions, frame the information in terms of how those plans and ambitions will impact your investor’s returns.
• Instead of listing your team’s background, demonstrate how that background makes you a safe pair of hands for a new owner.
• Got great sales forecasts? Show how those forecasts will translate into rewards for investors.

Grab and hold their attention by using the language of M&A and investment and focusing on the things that matter most to potential buyers.  Read how to create a great pitch document.

Contact us for a free consultation on your coaching needs

Best management presentations tip #2: Keep it simple

Investors don’t put their cash into opportunities they don’t understand. If you present a concept in a difficult or complicated way , the mental exertion feels painful or makes them uneasy. Investors associate this with a negative gut instinct about you or your opportunity. That road leads to a ‘no’.

Instead, make the investment proposition easy to grasp . Clarity and ease of mental digestion feels good – That means investors will associate positive feelings with you and your opportunity .

So how do you transform a complex business into a simple management presentation?

When Steve Jobs was trying in 1990 to explain the impact that computers would have on the world, he spoke about bicycles. He described how humans are inefficient movers compared to many other animals on the planet. A human on a bicycle, though, can move even more efficiently than a condor. And a computer is like a bicycle for the human mind.

This analogy used a familiar concept (bicycles) to make an unfamiliar concept (computers in 1990) relatable. Analogies are one of several tools that help communicate complex ideas more effectively. Others are metaphors, similes and stories. No matter how complicated or abstract your product is, there is a way of presenting it in a simple, visual and engaging way. Use these ideas in your management presentations.

Best M&A management presentations tip #3: Be clear what makes you special

We find senior executives are frequently too close to their business to uncover the red thread that needs to run through their management presentation to make it exciting for investors. This is especially true for people wanting to sell their business . That’s where we help them discover their red thread and turn in into a seam of gold. What is the secret sauce that drives your success? Perhaps it’s your team, your IP, your connections or your track record?  

The best M&A management presentations focus relentlessly on their unique advantage. They demonstrate why it will contribute to the business’s success and how the team will leverage it.

One of our clients, a London-based block chain developer, used this idea to their advantage. Their original pitch had confused what they had done, the market, their technology, their products and the potential of the business. In all, it was unclear what the business did and why investors should be excited. For their management presentation, we helped them identify the red thread and then turn it into a few clear messages that ran through the presentation. The result was a compelling investment story that has taken them to the next level.  

Learn how to create a powerful equity story.

How to create a killer pitch deck

Best management presentation tip #4: don’t be boring.

• Crowded slides?
• Long blocks of text?
• Lists of bullet points?
• Bland headings?
• Weak design?

If your management presentation pitch deck looks as boring as everyone else’s, then investors will not get excited about meeting you. The best management presentation pitch decks are easy to read . They grab interest from the start, avoid jargon and use engaging language. They arouse interest through compelling headlines .

Investors should be able to flick through your management presentation pitch deck and understand your key points just from reading your slide headings. But those headings should also be different and intriguing enough that investors want to find out more. For example, instead of naming one of your slides ‘ About Us’ or ‘Our Team’ , choose a headline that reinforces your key message.

If your business is about running rock festivals, your headline for the team section of your deck could be ‘Ten Years’ Combined Experience of Running Profitable Events’. If you manufacture widgets that draw on your experience working with the inventor of the leading vacuum cleaner, your headline could be ‘James Dyson’s Protégé’. Finally, the best management presentations are often professionally designed with plenty of white space and relevant visuals. Don’t let amateur design let you down.

Best management presentation tip #5: Appeal to the heart as well as the head

Stories are an incredibly effective way to bypass investors’ heads and reach straight for their hearts. Instead of delivering plain facts in your management presentation (which are quickly forgotten), provide them within the context of a story.

• Identify the problem (the ‘villain’ of your story) and then
• Introduce your solution (the ‘hero’ of your story).
• Show what happens after the hero takes action, and
• Lay out the consequences of that action (or the consequences if that action doesn’t happen).

Perhaps your product is a small security device that alerts friends and family when you need help. Your presentation could focus on the software behind the invention. You could talk about how easy it is to set up. You can list the features and benefits. Or you could share what it’s like to feel safe and connected. You could show a video of someone whose life was saved, and how he or she felt when help came running – thanks to your device. That’s what great management presentations feel like.

When you trigger your buyer’s emotions, they become invested in your business and in you. Your management presentation becomes memorable and shareable. Remember: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Best M&A management presentation tip #6: Be honest

The best management presentations are from senior executives who don’t pretend to be perfect. Teams admit their mistakes, but also what they’ve learnt from them. They don’t hide their strategy changes, but instead share why and how they changed their approach, and the impact this has had. They have the confidence and self-awareness to be honest. As a result, investors see them as being trustworthy and having integrity and credibility.

Investors know there’s no perfect opportunity, there’s no perfect team, there’s no risk-free reward . So they are – rightly – wary of management teams that claim to offer any of these. Equally, if it appears that you’re trying to hide or mislead them, the investor will start to question everything else about you. To avoid this, be explicit about the data backing up your track record and the methodology used for your forecasts. Address doubts in your management presentation instead of creating them.

How to prepare an investor pitch deck

Best management presentation tip #7: show, don’t tell.

In your management presentation, Instead of describing how your product works, embed (or link to) a short film or screen-capture showing how it works. Instead of stating that your product changes people’s lives, include screenshots of customer reviews in which people say they will never be the same again. You could say that your product or service is different, but it’s much more powerful to show it, with mock-ups, testimonials and clippings from your industry’s trade press.  

A few years ago we helped a diamond mining company raise money from investors in London. To back up the powerful pitch deck that we helped them create, for their management presentation we suggested they bring a raw diamond into their meeting. Why? Firstly, few investors will have ever handled a raw diamond. Secondly, it allowed the management team to bring the business to life with stories: How often a diamond of that size was found, How many tons of rock they had to move to find that diamond, At what depth they found it, and What they did about safely and security. This one small prop transformed the quality of their presentation and made it much easier for the team to raise the money they needed to expand the business.

Transform your M&A management presentation

Call us, you’ll get  practical, easy-to-implement advice that will help you to grab investors’ attention , impress them and get you invited in for that vital face-to-face management presentation. you’ll benefit from our 15+ years experience transforming management presentations. then, ahead of   the meeting, we help you rehearse the management meeting so that you come across as just the right team to help the investors achieve their investment objectives., we do this every day for scale-ups, quoted companies and private equity firms.  , call louise today on +44 (0)20 7018 0922 or email [email protected] to discuss how we can best help you., transform your presentation skills with tailored coaching.

We can help you present brilliantly. Thousands of people have benefitted from our tailored in-house coaching and advice – and we can help you too .

“I honestly thought it was the most valuable 3 hours I’ve spent with anyone in a long time.” Mick May, CEO, Blue Sky

For 15+ years we’ve been the trusted choice of leading businesses and executives throughout the UK, Europe and the Middle East to improve presentation skills and presentations through coaching, training and expert advice.

Unlock your full potential and take your presentations to the next level with Benjamin Ball Associates.

Speak to Louise on +44 20 7018 0922 or email [email protected] to find out more and discuss transforming your speeches, pitches and presentations.

Or read another article..., how to sell your business: 9 success secrets.

Get the best value when you sell your company Embarking on the journey…

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Contact us for a chat about how we can help you with your presenting.

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"Thank you so much for an absolutely brilliant session yesterday! It was exactly what we were hoping for, and you did an incredibly job covering such a range of issues with 4 very different people in such short a session. It really was fantastic - thank you!"

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"Essential if you are going to be a spokesperson for your business"

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"Being an effective communicator is essential to get your stock ideas across. This course is exactly what's needed to help you do just that!"

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“Our investment in the coaching has paid for itself many times over.”

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“You address 95% of the issues in a quarter of the time of your competitor.”

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“Good insight and a great toolbox to improve on my presentations and delivery of messages to not only boards, analysts and shareholders but to all audiences”

CEO, Eurocamp

“We had a good story to tell, but you helped us deliver it more coherently and more positively.”

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“Ben did a great job on our presentation. He transformed an ordinary set of slides into a great presentation with a clear message. Would definitely use him again and recommend him highly.”

Nick Rogers

“Moved our presentation into a different league and undoubtedly improved the outcome and offer we received.”

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6 March, 2023

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Project Management Presentations: The 3 Expert Elements for a Great One

By   Mike Clayton

Too many Project Managers find it’s their presentation skills that let them down.

Yet, having coached many presenters, I find that the difference between:

• a clear, confident presentation, and
• a waffly, wobbly presentation

is usually very easy to fix.

There are a few simple things any project manager can do to brush up on your presentation skills.

This will show your project skills to their best and impress the people you want to influence. You’ll have a greater impact as a project manager, and it’s often your presentation skills that give a real boost to your career.

So this is what we’ll look at in this guide: the three key elements of presenting for project managers.

Why Presentation Skills Matter to a Project Manager

Project Managers often get plenty of opportunities to use their presentation skills. And, while some of us relish the opportunity to perform; others hate the idea. But, when the need arises, one thing is for sure:

People will judge you on how well you present .

This has more impact than it first appears.

Because the ‘halo effect’ means they won’t just judge you as a  presenter. They will extend their assessment to other areas of your professional competence. If you present poorly, people will easily think you are a poor Project Manager.

Objectively, we know that this is not logical. But we cannot help it. If you give a poor presentation of good work, people will have two abiding memories:

• Where was the evidence of good work?
• This person does not come across as professional

So, there are clearly two powerful reasons why presentation skills should matter to you:

• They are how you showcase your Project Management achievements
• They set the tone for how people perceive you as a professional

Presentation Skills are a Part of the Role of Project Manager

But what if you said to me:

‘Hold on, Mike. That’s all very well. But I’m interested in being a good Project Manager, not in looking like a good Project Manager.’

Well, I also argue that presenting is a core part of your Project Management skillset. After all, I’m not alone when I often tell people that:

Here are some examples of where your presentation skills are essential to doing a good job as a project manager.

• Influencing stakeholders
• Communicating status and plans to business leaders and project board members
• Briefing and motivating your project team
• Setting the tone of your project at your kick-off meeting

The Essential Elements of Good Presentation Skills

So, the three elements that we will look at in this article are:

• Being clear about the information you want to convey
• Putting together a presentation that is compelling, powerful, and persuasive
• Performing your presentation with confidence

These three things also set out the three steps to giving a good presentation. So we will use them as a structure for this guide.

For More Detailed Information: FREE Course!

This article summarizes some of the most important elements of presenting. Like many of our long-form articles, it’s pretty comprehensive. But a committed Project Manager may want more.

If only there were a complete Presentation Skills course that you could take, in your own time, which was completely free .

Well… It turns out there is!

Our sister YouTube channel, Management Courses , has a complete course on Presentation Skills. You can:

• View the Presentation Skills playlist on YouTube
• Access the full course more conveniently, on the MgmtCourses.com Presentation Skills course page
• Subscribe to the YouTube channel for all future Management Courses content
• Check out all our completed FREE courses on the MgmtCourses.com website

You can, of course, come back to this at any time.

So, let’s dive into our article!

Presentation Skills 1: Being Clear about the Information You want to Convey

Before you start drafting your presentation, it pays to prepare. And this means deciding what you need to communicate, to meet your needs and the needs of your audience. I often use the metaphor of defusing a bomb. If you fail to prepare well, your presentation is like a ticking time bomb, waiting to go off in your face. The four components of your initial preparation are:

• B ackground

If you carry out these four steps properly, you will defuse the bomb.

First, ask yourself:

‘Why should my audience listen to my presentation? What is the benefit for them?’

Too often, you think first about what you want to say. But your audience is giving up their time, and giving you their attention. So you need to give them something in return, that is at least of equal benefit.

What’s in it for them?

So, what do they want or need to know?

• How will they use the information you give them?
• Why will they be attending your presentation?
• How do they need to change?

Start by seeing your next presentation through the eyes of your audience. When you craft a present that meets their needs, they are always going to be more interested in what you have to say. And that means they will find it more helpful and rate you higher.

But you are also investing your time, effort, and reputation in making this presentation. So, for what reason?

A good way to start designing your presentation is to ask yourself:

‘What do I want to be different, when my presentation is over’

One of the key presentation skills is your ability to trigger action. And this means knowing what action you would like.

Call to Action

If you start your thinking with the call to action (CTA) you’ll want to make at the end, you can focus your content on the key information that will lead up to that CTA. This will be information that:

• makes your call to action an obvious ending
• compels your audience to want to act

Now you know what you want to achieve, and what your audience needs to get from your presentation, it’s time to ask yourself:

‘What is the story I need to tell?’

And I purposely frame your presentation as a story for two reasons:

• Firstly, because humans are story-telling and story-listening creatures. This is how we best absorb information. It’s also a great way to build emotion into a business-focused presentation.
• Secondly, because a story has a narrative structure. And it is by creating a logical structure that you will make your presentation compelling (see below).

The Elements of Your Story

Your Project Management presentation will have a central idea that you need to get across. This will lead directly to any call to action you need to make. So, these are the start and end of your presentation.

In between is a structure that will take you from your central idea to your call to action. Within that structure will be the evidence and practical information that will make your CTA not only persuasive but also practical for your audience. At the end, you want them to say:

‘I followed that argument, agreed with your evidence, and see why and how I can do what you suggest.’

The last part of your preparation is to do your homework. Make sure that you have all the knowledge you need, to draft a persuasive and powerful presentation. Ask yourself two questions:

‘What do I know about my audience, what they need, and what they know?’ ‘What information do I need to know, to address my audience’s needs, and be confident that I can speak with authority?’

These questions will guide your research. And answering the first question may lead you to review your thinking on the Benefits, at the start of the BOMB process.

The 7x Factor

When I started learning about presentation skills, someone gave me a useful piece of advice. I genuinely do not recall who it was. They told me that I should never put everything I know into my presentation, because, if you do, it means:

• You are failing to select the most important information for your audience – and are therefore being lazy.
• Any good question from the audience could take you outside of your zone of knowledge.

Their rule of thumb was to always know seven times as much as you present. Or, to put it another way, never present more than 15 percent of what you know. That way you have plenty in reserve. That accords well with the Pareto Principle, which tells us that approximately 80% of the value to your audience comes from 20% of the information you could present. So, I conclude that 15-20% of your knowledge is about right for a presentation.

Presentation Skills 2: Putting together a Presentation that is Compelling, Powerful, and Persuasive

Once you have done your preparation, the next step is to draft your presentation. Your goal is to make it compelling, persuasive, and powerful.

• Compelling Draw your audience in, keep them engaged, and help them to understand your presentation. You do this with a clear structure that uses flow and sequence. The best tools to help you are a story-telling approach, and question and answer frameworks.
• Persuasive Change the way your audience thinks, by helping them understand the world as you see it, and generate agreement with your point of view. You do this by creating a persuasive argument that uses the three elements of character, reason, and emotion.
• Powerful Drive change by making your audience remember what you say and want to act on your recommendations. Do this by addressing their needs, being memorable, and using your knowledge of psychology.

We shall look at each of these three components in sequence.

The most important aspect here is to create a logical structure that your audience can follow easily. Yes, novels, plays, and films sometimes adopt non-linear storytelling. But they are art that aims to entertain. You are a professional who needs to inform.

So, coming up with a straightforward sequence for your information is one of your vital presentation skills. And, don’t take chances. Use regular signposting to help your audience know where they are in your presentation, and what’s coming up next.

A Works-every-time Compelling Structure to Boost Your Presentation Skills

Here is a simple and effective structure that works every time.

• Introduce your central idea
• Why… is it true?
• How… can you implement it?
• What… are the components?
• How… did it happen?
• Who… are the people involved?
• What if…something goes wrong?
• Introduce the principle answers to your question Seven should be the absolute maximum, and three is the most memorable number
• For each principle answer, have a section that you divide into a small number (2-5) of parts
• When you have covered one answer, move to the next and repeat
• When you have covered all your answers, summarize
• Finally, make your call to action

How to Introduce your Central Idea

A good introduction will get your presentation off to a powerful start, with your audience hooked on hearing what you have to say.

Luckily there is a simple but powerful formula that is used by professional writers from journalists to novelists. Even Jane Austen used it !

Step 1: Tell the audience something they know

This way, it’s easy for them to agree with you, so you have them on your side right from the get-go. But you need to stop that pretty quickly, before they get bored.

Step 2: Tell the audience something surprising, controversial, worrying…

This will raise their alertness, by increasing the stakes. Now, your presentation matters.

Step 3: Pose a question

Either ask your audience a question directly or raise a question in their minds.

What happens when you hear a question?

That’s right… You try to think of an answer. Now you are mentally hooked:

• If you have an answer, you want to know if it’s the right one.
• Or if you are confident, you want to know if the presenter will get it right!
• If you don’t have an answer, you want to know what the answer is.

Step 4: Reveal your Answer

This is the Central Idea of your presentation. Now your audience has a clear signpost for what they will get.

Step 5: Another question

The lead into your main content is the question you are going to answer in your presentation:

• It might justify your central idea, so the question would be ‘why?’
• Maybe you will spell out how to implement your central idea, so your question would be ‘how?’
• Or perhaps your central idea is about risk and you are going to lay out some scenarios, so your question could be ‘what if?’

You get the picture.

If your audience cares enough about the complication you introduced in step 2, they will want to hear your answers to the question in step 5. And these are the main parts of your presentation.

Will You be using Slides?

If you are, and you want to start your presentation powerfully, here is a great article on giving a good presentation , and how to start a presentation with 5 strong opening slides, from SlideModel.com.

We also have a great video on our sister site, Management Courses: Attending Meetings – Using Projector and Slides Effectively

As an aside, can you see how I used this structure to introduce this article?

Step 1: Too many Project Managers find it’s their presentation skills that let them down. [You probably knew that]

Step 2: Yet, having coached many presenters, I find that the difference between:

is usually very easy to fix. [Really? – I expect a lot of people will think it would be tricky]

Step 3: There are a few simple things any project manager can do to brush up on your presentation skills. [What are they?]

Step 4: This will show your project skills to their best, and impress the people you want to influence. You’ll have a greater impact as a project manager, and it’s often your presentation skills that give a real boost to your career. [Okay, so you see you can have a greater impact]

Step 5: So this is what we’ll look at in this guide: the key elements of presenting for project managers. [What are they? Tell me how?]

I have made a video that covers very much this idea, called: How to Communicate Big Ideas with Maximum Impact .

The science of persuasion and influence is a huge discipline, so I recommend you read our article Persuasion and Influence: A Through Introduction .

Here, I want to highlight the three elements that classical speakers and presenters going right back to ancient times have used. People are much the same now as they were three thousand years ago, so these methods still work.

Aristotle told us a speaker needs to demonstrate three things:

• Ethos – Character
• Logos – Reason
• Pathos – Emotion

We’ll cover these in this order, because it’s the order that classical speakers learned to address these three, for maximum effect.

Ethos is about you. The first question your audience will need you to answer is:

‘Why should I listen to you?’

So right from the start, in the way you dress, introduce yourself, and open your presentation, you need to establish your credibility and your integrity.

Logos is about the facts – it literally means ‘the word’ . Here is where you:

• Select the information that will be most persuasive, and
• Present it in a logical way that creates a convincing argument

I usually find that this is the part Project Managers find easiest, because we tend to be in control of the facts. However, selecting out the minor points, so you can focus on the big points that matter, is a real skill. So too, is structuring that information.

Visual Communication

A lot of the information that we need to communicate is visual in nature. So, I recommend you take a look at the guest article that Jeilan Devanesan, the graphic design expert from Venngage, wrote for us: Visual Communication for Better Project Results .

Pathos is about your audience and how the facts matter to them. If you don’t know why they should care, you’ll never convince them.

So, answer one or more of these questions:

• What will happen to your audience if they act on your call to action?
• And what if they do not?
• What won’t happen if they act on your call to action?
• And what won’t happen if they don’t?

Here, you can appeal to a few fundamental drivers in our audience

• Anticipation

Persuading your audience that you are right is not enough. You need to have an impact on them.

So, the next of your presentation skills is to speak with power. This means:

• Being memorable
• Inciting action or change

How to be Memorable

The main ways to be memorable are very simple:

• Keep your message simple and don’t say too much. Just three points is great. One is ideal.
• Repeat your key points again and again.
• Introduce your key points at the start, when your audience is alert.
• Remind your audience of your key points at the end, so they stay fresh.

For more detail…

How to Incite Action

Above all, you cannot get people to do something if they are unsure what to do. You need to craft a clear, unambiguous, simple call to action. Spell it out and make it easy.

But then, you want to motivate them to follow your CTA. So, do you know what the most powerful motivators are?

I think these are the main psychological hooks you can use. Of the three, fear is undoubtedly the most powerful. But it is also the most dangerous, so I always save this for the most important and urgent situations.

I like to focus on desire. Ask yourself this question about your audience:

‘What’s in it for you?’

If you know why they should act, and you tell them, you will be answering their most pressing question. And nothing compels action better than a big, fat, juicy ‘ because ‘.

Presentation Skills 3: Performing Your Presentation with Confidence

The last of your presentation skills is to bring everything together in front of your audience.

You can hear a lot of nonsense from various trainers about how to give a good performance:

• Make big movements
• Stay in one place
• Use lots of slides
• Don’t use too many slides
• Speak loudly
• Talk slowly
• Speed up to keep your audience alert

They all have their place. But unless you aim to be a polished professional speaker, rather than a professional project manager who presents well, they barely matter.

The Two Big Things

What matters is that your audience warms to you and finds you credible. And that means two things:

• Be yourself, and make your speech and movements natural.
• Be confident, so that you can project that confidence to your audience.

Being Yourself

I cannot tell you how to be yourself. No one knows that but you. Of course, you need to slow down enough for people to follow you. This is especially true if some people in your audience are not fluent speakers of your language. And you certainly need to be loud enough for them to hear. And, of course, too much fidgeting or bobbing around can be a distraction.

But the basic guidance is that, as long as you are comfortable, your own natural style is the best one to use. Unless some aspect is so obtrusive that it detracts from your message, you’ll find that:

• Trying to suppress who you are or
• Putting on some kind of act

will be more distracting to your audience.

Be Confident

The biggest challenge for most speakers is confidence. many of us fear having to get up in front of people and speak to them. So, I have three tips for you, based on what I call the Triangle of Confidence . I have described this fully in our guide: Confidence: What You Need to Know to be a Confident Project Manager . I do recommend you read that article.

Personal Impact

At our sister site, Management Courses , we offer a whole course, FREE, on personal impact. It covers topics like:

Click here – or on the image – to check it out.

What is Your Experience of Presentation, as a Project Manager?

A good call to action is essential at the end of a presentation. So here’s mine. Use the comments box below to share your thoughts on presentation skills for project managers. As always, I’ll respond to every contribution we get.

Learn more…

Take a look at our article: Communication Skills for Project Managers | The Best Books

And, as a reminder, here is a link to the section of this article where I pointed you to the FREE Online Presentation Skills course, from our sister channel, Management Courses .

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Project Presentations: How to Prepare and Deliver a Project Presentation

Can anything make a project manager’s heart sink faster than being told that they need to give a project presentation to the board of directors? The pressure. The responsibility. Sure, you’re happy that the directors of the company trust you enough that they want your input in the project, but having to present in front of these powerful players is making your stress levels spike.

If you haven’t come across these presentation requests from senior managers yet, you will! These scenarios are common on projects, especially projects that introduce a new product or involve organizational change. But don’t feel overwhelmed. Giving project presentations may feel scary, but you can plan and prepare for them just like any other meeting.

What Is a Project Presentation?

A project presentation is an opportunity for you to explain your project processes and deliverables to key stakeholders. These can be informal, like a quick update via reports with a few individuals, or formal. Formal project presentations often require proper meeting times, thought-out slide decks, goal review and more. We’ll spend most of our time discussing how to prepare and deliver a formal project presentation.

A formal project presentation requires good data. Project management software can provide you with the dashboards and reports you need to supplement your points and progress updates. ProjectManager has real-time dashboards that you can share with stakeholders, and eight different in-depth project reports that you can make with just a few clicks. Get started for free today!

Why Is a Project Presentation So Important?

A project presentation is your opportunity to convey the importance of the work you and your team have been doing. If you’re unable to articulate your progress and achievements, key stakeholders won’t understand why money, time and resources are being spent on your project.

When you think of it like that, it’s no wonder why people spend so much time preparing for their project presentations. Read on to see how you can knock your next presentation out of the park.

How to Prepare for a Project Presentation

Preparing for a project presentation can be more important than you actual delivery. That’s because good preparation can set you up for success on the big day. Let’s go through some preparation techniques you can do for your project presentation.

1. Create a Calendar Invite for Your Project Presentation

You can’t just expect people to turn up – they need to know that there is an important event that requires their attendance, so get it in their diaries. People plan their meetings and calendar appointments sometimes quite far in advance, giving ample warning. Schedule the presentation as soon as you can, and check with the individuals (or their assistants) if you don’t get a reply about their availability.

If you have been invited to someone else’s meeting to talk about your project, make sure it is in your planner and book some time to plan for it in advance. If you don’t, you risk running out of time to prepare your material.

2. Select a Format for Your Presentation

How are you going to get your message across? If you’ve scheduled a meeting it’s likely that you are expecting to do a formal presentation. That’s fine, but how? Will you use slides or flip charts or mirror your iPad on a monitor? Do you expect the audience to participate in any part of the presentation? Can you speak without notes or would it be better to have some pointers with you on the day?

You should also consider where you will be giving the presentation. For example, a format that is suitable for a small room and a limited audience, such as a loosely-structured project update with a couple of slides, is not going to be appropriate for a room full of stakeholders, laid out like a lecture theatre with you at a lectern at the front.

3. Practice Your Project Management Presentation

Giving presentations is a skill. Practice, practice, practice. Before your big project presentation, volunteer to do some smaller ones, like staff briefings or shorter updates at team meetings. You want to feel comfortable both standing up in front of the room and with the material. Run through your presentation at home or in an empty meeting room so that you remember where the slide transitions are. Practice using the projector and a clicker to move the slides forward. Write out your flip charts several times so that it becomes second nature.

Practice and training will make your delivery much more polished and professional and give your audience a far better experience.

4. Write Big So Your Presentation Is Legible

Whether you are using slides or flip charts, write big or use big fonts. It is often difficult to see what is on the screen, even in a small room – and that means your message is not getting across. And it’s an excuse for audience members to check their phones instead of listening to you.

A good tip is to print out your slides and put them on the floor. If you can still read them clearly from a standing position, then the text is big enough. If you can’t read the words or you have to bend down to read them, make the font size larger!

5. Have a Backup Plan for Your Presentation

Projectors break, meeting rooms don’t have conference phones in, pens run out just at the critical moment. Plan for everything to go wrong. Your presentation audience is made up of busy people and they don’t want to sit there watching you fiddle with the technology. Get it all working before they arrive, and if it doesn’t work when you get going, make sure that you have a contingency plan (like a printout of your slides) so that you can carry on anyway.

How to Give a Project Presentation

When the fateful day arrives, there are some important things to keep in mind when giving your project presentation. Follow these best practices and you’ll portray your project and your team in the best possible light.

1. Speak Clearly and Don’t Rely on Jargon

Presentations depend on clarity and good communication . If you bog down your presentation with jargon and convulated reasoning, you’re going to lose your audience. Make sure that you use language that your audience will understand, so they can follow along with all of the key points you need to make.

Remember, not everyone in that meeting is going to understand all the intricasies of your project, in fact, none of them likely will. So speak slowly, clearly and ensure that you communicate.

2. Stick to What Matters and Use Data

When giving your project presentation, don’t lose sight of the original goals and requirements of the project. Your stakeholders agreed on certain goals at the beginning, how are you trending towards reaching those goals? Sometimes it’s easy to focus on setbacks or difficulties, or things that you may find fascinating. However, it’s best to recenter on critical business objectives.

It’s important to use data to supplement your project presentation as you address key goals and initiatives. But don’t use too much data! People will get lost in the numbers and stop listening to what you have to say. It’s a delicate balance.

3. Tell a Story

You have probably sat through a fair few presentations in your time, and I expect you’ve tried to stop yourself from nodding off in some of them. Project status updates can be boring. If the subject matter isn’t dull, often the speaker is. Don’t let that be you.

One way to keep the attention of the audience is to structure your presentation in the most interesting fashion. Consider what they will find interesting (and it won’t be the same as what you find interesting). Telling the story of your project is a good idea. Think about a start, a middle and an end to your presentation. Perhaps follow the lifecycle from the perspective of a customer.

Focus on the benefits and not the project management process. If you don’t know if your presentation material makes sense, run it past a friend or family member who doesn’t know anything about your project. If they don’t fall asleep, it’s OK!

4. Ask for Feedback on Your Presentation

When your presentation is over, ask for feedback. You could do this directly at the end of the session before people leave the room, or a couple of days later. It’s good to get some feedback as it helps you work on what to improve for next time.

Ask people to give you their impressions both of your presentation skills and also of the presentation content. You could find that the content was really good but you lacked confidence delivering it, or conversely that you were an engaging presenter but the material was not relevant to them. All this is useful stuff to know and it will help you improve your presentation skills for next time.

Project Management Presentations Take Time to Master

Giving presentations isn’t an everyday occurrence on projects but it is likely that you will have to give one or two during the project lifecycle – more if your project involves a lot of workshops or user sessions.

Don’t panic – presentation skills are something that you can learn and you will get better with practice! Once you have cracked it, you’ll feel confident delivering presentations and you’ll find that it gets easier to prepare for them in the future.

The scheduling features of our software can be used to book your presentations on the team calendar, which can be easily seen on the project dashboard. With it you have the ability to share agendas and slides after the presentation with the online document library. Then you can carry on the discussion after the meeting by using the great chat tool. Try the software from ProjectManager free for 30 days and see how helpful it really is.

Deliver your projects on time and under budget

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How to Make a “Good” Presentation “Great”

• Guy Kawasaki

Remember: Less is more.

A strong presentation is so much more than information pasted onto a series of slides with fancy backgrounds. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others. Here are some unique elements that make a presentation stand out.

• Fonts: Sans Serif fonts such as Helvetica or Arial are preferred for their clean lines, which make them easy to digest at various sizes and distances. Limit the number of font styles to two: one for headings and another for body text, to avoid visual confusion or distractions.
• Colors: Colors can evoke emotions and highlight critical points, but their overuse can lead to a cluttered and confusing presentation. A limited palette of two to three main colors, complemented by a simple background, can help you draw attention to key elements without overwhelming the audience.
• Pictures: Pictures can communicate complex ideas quickly and memorably but choosing the right images is key. Images or pictures should be big (perhaps 20-25% of the page), bold, and have a clear purpose that complements the slide’s text.
• Layout: Don’t overcrowd your slides with too much information. When in doubt, adhere to the principle of simplicity, and aim for a clean and uncluttered layout with plenty of white space around text and images. Think phrases and bullets, not sentences.

As an intern or early career professional, chances are that you’ll be tasked with making or giving a presentation in the near future. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others.

• Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist at Canva and was the former chief evangelist at Apple. Guy is the author of 16 books including Think Remarkable : 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference.

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Home Blog Presentation Ideas How to Give A Compelling Interview Presentation: Tips, Examples and Topic Ideas

How to Give A Compelling Interview Presentation: Tips, Examples and Topic Ideas

Interview presentations have now become the new norm for most industries. They are popular for sales, marketing, technology, and academic positions. If you have been asked to deliver one for your job interview presentation, prepare to build a strong case for yourself as a candidate.

Giving a general presentation is already daunting. But selling yourself is always the hardest. Spectacular credentials and stellar expertise don’t count much if you cannot present them clearly, which you are expected to do during your interview presentation.

So, let’s prime you up for the challenge. This post is action-packed with job interview PowerPoint presentation examples and will teach you the best way to do a presentation without stressing too much!

Table of Contents

What is an Interview Presentation?

What should an interview presentation look like, how to prepare for a job interview presentation: the basics, define your structure, what slides to include, how to come up with 15-minute interview presentation ideas, how to conclude your interview presentation, how to prepare for an interview: the final tips, what to do at the first interaction with the company elevator pitch for interview, presentation design tips, how to overcome presentation anxiety, tips on maintaining positive body language throughout the presentation, your final act.

An interview presentation, also known as a job interview presentation or interview portfolio, is a formal and structured way for candidates to showcase their skills, qualifications, and suitability for a specific job position during an interview. It goes beyond the typical Q&A format of interviews, allowing candidates to demonstrate their expertise through a prepared presentation. Employers commonly request interview presentations in various industries, such as sales, marketing, technology, academia, and management roles. These presentations serve several important purposes: assessing communication skills, evaluating cultural fit, measuring expertise, analyzing problem-solving skills, and observing presentation skills. While the specific format and requirements of interview presentations vary widely, candidates typically receive guidelines from the employer regarding the topic, duration, and any specific criteria to be addressed. In essence, an interview presentation is an opportunity for candidates to make a compelling case for their candidacy, showcasing their qualifications, experience, and suitability for the job. It requires careful preparation, effective communication, and the ability to engage and persuade the interview panel. A successful interview presentation can significantly enhance a candidate’s chances of securing the desired position.

Think of your interview presentation as a sales pitch.

Your goal is to convince the human resources team that you are the best candidate. The kick here is that you will present to a warm audience – you already impressed them enough with your resume to be called in for an interview. We recommend generating a strategy and presentation based on a 30 60 90 Day Plan .

Employers request interview presentations for a few simple reasons:

• To assess your communication and public speaking skills.
• To understand whether you are the right cultural fit for the company.
• To develop a better sense of how well-versed you are in the domain .

So, your first job is ensuring your presentation fits the criteria. Review the company’s job description again and jot down all the candidate requirements. Take the time to read about their company values and mission. Be proactive and ask precisely what you should cover during your presentation.

Most interview presentations will differ in content and style, but here’s a quick example to give you more context:

[ Use This Template ]

Before you get elbow-deep in designing that PowerPoint for a job interview presentation, do some scouting and reach out to the HR team with a few questions.

You want your presentation to be on-point and technically accurate, so ask your contact the following:

• How long should an interview presentation be? Fifteen minutes is the golden standard, though some employers may ask to cut it down to just 10 minutes or extend it to 20-25.
• Who exactly will be present? A conversational presentation would undoubtedly be welcomed by your peers and a team leader but may appear too casual for the senior managers or board of directors.
• Does the HR team have a particular agenda in mind? Ask some leading questions to understand what kind of skills/experience they want you to demonstrate. If needed, use a proper agenda slide to include your content.
• What’s the IT setup? Should you bring your laptop? Do you need an adapter to connect to their projector? What kind of presentation software have they installed – PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides?

Everyone appreciates clarity.

In fact, 89% of professionals state their ability to communicate with clarity directly impacts their career and income.

Your presentation should flow, not rumble. Make sure that your story is easy to follow and your key message is easy to digest, remember, and pass on. If you want people to retain your main points, opt for the following structure:

Source: this infographic was created with  3 Steps Editable 3D Ladder Infographic

Here’s an interview presentation example styled in this fashion.

What is: The company’s presence in the Middle East is low. Only 15% of revenues come from the top markets.

Why this matters: The UAE fashion market alone is expected to grow at a CAGR of 21% during the next five years.

What could be: I have helped my previous employer open a flagship store in Dubai, have a lot of industry contacts, and am familiar with the local legislature. Your brand can expect a 17% revenue growth within one year of opening.

You can find even more ideas for designing your presentations in this post .

The choice of slides will largely depend on whether you are asked to talk about yourself or present on some task that you will be required to do as part of your job (e.g., create marketing campaigns).

Most interview presentation templates feature the following slides:

• Opening Slide
• Quick Bio/Personal Summary
• Career Path
• Education timeline
• Key Skills and Expertise
• Case studies/examples of the problems you have solved at your past jobs
• Your vision for your future role.
• What exactly can you bring in as the candidate (we will come back to this one later on!)

Can’t figure out where to start? Check out our AI PowerPoint generator to create an entire interview slide deck in a couple of clicks, or just download a job interview template . Swipe down to learn from the either of the following job interview presentation samples.

Typically, a talent acquisition team will suggest broad interview presentation topics for you. For example, if you are applying for a sales position, they may ask you to develop a sales presentation for some product (real or imaginary).

Some employers will request a short presentation about you or your hobbies to understand whether you are a good “fit” for the team and share the company’s values. Remember this: your audience will be assessing your aptitude for the role, no matter which topic you were given.

In fact, the interviewers at this point don’t care that much about your experience and skills. They want to know how you can apply those to solve the company’s pressing problems – meet sales targets, improve ROI from social media marketing or help them earn more revenue.

Your job is to make an educated guess… predict the most wrenching problem, and pitch your “magic pill” during your interview presentation.

I know what you are thinking – but how do I find the right opportunity/problem to tackle?

Businesses across different industries pretty much struggle with the same generic challenges related to either of the following:

Your topic should clearly address one of these areas and offer a potential roadmap for solving some specific problem within it.

Let’s say that you are applying for a sales role. Clearly, you will want to tackle the “customer audience” set of problems. To refine your idea, ask yourself the following questions:

• Can you think of a new customer segment the company should target? Who are they, what do they want, and how you can help the company reach them?
• Do you have a network or experience to identify and pitch new clients?
• Can you think of new collaboration opportunities the company could use to attract a whole new niche of customers?

So a sample job interview presentation about yourself should include a series of Problem & Solution Slides , showing exactly how you will address that issue if the company hires you.

Here’s another PowerPoint presentation about yourself for job interview example worth using – incorporate a case study slide, showing how you have successfully solved a similar problem for your past employer.

Wrap up your presentation by laying out the key steps the company needs to take. Give an estimate of how much time it will take to tackle the problem, and what changes/investments should be made.

Your conclusion should tell this: “Hire me and I will solve this problem for you in no time!”.

Source: StockSnap

Dial-Up Your Power

Take a deep breath and strike a “power pose” before you enter the room.

According to her research, power posers performed better during interviews and were more likely to get hired. Another study also proved this theory: unaware judges gave major preference to the power-primed applicants. So yes, pep talks do work!

The first 30 Seconds Count The Most

What you do and say in the first 30 seconds will make the most impact. Psychological  research  shows that listeners form opinions about your personality and intelligence in the first 30 seconds of the interview. So be sure to start with a compelling opening, framing exactly how you want to be perceived.

Try To Appear Similar to the Interviewer

Lauren Rivera, a professor from Kellogg School,  came to the conclusion that interviewers tend to hire “people like them” .

Even the top human resource management folks fall for this bias and tend to base their evaluations on how similar a candidate is to them, instead of trying to decide whether the person’s skill set is ideal for the position. So to be liked, you will have to act relatable.

Back up your statements with facts

To deliver a presentation with a bang, you can make use of pre-analyzed facts to support your hypothesis. Make sure to do your homework, study the company and its competitive landscape, and do the professional work you would have done as a member of the company crew. At some point in your interview presentation, you go “off the script”, and pull out a bunch of documents, supporting your statements.

For example, you can give away a quick plan indicating a number of things the employer could do today to save money, even if they don’t hire you. Make sure to be meticulous; your work will speak for you. But giving away this work will show the employer your commitment, skills, and focus.

And that’s exactly how to make your job interview presentation stand out. Most candidates just ramble about their skills and past career moves. You bring specificity and proof to the platter, showing exactly what makes you a great hire fair and square.

Within a selection process, there are many interactions (interviews and dynamics) that you must successfully complete in order to be the next selected candidate. One of your objectives in this first interaction should be to generate a great first impression in the company. For this, we recommend using the Elevator Pitch for Interview technique.

The Elevator Pitch for Interview will allow you to present yourself in a solid and professional way in less than 60 seconds, in order to generate an outstanding first impression.

What is an Elevator Pitch for an Interview?

The Elevator Pitch is a condensed speech about yourself that aims to generate engagement in no more than 60 seconds. Entrepreneurs widely use this type of speech to persuade investors and job seekers in job interviews. Your Elevator Pitch for the Interview will generate a great first impression to the employer and be better positioned than other candidates. If your goal is to make a convincing presentation in a job interview, your Elevator Pitch needs to be well crafted.

How to Make an Elevator Pitch for an Interview

There are many ways and tips to make an excellent Elevator Pitch for a job interview. This section provides you with essential advice to make your interview more convincing.

Identify your target

You need to know to whom you are presenting yourself. Is it a recruiter? or an executive?. Your Elevator Pitch will change depending on the receiver.

Comprehend the needs of the hiring company

Make an advanced study about the search requirements for the job position. Identify your strengths. Highlight them. Demonstrate your experience. Identify your weaknesses. Show that you have a profile that seeks constant improvement

Create a clear, concise, and truthful Elevator Pitch

This point is critical. Your Elevator Pitch must be clear, concise, genuine, and impactful. Go from less to more. Generate a real hook in your audience. Try not to go off-topic or talk too much, and be brief in everything you want to say.

Speak naturally and confidently

If you can speak fluently and naturally, you can show a confident profile. Show you know what you are talking about and what you want.

Elevator Pitch Example for Job Seekers

This section illustrates an Elevator Pitch Example targeted to Recruiters. It will help you put together your own.

“My name is [NAME]. After graduating with a degree in Business Administration, I have spent the last five years accumulating professional experience as a Project Assistant and Project Manager. I have successfully managed intangible products’ planning, strategy, and launch these past few years. I was excited to learn about this opportunity in Big Data – I’ve always been passionate about how technology and the use of information can greatly improve the way we live. I would love the opportunity to bring my project management and leadership skills to this position.”

Ways to avoid common mistakes in your Elevator Pitch

Keep in mind the following points to avoid making mistakes in your Elevator Pitch for an Interview.

Don’t hurry to make your Elevator Pitch

The Elevator Pitch lasts approximately 60 seconds. Do it on your own time and naturally, as long as you make it clear and concise.

Do not always use the same Elevator Pitch for all cases

One recommendation is not to repeat the same Elevator Pitch in all your interviews. Make changes. Try new options and ways of saying the information. Try different versions and check with your experience which generates more engagement and persuasion.

Make it easy to understand

Articulate your pitch as a story. Think that the person in front of you does not know you and is interested in learning more about your profile. Don’t make your Elevator Pitch challenging to appear more sophisticated. Simply generate a clear and easy-to-understand narrative, where all the data you tell is factual and verifiable.

Don’t forget to practice it

Practice is the key to success. Your Elevator Pitch for Interview will become more professional, convincing, and natural with practice.

How to End an Elevator Pitch?

An essential aspect of ending an Elevator Pitch for an Interview is demonstrating interest and passion for the position. You have already presented yourself and established that you have the necessary background for the job. Closing with phrases revealing passion and attitude will help reinforce your pitch.

We recommend you use expressions such as:

“I have always been interested and curious about the area in which the company operates, and it would be a great challenge for me to be able to perform in this position.”

“I have been interested in moving into your company for a while, and I love what your team is doing in IT.”

“I would like to advance my career with an employer with the same values. I know that thanks to my profile and experience, I can make excellent contributions to your company.”

Keep It Visual: Use visuals like images, graphs, and charts to convey your points effectively. Visuals can make complex information more accessible and engaging. Consistency Matters: Maintain a consistent design throughout your presentation. Use the same fonts, color schemes, and formatting to create a cohesive look. Practice Timing: Be mindful of the allotted time for your presentation. Practice to ensure you can comfortably cover your content within the time limit. Engage the Audience: Incorporate elements that engage the audience, such as questions, anecdotes, or real-world examples. Interaction keeps the interview panel interested. Use White Space: Avoid cluttered slides. Use white space to create a clean and uncluttered design that enhances readability.

Presenting during a job interview can be nerve-wracking. Here are some strategies to overcome presentation anxiety:

• Practice: Practice your presentation multiple times, ideally in front of a friend or mentor. The more you rehearse, the more confident you’ll become.
• Visualization: Visualize yourself by giving a successful presentation. Imagine yourself speaking confidently and engaging the audience.
• Breathing Techniques: Deep breathing can help calm nerves. Take slow, deep breaths before and during your presentation to reduce anxiety.
• Positive Self-Talk: Replace negative thoughts with positive affirmations. Remind yourself of your qualifications and the value you bring to the role.
• Focus on the Message: Concentrate on delivering your message rather than dwelling on your anxiety. Remember that the interviewers want to learn about your skills and experiences.
• Arrive Early: Arrive at the interview location early. This gives you time to get comfortable with the environment and set up any technical equipment you use.

Maintain Good Posture: Stand or sit up straight with your shoulders back. Good posture conveys confidence and attentiveness. Make Eye Contact: Establish and maintain eye contact with your audience to show confidence and engagement. Use Open Gestures: Employ open gestures, like open palms and expansive arm movements, to convey enthusiasm and openness. Smile and Show Enthusiasm: Genuine smiles and enthusiastic facial expressions demonstrate passion and eagerness. Control Nervous Habits: Be mindful of nervous habits like tapping or fidgeting, which can distract your audience and convey anxiety.

Stop fretting and start prepping for your interview presentation. You now have all the nitty-gritty presentation tips to ace that interview. If you are feeling overwhelmed with the design part, browse our extensive gallery of PowerPoint templates and cherry-pick specific elements ( diagrams , shapes , and data charts ) to give your interview presentation the top visual appeal.

Here you can see some 100% editable templates available on SlideModel that could be useful for preparing an interview presentation.

1. Versatile Self-Introduction PowerPoint Template

Use This Template

2. Professional Curriculum Vitae PowerPoint Template

This a sample of PowerPoint presentation template that you can use to present a curriculum and prepare for a job interview presentation. The PPT template is compatible with PowerPoint but also with Google Slides.

3. Modern 1-Page Resume Template for PowerPoint

4. Multi-Slide Resume PowerPoint Template

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Academic Degrees , Business Administration Articles , MBA News

MBA Finance Specialization: Top Trends

Published: April 26, 2024

The Master of Business Administration (MBA) is one of the most popular graduate programs worldwide, as it has been for the past decade. With many types of MBAs available, the Master’s of Business Administration is a versatile degree that can be customized to suit a variety of different career paths.

Along with the advanced business knowledge, problem-solving skills, and leadership experience students gain, an MBA is highly respected in the business world. Graduates are often rewarded with career opportunities and increased earning potential. 

According to The Princeton Review , one of the most in-demand MBA specializations is the Finance MBA. In this article, we will take a deep dive into that program to help you discern whether it is the right educational path for you. 

Let’s jump in!

What is an MBA in Finance? 

An MBA in Finance is a specialized graduate-level degree that focuses on the management of financial resources within businesses and organizations. Students learn how companies make financial decisions, manage risk, and handle financial resources to maximize profitability and ensure stability. It provides a strong foundation in business principles while emphasizing finance-specific skills such as financial analysis, budgeting, forecasting, and financial reporting.

For students interested in advancing their careers in the financial sector, an MBA in Finance can open doors to leadership positions such as financial manager, chief financial officer, investment banker, financial analyst, or portfolio manager. The degree aims to equip graduates with the necessary skills to handle complex financial issues in a dynamic business environment, making it an excellent choice for those looking to excel in the business world .

What is the Scope of an MBA in Finance?

The scope of an MBA in Finance is broad and diverse, equipping graduates with in-depth knowledge of financial management, investment strategies, and market analysis. Here are some of the key lessons you will learn in a Finance MBA:

Financial Analysis and Reporting

Students learn to analyze financial statements, interpret financial data, and prepare reports on financial performance. 

Investment Strategies

The program covers various investment theories and practices, including portfolio management, risk assessment , and the evaluation of different investment vehicles. 

Corporate Finance

You will learn how corporations manage their finances, including capital raising, investment decisions, and dividend policies. 

Risk Management

Students learn to identify, analyze, and mitigate financial risks. This includes understanding market risk, credit risk, and operational risk.

Quantitative Analysis

MBA finance programs often include training in quantitative methods, such as statistical analysis and econometrics, to help students analyze and interpret complex datasets and make data-driven financial decisions.

Strategic Thinking and Planning

You will learn to think strategically about financial planning and business development. This skill is crucial for leadership roles, where long-term planning and strategic decision-making are key responsibilities.

Ethical Decision-Making

Students explore the importance of ethical decision-making in finance, ensuring the integrity of financial practices and compliance with regulations.

Communication and Presentation Skills

You will polish your communication and presentation skills, so you can convey complex financial information to non-experts and influence decision-making processes.

Leadership and Teamwork

Leadership training prepares students to lead teams, manage projects, and drive organizational success.

Global Financial Markets

Students will understand the impact of global economic events on financial markets and learn about international finance regulations and practices.

Technological Proficiency

You will become familiar with financial software, databases, and analytical tools, as well as fintech innovations and their applications in finance.

After mastering these lessons, graduates of MBA programs in finance are well-prepared to tackle the challenges of the financial industry, lead with confidence, and make impactful decisions that drive business success.

What Jobs Can You Get With an MBA in Finance?

There are a wide variety of career paths you can follow once you have earned an MBA in finance. One of the most popular is a role in the financial services industry. This includes work in investment banking, asset management, private equity, or hedge funds.

Corporate finance is also a common place for MBA graduates to work. Consider taking on roles as a financial analyst, chief financial officer, or corporate controller. Additionally, you could work for a financial consulting firm, providing expert advice on financial management, restructuring, strategy, and risk management to businesses across various sectors. 

MBAs can also find opportunities in government agencies, public sector, and nonprofit organizations, managing finances, budgets, and funding strategies. Although these jobs are not often as highly compensated as corporate positions, they offer the opportunity to further a cause and improve the world around you.

The comprehensive skill set gained from an MBA in Finance can empower graduates to start their ventures as entrepreneur . Other options include specializing in real estate — financing real estate projects, managing property investment portfolios, and real estate valuation — or fintech, which involves work on financial technology innovations, digital banking, blockchain, and more.

An MBA in Finance is not just about acquiring a set of financial skills; it’s about developing a strategic mindset that can navigate the complexities of today’s business and financial landscape. The degree opens up myriad paths, from traditional finance roles to innovative sectors, ensuring that graduates can find their niche in a changing economic environment.

What are the Benefits of Earning an MBA in Finance?

Earning an MBA in Finance offers numerous benefits, making it a valuable investment for professionals aiming to enhance their career prospects in the financial sector. 

As we discussed above, an MBA significantly boosts career advancement opportunities, opening doors to high-level positions in a variety of industries. It equips graduates with a deep understanding of financial markets, corporate finance, investment strategies, and risk management, which are crucial for making informed and strategic financial decisions within organizations.

Additionally, an MBA in Finance often results in increased earning potential. Graduates with specialized skills and knowledge qualify for more senior, well-compensated roles in the finance industry. 

The program also broadens one’s professional network, connecting students with peers, alumni, and industry leaders, which can be instrumental in career growth. Moreover, the degree enhances critical thinking and problem-solving skills , preparing graduates to tackle complex financial challenges effectively. 

Where Can You Earn an MBA in Finance?

UoPeople is an accredited online university offering MBA degrees that can be completed in less than a year, tuition-free. Of several specializations offered, UoPeople’s certificate in finance is best suited for students wishing to pursue a career in any of the areas we’ve discussed in this article.

UoPeople’s finance certificate layers financial lessons on top of the more traditional MBA curriculum. Students participating in the certificate program will understand basic principles of finance, develop budgets and financial plans, learn how to make financial decisions to maximize shareholder wealth and gain practical knowledge of personal finance management.

The MBA program at UoPeople is designed with flexibility, making it perfect for working professionals, multitasking parents, and returning students. The program provides asynchronous classes that allow learners to study on their own schedule, with the possibility of completing the 12-course curriculum in as few as seven months. 

Throughout the program, students will acquire skills in strategic planning, management, organization, and business operations. They will also learn to craft innovative solutions to complex business challenges and to thrive in the modern, globally interconnected business environment.

As you consider whether pursuing a finance MBA is for you, remember that this path is more than an educational commitment—it’s a strategic career investment. Thanks to the comprehensive skills and robust knowledge the program imparts, graduates emerge as sought-after professionals in the business world. 

Moreover, the connections you’ll make with peers, professors, and industry professionals will provide you with a powerful network that will help you climb the corporate ladder. You’ll graduate with a heightened ability to lead, innovate, and contribute meaningfully to businesses and society at large. 

In an ever-evolving financial landscape, the investment in a finance MBA could be a prudent decision if you want to become a leader in the field. It’s an investment in a future marked by success, leadership, and continuous advancement in the exciting world of finance.

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Standardizing cloud cost management: the rise of focus in finops.

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Nicola Sfondrini - Partner Digital and Cloud Strategy at PWC .

Understanding cloud costs is quickly becoming a business-critical function. There is a large variance in financial terms, measures, dimensions and usage presentations available in Azure, Amazon, Google and many other cloud service providers (CSPs). There is not yet a commonly accepted way to aggregate and present this data between multiple CSPs. FinOps is evolving as a practice to bridge the financial reporting world with the cloud services world where all organizations operate. As an emerging discipline, it is an advocate for software that allows organizations to manage and optimize their cloud costs.

Most recently, the FinOps Foundation introduced a new standard, the FinOps Open Cost Usage Specification (FOCUS) , aiming to work as a common language for financial and usage accounting within the realm of cloud services. This standard allows us to set a common baseline for cloud cost and usage discussions. FOCUS also provides new chart translations and introduces data allocations to establish a common vocabulary for finance, engineering and business decision-makers to align with key performance indicators.

This standardization construct holds great potential for increased emphasis on cloud cost data integrity across different CSPs, which in turn paves the way for conscious technological innovations that will simplify enterprise adoption and embracing of cloud services, ultimately bolstering the enterprise return on investments.

Revolutionizing Cloud Cost Management Through FOCUS

FOCUS is finally providing a technical "lingua franca" for the very complex world of multi-cloud cost management. Without a standard lexicon to describe cloud cost data (like disk storage and CPU pod pricing), cloud cost management best practices have long been hard to congeal and implement. To reconcile their data, companies have been forced to either make bespoke data workflows with a data formatting provider or piece together a monolith of cloud APIs that come molded with the cloud services they want to manage.

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With FOCUS, there’s a standardized language for defining billing items. This standardization is crucial for fostering an open ecosystem where industry leaders can collaborate to promote best practices in cloud cost management, ultimately helping companies reduce waste and avoid overpayment. For companies, it means that cloud bills can now be benchmarked much more accurately and insightfully as to how and where their costs stack up relative to a series of "smart" assumptions.

Cloud Industry Endorsement

The backing of FOCUS by industry giants such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google is set to significantly enhance billing transparency and democratize strategic cloud cost management. With FOCUS, the task of cost management shifts from the organizations themselves to the end-users. Though it's still in its nascent stages, this shift is a critical step toward fostering a culture of financial responsibility and efficiency within organizations.

The growing acceptance of FOCUS marks a critical turning point in the discourse around cloud costs and the future trajectory of cloud cost management. Cloud FinOps is evolving from an abstract concept to a tangible practice. With a shared language for data consumption and analysis, FOCUS transforms the broad objective of cost efficiency into a specific, executable strategy that organizations can adopt both now and in the future.

How Different Sectors Can Exploit FOCUS

Leveraging FOCUS, companies can significantly improve their cloud cost management processes. By implementing RPA tools, companies can automatically extract data from invoices, which facilitates the reconciliation of actual spending with budgeted forecasts. These advanced tools can seamlessly integrate data from various cloud service providers, adhere to the FOCUS specifications and generate comprehensive reports.

Different FinOps personnel can easily exploit the FOCUS framework as follows.

Business Or Product Owners

These individuals require accurate comparisons between actual cloud usage costs and their projections to make informed budgetary decisions. With FOCUS and RPA tools, they can ensure that usage charges are within expected budgets, particularly across single billing accounts. They benefit from having an aggregated view of cloud costs without the distortions of past adjustments, allowing them to focus on current data relevant to the billing period.

Finance Manager

Those in finance roles need reports detailing costs from all geographic locations within a set timeframe, often for a single product. Utilizing FOCUS, they can reconcile bills in various currencies and conduct cost allocation and chargeback operations efficiently. This aids in calculating the cost of goods sold (COGS) and operational expenditure (OPEX) at a product level, which is vital for accurate financial reporting and analysis.

FinOps Practitioners

These professionals are tasked with tracking and managing unused cloud commitments to optimize future financial planning. With the clarity provided by FOCUS and the automation of RPA, they can better identify data from a specific period where commitments were not utilized. This allows them to take corrective actions (such as selling the commitment or reallocating it to where it can be effectively used) or choose to ignore it with full knowledge of the implications.

Engineers need to extract a list of the top service cost drivers within a specific account from a given period. Understanding these cost drivers through the lens of FOCUS allows engineers to prioritize their efforts to optimize services that have the most significant financial impact. The standardized language and data representation FOCUS offers enable engineers to develop a clearer strategy for resource optimization, which can lead to potentially substantial cost savings.

Future Directions

FOCUS offers a standardized and scalable approach to collecting basic cost and usage data from the cloud. This initiative helps achieve greater financial transparency and control. If FOCUS succeeds in reshaping how people approach and manage their cloud expenditures, it will mark a transformative moment in the current and future landscape of cloud computing, laying the groundwork for shared learning and collaborative innovation.

When embraced by both the public and private sectors, FOCUS has transformative potential, mirroring the public spend visibility efforts of initiatives like the Open Government Partnership's Digital Public Goods Alliance and meeting the strategic objectives of leaders across the digital economy. This spirit of collaboration and innovation is what I believe will carry us through the digital decade.

To promote the adoption of FOCUS, stakeholders are encouraged to engage in active dissemination and training sessions that highlight the pragmatic benefits of FOCUS in managing cloud resources efficiently. Challenges may arise, such as resistance to change from traditional practices and the initial resource allocation for integration and training. Addressing these hurdles through targeted communication strategies and demonstrating the long-term cost benefits can facilitate smoother adoption and maximize the impact of FOCUS in the evolving digital economy.

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Presentations

Presentation Management 101

How bad is your presentation management?  It might seem like a pretty direct question, but few of us really know what presentations management is actually about. Let alone how to be any good at it.

Most of us can relate to a plethora of presentations floating around on memory sticks, shared drives, various cloud services, and of course on our trusty desktops. But it’s exactly this organisational ‘system’ which causes us problems when we try to find the best presentation we made a few years back, and our colleagues problems when they promise to send us slides from the last company conference.

Sound familiar? Without having a place where business presentations can go to rest once they’ve been shown off, we’re creating a repetitive work culture. With teams having to re-create the essence of a good slide they saw a while ago. Rather than being able to simply find the slide and repurpose it.

This also carries through to other parts of presentations. Approved logos, fonts and colors fly around without expiry dates and are subject to misuse by well meaning employees who for example, have just returned from their holiday. This makes presentations far more difficult to manage. As not having one place for up to date information means that employees often just use the first thing they find. Presentation management is a way to solve all of these problems, and more.

What is Presentation Management?

Presentation management is a way of structuring how presentations are made, stored, and shared in teams. It is user focused, and ensures that presentations live in a secure and defined place in a company which is super easy to navigate. Some organizations also use this as a place to keep their best presentations, pitch decks, and templates.

On the whole, presentation management for businesses means giving proper thought to three areas:

1. Quantity of Presentations

Storing presentations in a way which is practical and useful to those making them. Dealing with many presentations means having searchable functions such as tagging, or other structures to make it easy to find files in the future.

2. Quality of Presentations

Creating a high level of quality for all presentations in the future. Ensure that all of the materials and guides needed for employees to make the best presentations are in one easy to find place. That way, spontaneous uses of ‘creative license’ can be avoided.

3. Making full use of Previous Presentations

Properly making use of each business presentation ensures that productivity is at its peak, brand guidelines are kept clear, and time is not wasted correcting mistakes, or repeating the same content. This may include keeping centralised presentations for certain events such as health and safety procedures, onboarding new employees, or researching for future presentations.

Getting the most out of presentations can make a big difference in the day to day workings of teams, and can take the place of many external agencies, from new onboarding courses to freelancers who need to know what the company is about, quickly.

We all know that finding a presentation that we haven’t cleverly stored on our desktop is a hassle, and trying to find a particular slide can be even worse. It takes up a lot of time opening each presentation we come across to see if it’s in there. But there are numerous ways to combat presentation frustration and locate your whole team’s presentations easily. From company conferences to investor reports, keeping everything in a logical order can make everything much simpler for everyone involved with the right presentation management.

Although finding the best presentation software out there may be on some peoples minds, presentation management doesn’t mean downloading a new program and investing in learning how to use a new piece of software. It can be simple.

Some companies create folders on their shared drives for people to upload their presentations, and make their teams aware of any changes via email. For example – Shared Drive >> Presentation >> Marketing >> Reports >> 2018 >> May

This is probably the simplest way of coming up with a system in which to store your presentations. But is also one of the easiest to have ignored or messed up.

If you believe that using folders is the best route to go down with storing your presentations, try delegating control in certain departments to one individual. By doing so, you shift the responsibility to one employee, who the rest of the team know will be checking up on them with their presentation management.

Some who use folders also make sure to name their presentations with very long titles, so that they’re easier to find later through the search function. For example, instead of twitter-report-2018.ppt changing it to twitter-report-2018-q1-user insights-statistics-RT-likes-mentions-demographics.ppt

Some people don’t like to separate their presentations from other files, because it makes sense to work project by project, or theme by theme. For these teams, having a presentation space for everyone to use might not be the best option. Instead, zipping up files every month may be the right way to handle things.

This is a great presentation management solution for those who want to keep all of their files locally on their computer and also want to be able to save on space.

Given the recent rise of Slack, many people now us it as their go to for information sharing. Whether that’s presentation slides or logo formats, Slack has turned into the hip new storage unit.

However, the search function on slack can leave much to be desired. With problems such as searching for a particular report resulting in either getting a thousand results or none. Seldom in between.

But, there are better ways to use slack for your files. One of which is to send important presentations to yourself in a personal message. Another way would be to set up a #presentations-2018 channel for everyone to upload their presentations to. This makes it easier to search, as Slack allows you to search inside specific channels with the in: command.

Having a natural place where every presentation is stored can bring value to some teams. Not having to search around for a memory stick, or worry about corrupted files can take an extra layer off the unnecessary stress that comes with certain presentations. In most cloud platforms, the ability to share PowerPoints with colleagues or departments is also a great asset, meaning that information can be easily shared, but still with elements of privacy if needed.

Another good use of cloud services regarding business presentations is to keep a folder of all the company templates which are up to date. This allows for an element of control for the design team in presentation management, and also a way to keep everyone on the right page.

But not every cloud has a silver lining. Some people feel that uploading presentations to cloud services isn’t secure enough, or company policy dictates that there is no cloud approved server. Leaving individuals having to look elsewhere.

Multiple Platforms

Using lots of different platforms is another method which is commonly used by businesses. It’s often favoured by those who have trouble with business presentations from different departments being mixed up. For some this method works well as it stops files being confused with others, updated or deleted. It also allows teams to designate someone to be in charge of each platform without having to take on the responsibility of everything.

However, for some teams this can cause a lack of accountability, and increase the chances of not storing their presentations where they should be.

Email Presentations to Yourself

Perhaps one of the most common ‘storage’ system out there – email. Sending presentations to yourself by email is a common trick used by many individuals who want to save on hard disk space without using a cloud platform.

To make the most of this technique, you can easily ‘tag’ your emails by writing all they key words which may one day help you to find that presentation again.

For instance, if you’re sending a marketing report from your latest twitter campaign in an attachment, your email may read ‘Twitter, Social Media, Report, Q1 2018, Presentation etc. ’ But remember that although this may work for individuals with a few presentations, there is no ability for you to view all of your presentations side by side for comparison, or use presentation management for teams.

Using presentation management also means keeping up a high standard of quality with all your business presentations. This can be made easier by knowing a few tricks of the trade, and working out what would be appropriate to you, your team and your company as a whole. Creating a mix of the solutions below or sticking to one rigid system can be the right solution, depending on the your company, and your needs.

Corporate Templates

Corporate slides are a common sight in business, regardless of the industry. They are used by companies to keep brand guidelines tight, and to ensure that each presentation is kept in a similar style across the company.

They are normally a set of PowerPoint slides with the company colors, fonts and logos built in as standard to every business presentation. All intended to be used by employees across every department. In some companies, these are updated every quarter. In others, only every few years. But regardless of when they are updated, slide templates are rigid, tricky to fit graphs over, and restrictive of color schemes. However, they do the job. So for some companies who don’t make many presentations, corporate templates do the basic task of keeping branding in there somewhere, without much fuss over the specifics of presentation management.

Presentation Templates

Presentation templates are usually a set of 30-50 sides which have many different formats. From charts to data, and processes to a who’s who of team members. Creating well formatted sides can be difficult to create from scratch, so having something to work from with an appropriate, and Keynote or PowerPoint friendly design can be a great asset when weighing up the right presentation management solution.

Although individuals may find benefit in having such presentation templates stored on their desktop, being able to cut and paste slides wherever and whenever necessary, this is not a sustainable solution for large teams who consistently need slides for various purposes.

However, if you’re the only person creating presentations in your company, you might want to take a look at Improve Presentation for hundreds of fully editable pitch decks.

Management Systems

Some organisations choose to document every presentation, file, picture etc. in one place. Allowing desktop space to be freed, and data to be updated continuously. This empowers companies who struggle with keeping employees aware of updates to make sure everyone is using the latest data. Whilst also ensuring they are making good quality presentations with the right information.

In keeping a management system active for all company data which is intended to be shared, companies usually choose from DMS, CMS or ECM depending on their needs. These management systems vary by the needs of the company. From ECM systems, which concentrate on extensive documentation, delivery, managing and storing, to DMS which acts more like a filing cabinet for slides, allowing for individuals to quickly locate files in a more organized system than available locally on drives.

If you need to store more than presentations in a logical way, presentation management can be incorporated into such systems easily instead of using the best presentation software which will only help with part of the problem.

PowerPoint Version Control

PowerPoint version control is a function often overlooked by companies who rely on PowerPoint for their presentation making. It’s a way for employees to keep one master version of a presentation. Instead of having many of the revisions take up space, and potentially cause problems when presenting the most recent updates of data. Employees can use PowerPoint version control to send their business presentations for review, whilst still keeping the original. Or, they can send it to co-workers for edits, all the while having the clean master version.

Simply open the original presentation, then click review >> compare and follow the onscreen instructions to complete the merging process between PowerPoint files.

Presentation People

Keeping track of the quality of presentations can also be measured by an element found in every office – people. Presentation people, or as they’re less fondly known if they do a bad job – ‘presentation police’, can work to ensure employees know that the quality and style of every presentation must always be kept on point.

Some businesses opt for having presentations scored, but that doesn’t work for all teams. Others work on a system of rewards or bonuses for quality presentations, or their own system which has proved efficient before.

Another way companies keep presentations manageable is to designate different members to certain types of business presentations. For example, having John in charge of ensuring that all financial reports are presented with up to date information, whilst Sarah is charged with keeping client reporting up to scratch.

Making full use of previous Presentations

Using presentations to their full potential can cause some serious ‘ Ah ha! ’ moments in some offices. This is mostly because presentations are not really anyone’s favorite thing to do, and the idea of using PowerPoint for another purpose may seem ridiculous. And that’s before even considering the problems of trying to actually locate presentation files.

But once the quality of presentations is improved, the other uses of presentations become clearer. From on boarding new employees, to researching for the next investor update, presentations can be a great way to get a current handle of what is going on in the company.

...once the quality of presentations is improved, the other uses of presentations become clearer. Click To Tweet

Managers and Presentation Management

Management can often find presentation organization a little daunting. There are so many business presentations made everyday, that coming up with a universal solution can seem difficult. And no-one wants to be seen as unofficial branding police for presentation management. Many managers face the presentation decision that perhaps having a good office atmosphere is worth taking the responsibility for the odd bad presentation.

But not all managers find this a difficult decision. Many also ensure that their team are always up to date with the presentation content. But the price to pay is that they are investing time which they could spend working on other projects, instead of presentation management.

Managers can also become a key focus point for presentation related questions, as they often watch most of the presentations themselves, and can act as a good knowledge base of where to start looking for the right information.

Best Presentations

Companies must have a set of best in class presentations for employees to aim for. If your team have no idea what to work towards, creative licenses will be used not only in the presentations themselves, but also in where they store them. If your team don’t have a location where your business templates or other presentation materials are kept, you’re missing a trick, and you’re likely to be causing an organizational mess. Although finding the best presentation software out there is the right answer for some, it’s also possible that you just need to find the right storage method for your PowerPoints.

Having a place where you show best practises also serves another purpose. It allows departments to give praise to certain employees, whilst also encouraging others to look up to them for great presentation skills. Keeping your best-in class presentations clear is a must for all companies, both large and small if you want to get employees presenting perfectly.

Catching up Employees

Catching up employees is also a common problem in some companies. From annual leave to unexpected absences, getting everyone on the same page at the same time can be hard. Some businesses use the PowerPoints created since the employee has been away as an audio visual tool for the explanation of events. This allows companies to not skip any changes and not have to spend a morning attempting to recollect events.

By having an upload point for your presentations, catching up those who have been away can become a much simpler process. Whilst also making it easier for the individuals themselves to remember all the events which have happened. Best of all, this would come at no extra cost chasing down presentations, or time wasted having to remember everything that has happened.

Keeping all your Presentations in one Place

Having your presentations easily accessible is great, but what about individual slides? Keeping individual slides for charts, quotes, maps and everything else your team might need is pretty much impossible to do on your own.

But, we have come up with a solution for that problem – google images for presentation slides. In fact an entire library of company branded slides on an online platform for you and your team to access 24/7.

It’s called SlideCamp , and it’s where managers have control over every presentation, which means being able to oversee that quality, quantity and proper use of presentations is always being handed well.

1. Quantity

The quantity of presentations in any team builds up over time, or can come crashing down like an avalanche when a company conference comes up. SlideCamp comes with an upload and search function, which doesn’t just allow you to search the title and tags of every presentation, but also the content within each individual slide. Permissions and sharing features are also available to ensure that the quantity of presentations can be kept under control. Whilst newly created presentations can live in one online location, rather than in many across the company.

Teams often struggle with keeping the quality of presentations the same across the board. With employees each having a different individual take on what the company branded template should really look like. But by using SlideCamp’s slide library the quality of presentations will stay at the same professional level. Creative employees will be able to display information in different ways rather than go off brand, and any new need of creativity can be channeled by simply requesting a new slide template from us.

Repurposing presentations for different functions is also important to managing presentations properly. SlideCamp enables you and your team to share links to your presentations instead of having files clog up your company computers with many versions of the same thing. At the same time managers are also in a much better position to proofread presentations before they are made, catch-up employees who have been away, and give a boost to productivity when lost time in presentation design is no longer an issue amongst their team.

Making presentations manageable will have different solutions for different teams. But by putting aside a little time to consider quantity, quality and proper use of presentation slides, you’re sure to improve your presentation process for your whole company.

Problem: We have too many presentation files flying around everywhere, with no sustainable organizational solution in sight.

Solution: Addressing quality, quantity, and making full use of every presentation results in using presentation management to sort everything out. From zipping up files to cloud services, and presentation police to Slack, this article explores the various ways other businesses out there make their presentations manageable.

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What the New Overtime Rule Means for Workers

One of the basic principles of the American workplace is that a hard day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay. Simply put, every worker’s time has value. A cornerstone of that promise is the  Fair Labor Standards Act ’s (FLSA) requirement that when most workers work more than 40 hours in a week, they get paid more. The  Department of Labor ’s new overtime regulation is restoring and extending this promise for millions more lower-paid salaried workers in the U.S.

Overtime protections have been a critical part of the FLSA since 1938 and were established to protect workers from exploitation and to benefit workers, their families and our communities. Strong overtime protections help build America’s middle class and ensure that workers are not overworked and underpaid.

Some workers are specifically exempt from the FLSA’s minimum wage and overtime protections, including bona fide executive, administrative or professional employees. This exemption, typically referred to as the “EAP” exemption, applies when: 

1. An employee is paid a salary,  

2. The salary is not less than a minimum salary threshold amount, and 

3. The employee primarily performs executive, administrative or professional duties.

While the department increased the minimum salary required for the EAP exemption from overtime pay every 5 to 9 years between 1938 and 1975, long periods between increases to the salary requirement after 1975 have caused an erosion of the real value of the salary threshold, lessening its effectiveness in helping to identify exempt EAP employees.

The department’s new overtime rule was developed based on almost 30 listening sessions across the country and the final rule was issued after reviewing over 33,000 written comments. We heard from a wide variety of members of the public who shared valuable insights to help us develop this Administration’s overtime rule, including from workers who told us: “I would love the opportunity to...be compensated for time worked beyond 40 hours, or alternately be given a raise,” and “I make around $40,000 a year and most week[s] work well over 40 hours (likely in the 45-50 range). This rule change would benefit me greatly and ensure that my time is paid for!” and “Please, I would love to be paid for the extra hours I work!”

The department’s final rule, which will go into effect on July 1, 2024, will increase the standard salary level that helps define and delimit which salaried workers are entitled to overtime pay protections under the FLSA. 

Starting July 1, most salaried workers who earn less than $844 per week will become eligible for overtime pay under the final rule. And on Jan. 1, 2025, most salaried workers who make less than $1,128 per week will become eligible for overtime pay. As these changes occur, job duties will continue to determine overtime exemption status for most salaried employees.

The rule will also increase the total annual compensation requirement for highly compensated employees (who are not entitled to overtime pay under the FLSA if certain requirements are met) from $107,432 per year to $132,964 per year on July 1, 2024, and then set it equal to $151,164 per year on Jan. 1, 2025.

Starting July 1, 2027, these earnings thresholds will be updated every three years so they keep pace with changes in worker salaries, ensuring that employers can adapt more easily because they’ll know when salary updates will happen and how they’ll be calculated.

The final rule will restore and extend the right to overtime pay to many salaried workers, including workers who historically were entitled to overtime pay under the FLSA because of their lower pay or the type of work they performed. 

We urge workers and employers to visit  our website to learn more about the final rule.

Jessica Looman is the administrator for the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. Follow the Wage and Hour Division on Twitter at  @WHD_DOL  and  LinkedIn .  Editor's note: This blog was edited to correct a typo (changing "administrator" to "administrative.")

• Wage and Hour Division (WHD)
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Accelerating scientific and drug discovery in an AI-powered lab

In Gaurav Chopra’s lab, discovery starts with a conversation with an artificial intelligence (AI) agent manager that helps to plan, execute and analyze experiments. Researchers chat in natural language and make a query, perhaps asking to design a drug for a particular target or synthesize a specific molecule. The tool — an AI agent manager — identifies all the resources to fulfill the task and communicates with lower-level agents that represent an instrument in the lab; or domain- or task-specific knowledge; or analysis AI and constructs a workflow to address the query given the resources available in the lab.

The AI agent manager plans the workflow to execute on instruments and identifies the procedures that will be part of the experiment. At the individual agent level, the workflow includes scheduling the instrument with appropriate settings and commands needed for execution and even running specific computer code for operating the instrument.   

And then the work begins.

“The agent manager is like ChatGPT for the lab, and it works with the individual agents for each instrument or for domain-specific knowledge,” said Chopra, a Purdue associate professor of chemistry and (by courtesy) of computer science. “It’s a generalized, modular AI infrastructure that can do any task based on your objective. A lot of people are developing AI agents for one specific task. Our approach is task agnostic — I can swap out lab instruments or datasets and, if I do, I don’t have to change out the entire software infrastructure.”

Chopra is also a steering committee member for the Institute for Physical AI (IPAI) and core member of Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering, and Purdue Institutes for Drug Discovery, Cancer Research and Integrative Neuroscience.

With the goal of accelerating scientific discovery, his lab has been developing the artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) infrastructure with the support of the National Institutes of Health National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). In 2022, Chopra and a team used the AI/ML infrastructure as part of a project that won the grand prize in the NCATS A Specialized Platform for Innovative Research Exploration (ASPIRE) competition. More recently, the NIH awarded a grant to Chopra’s lab to develop a blockchain-based, open science AI framework . The researchers will use blockchain-distributed ledger technology from AI technology developer Onai Inc. to protect IP-sensitive information to promote greater collaboration and reproducibility among different organizations and laboratories.

In a tongue-in-cheek reference to fictional AI developer Skynet, Chopra’s team calls the AI agent’s infrastructure SCINET (Scientific Communication Interaction NETwork). It runs on an “operating system” dubbed LINQX (Ledger for INteractive Query eXecution) that can be expanded or adapted to AI agent-based applications for any instrument or scientific discipline.

To incorporate a new instrument, for example, the team creates a new agent, which is a “living digital twin” of the instrument, with access to the instrument’s command libraries and the ability to learn from usage. The agent can physically control some instruments in the lab, but if the instrument commands are not integrated, the instrument can be manually operated with the AI agent offering instructions from an adjacent laptop. Chopra recently published a new automation workflow for lipidomics on arXiv with the support of instrument manufacturer Agilent Technologies Inc.

As it formulates its workflow, the AI agent manager presents its reasoning for the actions it proposes in a series of “thought, action, observation” steps generated based on the question and the resources available.

“The AI isn’t a black box, it shows you what it is thinking based on your question and what’s available to it,” Chopra said.

And Chopra said the developers in his lab — including graduate students Matthew Muhoberac, Connor Beveridge and Sanjay Iyer — want the AI to augment human effort.

“A lot of the efforts out there are trying to replace humans. We’re not trying to replace the human, we’re trying to augment their work. The whole system helps and works with the user, and plans things from a user perspective,” Chopra said. The human sets the path and the system accelerates workflows with datasets, computational models, accelerates analysis, accelerates experiments to be done based on the plan.”

At its current level, Chopra said SCINET also softens the learning curve for new students who may not know how to code, don’t know protocols for specific tasks, or have no experience in how to use or troubleshoot a particular instrument. Unlike other AI agents, the Chopra team has implemented a memory feature in which the system learns with each query and could eventually become a true research partner.

“The agents start off as technicians, but over time I think they will become scientists to help plan and execute the best way of doing these experiments on these instruments and develop new workflows to accelerate scientific and drug discovery with humans,” Chopra said.

Writer: Mary Martialay, [email protected] Source: Gaurav Chopra, [email protected]