While i was working at Comex then, i used to have this senior who told me, "Presenting something is easy, all you have to do is to look at him, and tell him in the eye that he, cannot live without your product. You will find power in convincing him through knowing explicitly what you are pushing out to him."
With this mind-set, I presented my Car Park Solutions last Friday. Things did not go particularly well. I find myself constantly making errors when presenting certain points, and some points are not clearly explained, leading to an exciting round of Question and Answer session.
My presentation, apparently was seemingly interactive, attire was adequate appropriate and tone and speed was reasonable. However, I did show certain level of stage fear and lack of concentration when I made that few errors. I realised that I did not made full use of the slides as I was going faster than the slides, which would probably confuse my audiences. I too, appeared restless near the end of the presentation, which resulted in points mispronounce and some others, skipped. The language I used had some minor problems too as it was not proper English and had bad grammatical errors, resulting in the presentation being less convincing. My hand gestures did not aid very well to bring out my ideas.
I shall strive never to commit these mistakes again.
Close The Story Book
14 years ago
6 comments:
Dear Byron,
I like the interesting fact from your senior while working at Comex. In a way, it could be called hard selling. But some of the oral presentation skills can be picked up from it.
To be able to sell the product, or in our context, our idea, we must be familiar with the proposal that we are presenting. Being able to drive the important points to the audience is very important. As a result, there would be no major problems in the Q&A session if you know your contents well. I believe more rehearsals, more self-practice and to be clearer of what you are presenting would be good for future presentations. Attire-wise, I always believed that first impression counts. Wearing a long sleeve shirt would definitely be more appropriate for the presentation.
I like the fact that at some point of the Q&A, you admitted that you overlooked some of the important parts of your argument. Instead of trying to argue your way out of the situation, you decided that admitting the fault is a better solution. I believe that knowing when to concede or to defend your idea would let the audience see your maturity in handling the matter.
Good Luck to your Oral Defence on Monday!!!
Regards,
Kevin Lin
Hi Byron,
Firstly, I would like to point out that there are some grammatical and tense errors in your post. Do rectify them when you have the time. Also, you could have listed a set of criteria which you used to evaluate your performance.
Your presentation was not all that doom and gloom. Your strengths were maintaining eye contact with the audience instead of constantly looking at the slides and also the use of visuals to illustrate your point. In your case, you used the whiteboard to draw out the solution which made things clearer.
However as you mentioned, you were visibly nervous and your choice of words were inappropriate for a formal presentation. So, in the future, try to work on them and I am sure you will come good.
I would like to also state that you carried the team for most parts of the "heated" Q&A. Good job!
Hi Byron,
It would probably be better if you could elaborate on how to improve upon the mistakes that you felt you had done, such as making hand-held notes/checkpoints to prevent going faster than the slides. Linking back to the erros made in OP1 would be good too.
Overall, I believe the that strong point in the your team's presentation would be that the team kept their cool during the Q&A session, especially when everyone started bombarding you all with questions.
Good job and keep these errors you pointed out in mind for the 1102 Oral Defense! =)
Hi Byron,
I think you have made some improvements from the last presentation.
In terms of the non-verbal skills, you were good. You maintained proper eye contact with the audience and made appropriate use of non visual aids. However, due to nervousness your posture wasn’t appropriate.
I think you should work on your verbal skills because you made a few grammatical errors. You even messed up some points. This practice is undesirable as it tends to distract the audience.
You were polite while answering the questions during Q & A session. When you felt that the team wasn’t able to answer a query repeatedly you just accepted that you haven’t considered that point. This is a good practice because sometimes negotiations can lead to an ugly situation. So, it’s better to stop the discussion before it gets worse.
In your reflection, you could have elaborated more on your weak points and strong points. Moreover, there are some grammatical errors in the post which could be rectified. It’s better to proofread your post to ensure proper language and organisation.
I feel that it is good you realised your mistakes that you made during the presentation. Try to work on them and I am confident that you will do better presentations in future.
Good luck for the exams!!
Thanks
Best Regards,
Nitika
Hi Byron,
Firstly, your individual presentation was not as bad as you thought. Overall, you presented well and you were polite in admitting your own mistakes.
However, the content of your group's presentation somehow appears to be insufficient to me. The solutions are weak, and I felt that some of the solutions did not address to the problem that you have identified (which is the lack of car-park spaces). Therefore, it led to a heated Q&A session because the audience were able to find faults in your arguments. So next time, be careful in planning the contents of the presentation, and try to find evidences and supports for each point that you make. This would reduce the number of doubts from the audience and hence people would not be able to find faults with you easily. :)
Jing Mei
Thank you for your comments!
Ganesh- You mentioned that i had some grammatical errors. May i know which phrase or sentence are you referring to?
Rax- I did want to write out on how to resolve these errors. But i have more problems with word limits.
Nitika- I must admit that some of the mistakes i made were disastrous and i am not very able to rectify or twist the error on the spot. I did came prepared, but i was not very stable due to lack of practice.
Jing Mei- I must stress that our solution could at most pull off as adequate. I am trying to pull of a solution to solve a problem for a relative long term, e.g. 50 years. I must admit that i did not set a proper parameter to our solution, which resulted in a heated QnA session. On the other hand, i still think some of th questions posted were way out of point. Things like consumer choice and likes or dislikes is that bit of of topic. Then again, i did not state my parameters, hence, i accept it as my flaw.
Many thanks to my CEG coursemates and ms Happy for being presented at the presentation. I loved your responds to my solution(the "heated" QnA); it told me that you, are listening and that made me happy.=)
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