I remember the week leading up to the oral presentation as one filled with much sweat and toil. In addition to meetings (some would prefer to call them brainstorming sessions), my team and I had to rehearse as well. Through the constant cycle of feedback and refinement, our ideas began to develop and materialize. Much of our efforts were centred on the content, flow and organization of the presentation.
After much laborious preparation, it was time to deliver the final product. Admittedly, there was immense pressure being the first speaker of my team. I remember rehearsing countless times both in an empty classroom as well as in front of friends. During one of our meetings, Diana gave an excellent piece of advice which was to “start with a bang”.
With this in mind, I began the presentation with a true story. Not only was it thought-provoking, it was also able to engage the audience on an emotional level. And it appeared that the story worked its charm during the presentation. To confirm that I’m not mistaken, here is the test: do you still remember what the story was?
The story was not told in isolation, which was why Diana redirected the audience back to the story during the summary. I felt that I had a good introduction and was clear in addressing the NUSEU and explaining the objectives of the presentation. In addition, I thought that my voice projection and eye contact were not an issue for the most part of the presentation. However, although I managed to highlight the communication need in a concise manner, more could have been done with respect to the persuasiveness of the argument.
Confidence was at its all-time high at the beginning of the presentation, but plunged when I suffered from a momentary concentration lapse in the middle of the presentation. This broke my train of thoughts and unfortunately, I was forced to activate my contingency plan -referring to my laptop. Although I tried my best not to refer to the script, there were a few occasions where I had to take a brief glance to establish connections between 2 ideas. It was terribly disappointing as everything was going as planned until that moment. Nevertheless, I managed to calm down and regain focus following that anxious experience. Also, it helped to see Rohan smiling reassuringly among the audience. There was no need to superimpose a friendly face on another person.
On the whole, I felt that my team possessed excellent team dynamics. There was good rapport between the speakers as demonstrated by the smooth transition from speaker to speaker. One could also tell that there was flow and consistency in the slides. I believe that my team’s efforts manifested itself in our confident and systematic approach to the presentation.
Unnerving as the oral presentation was, I came out of it in deeper appreciation of how to organize and construct a persuasive oral argument. A minimalistic approach with respect to the slideware was employed, thereby focusing the audience’s attention on the speakers. This made it all the more vital for the speaker to engage the audience. I realized the power of stories to draw the attention of the audience. Furthermore, the importance of team dynamics was highlighted throughout the process of the entire oral presentation – all the way from the preparatory stage to the finale. I have indeed learnt much from this valuable experience and your (yes you, the reader) comments will go a long way in helping me develop into a more effective communicator.
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Dear Zhisheng,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for the mention. It made me feel like a celebrity for the moment(haha!). Glad I was able to help, albeit without realizing it.
The points I had noted down with regards to your bit was the impressive story start (yes, I do remember the story) and the good looking first slide. Gradually, your pace did slow down which began to give me a feeling that it was memorized and as you realized yourself, a bit of the momentum was lost when you had to look into your laptop screen.
Just a suggestion for next time - maybe it would be good to have no contingency plan whatsoever as it would possibly help you think on your speech. That's how I trained myself and it worked well even if there were a few disasters at first.
Overall, I thought you made a good start. There were points when I felt you could have been more direct but all in all, you had my attention!
Great job and all the best!
Cheers
Rohan
Hi Zhisheng,
ReplyDeleteI think you have captured much of my observations about your oral presentation in your post: There was a good start, but a rather abrupt loss of concentration for a moment which culminated with you looking into your laptop screen. This gave me an unfortunate impression that you were not too sure about your content, although I am confident that is not really the case.
With regards to this, I would disagree with Rohan. I feel that it is always good to have a contingency plan, just that you could made yours less obvious. For example, you could have put in the things you wanted to talk about in your hand-held cue cards instead.
For your group's presentation in general, I would like to just highlight that I found a lack of linkage between your primary research and recommendations. In fact, if I had not recalled wrongly, there was little or no mention of your primary research before questions and answers. I realise that that could be because your group felt that was unnecessary as the methodology was covered in your written proposal, but I feel that a summary of your research would nevertheless be of help.
All in all, a good job done, although there is still some room for improvement (like wearing the blazer as you promised ).
Hello Zhisheng!
ReplyDeleteWell done with using the black background to tell your story. It kept the audience's focus on you and not at anything else on the screen. Yes I do remember the story about the doctor persistently pestering the donor's family for the organs to the extent they said no to the organ donation.
At most parts, you were really calm and composed as you were presenting, up till you suffered that mental block. I know what you were going through, we all get that.
But I found it quite distracting that you kept looking at your laptop. In this case, I thought it would have been better to have cue cards instead. But this is just how I feel, I would have been more comfortable with using cue cards instead of a laptop. One is bigger than the other.
Anyways, good job with the presentation!
~nicole
Hi, Zhi Sheng.
ReplyDeleteOverall I felt you did a really good job. Here are some of my opinions of your presentation:
You started really well and looked really confident giving the impression that you know your contend well. You had good voice projection and eye contact throughout the presentation. However, during some parts of your presentation I felt you were speaking a little too slowly which could cause me to lose focus.
I also got the impression that you memorized part of your speech halfway through the presentation. This is because you were trying very hard to ensure that you said the right words and you will correct yourself immediately when you make the mistakes, causing you to stutter at times. Personally I thought the words that you said wrong sounded perfectly fine and we the audience have no idea what your script is, so it should be alright to continue normally.
The story really does capture attention and I still do remember it. Personally I feel it might be of greater effect if it is said after the problem statements to help reinforce the point more clearly.
This could be just me, but I found it weird that you started immediately with the story and doing a proper introduction after it.
Good job overall!
Hi Zhi Sheng,
ReplyDeleteI like the way you started the presentation. It does makes me interested to listen more. In terms of delivery, I felt you had good voice projection and good pace. In addition, you also vary your tone which makes me sense the emotion.
However, as your presentation proceeded on, I can feel a drop in confidence level. In my opinion your confidence level should only rise throughout the presentation. I’m glad you did notice it.
Nevertheless, it was a job well done! I have to admit it does takes a lot of courage to present like what you did.
Cheers,
Godwin
Thank you ladies and gentlemen! I really appreciated the feedback.
ReplyDelete@ rohan: You’re welcomed! Thanks for the tip on how to improve by doing away with the contingency. And I believe there is good reason to do so - the temptation to take a peek is often too difficult to resist. I’ll definitely bear this in mind the next time I have to do a presentation.
@ Clement: To be honest, my team ran into much difficulty while carrying out our primary research. We did not have much statistics like the other groups to substantiate our points, but we did our best to support it with secondary research. Also, like you have already pointed out, we had mentioned the limitations of our methodology in our proposal. Thus we felt that there was a greater need to highlight the limitations of our proposed changes. Nevertheless, I can understand why a summary of our research would have been useful.
@ Nicole: I did have a slip of paper in my hands with the main points. It was my original plan to refer to the paper instead of the laptop. Unfortunately my handwriting was so bad that I couldn’t read the words on it. I suppose I have no one else to blame but myself.
@Glenn: Thanks Glenn! You were right about the memorization. I guess I have much to work on that aspect.
@ Godwin: I do hope that with I’ll gain more confidence with more practice.