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First of all, I understand that the title to this article is not new because many authors have previously expressed their view on this topic. What makes this article original is that what I am sharing below is based on my own experience as a trainer for more than 10 years. In compiling the Do’s and Don’ts lists below, I would also like to acknowledge all my mentors for their generous sharing of experience and techniques used in their own training.

Here is my Do’s list:

• Find out whether the training is conducted in my own room or other people’s room. If it is in other people’s room, I will find out from the event organiser whether there are any specific requirements for the participants. I do not assume that my rules are their rules.
• Prepare my template by listing down the title to the presentation; a few enrolling questions to engage the participants at the very beginning; my personal story and the answer to the question “why am I qualified to give the presentation”. Finally, I will also prepare a list of benefits my participants will receive out of the presentation based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (“MBTI”) Model and/or the Extended DISC Model.
• Prepare my script and rehearse as many times as possible before the actual presentation. This is to ensure that the presentation flow would be smooth.
• Prepare the timetable and decide what kinds of group activities would be used in the presentation.
• Remind myself through visualisation technique that I will use empowering and positive language in my training at all times.
• Decide the marketing plan and opportunities for the participants who might be interested in my other programmes. I understand that many authors do not include this in their do’s lists. I guess this is because they believe that they are only speakers and not information business entrepreneurs. According to my mentor, a speaker only speaks. An information business entrepreneur makes information sharing a business.
• Always acknowledge my participants for their participation and sharing. If applicable, I will also acknowledge the event organiser for its effort to organise the event and put my participants and me together.
• Make sure there are regular opportunities for the participants to do their review and revision in order to reinforce what they have learnt.
• Prepare a speech for delivering at the end of the training session as a proper closure.

Here is my Don’ts list:

• Do not use PowerPoint unless I am showing pictures and diagrams which require a certain degree of accuracy. Use flip charts as my main teaching tool instead.
• Do not conduct the training as a monologue. Instead, always look for opportunities to engage my participants by asking them questions.
• Do not show off. The training is not a forum to show how much I know on the topic I am teaching. It is my participants’ show and I should let them shine.
• Do not mumble or speak too fast. A good trainer is someone who can communicate well with his participants. Speaking slowly and clearly will allow my participants to understand my messages.
• Do not let my participants’ energy level go down because this would be detrimental to their learning. If needed, stop teaching immediately and perform stage change techniques. I will only resume the teaching when my participants are back to their original energy level.
• When dealing with questions from the participants, do not assume that I must answer all of them. Other participants might be able to answer some of these questions. I can take a step back and become the facilitator of the exchange of views between the participants.
• Avoid using judgemental comments or passing unnecessary remarks about my participants.
• Do not keep on teaching without giving breaks to my participants. I confess that I have been guilty of this for years.

I hope you will benefit from my Do’s and Don’ts lists as discussed above. Visit my website as I have a lot of useful tips on public speaking. Please leave me with your comments on my website as I would love to hear from you too.

When it comes to negotiation the negotiation teams are busy strategically planning and working on each other’s moves almost like a giant chess game. Still, if the negotiation and agreement is supposed to work long-term, there must be something on the table for both parties. Negotiations have to be a little bit of “win-win” because if they are too much one-sided and too much “win-lose” in the end everyone loses because the deal falls through, or the objectives are not met causing problems for both sides.

The difference between negotiation and chess is that in chess there are specific rules, and it’s easier to predict your opponent. In negotiation although there are unspoken rules, almost anything goes. This is why creativity in negotiation matters very much, and the team with it has a huge advantage as they can come up with innovative ways to solve problems, and help the other party get what they want, so their team can get what it wants.

The more creative the negotiators, and the more agile they are, the more opportunities they have. This clearly gives them the advantage by far. All too often, people go to school to learn negotiation, and some of the top negotiators in the world have often gone to the same school interestingly enough. In top business level negotiations many of the parties involved either went to Harvard or to Yale. They are working out of the same playbook.

So, if you have someone on your team that is highly creative and did not attend Harvard or Yale then your team has the advantage, do you see that point? I hope you will please consider all this because it has come to me at a very high price, through my many years of negotiation. It was a learning process for me, and much of it I learned the hard way. So please think on it.

Most business people face the inevitability of having to deliver a presentation at some point. Of course, there are several ways in which you can accomplish that; however, at some point, you will probably use PowerPoint, which can be a really good thing. You need to find a way to really engage your audience and to keep them in the palm of your hand.

The most effective tools to use in your presentation–leveraging PowerPoint

When it comes to delivering a presentation, your goal is to engage your audience members and to get them to participate in a discussion with you and with other audience members. Your presentation is only the launching-off point. After that, your hope is that the people with whom you interacted at your presentation will want to continue to interact with you in some form indefinitely after that.

If the people who originally attended your presentation want to continue interacting with all of you (or just you), that will give you your opportunity to work on relationship with the other people and your ultimate goal, once you relationship has developed and become very solid (after building trust, credibility, positioning yourself as a subject matter expert, and building trustworthiness) is to be in a position of selling your offerings.

When it comes to your relying on PowerPoint to help you deliver your presentation effectively, there are ways to use it that will yield very positive results.

• Get your audience members to engage with each other and with you: As you are presenting your material, it is very important for you to encourage the members of your audience to interact. If you manage to make that happen, using PowerPoint becomes much less of a crutch. Instead, it becomes a nice tool to help you along. However, the real catalyst in that situation is the actual discussion itself. You should use your slides as discussion points. They will help you to keep your thoughts organized and it will drive your discussion in an organized fashion.
• Asking thought-provoking questions is an effective approach: Your questions (as long as they are interesting) will be a starter for your discussion. Everyone likes to feel as though their opinion matters to other people and that is exactly how you make them feel if you ask a question and make it clear that you value whatever they share with you in response. In fact, on the opposite side of the coin, there is nothing worse than asking a question, hoping to engage people and get them to respond to what you are saying, and they say nothing at all. It makes you feel as though they have absolutely no interest in what you are doing and in what you are sharing with them. It makes you feel as though they don’t value you and your business.
• Use PowerPoint in your Web-based presentation: It is certainly not uncommon for you to give a presentation in a WebEx or some other Web-based meeting. In that case, you can make your meeting interactive, just like you would have an interactive meeting if you were in the same room (physically) with your audience. However, the one limitation that you will have in that particular environment is that because you can’t see your audience in person, it may be more difficult to figure out how they are feeling (and thus, reacting) to whatever you are saying. That is about the body language. It is totally acceptable in that situation to recognize and work around the limitation of your audience not actually being in front of you in person. It is probably best not to wait until the end of your presentation to ask your audience if they have any questions or comments.
• Make use of PowerPoint’s interactive capabilities: Just because when you use PowerPoint, you present slides to your audience does not mean that it has absolutely no interactive capabilities. In fact, what you can do is embed links that lead to other information from your LinkedIn presentation. That is extremely easy to do and you can get a great deal of mileage from using back links to other valuable content. If you can manage to establish an interactive relationship and build that aspect into your presentations, you will be able to solidify your relationships and you will see positive results before too long.

Conclusion

Delivering presentations is an important and necessary part of your business (at least, in most cases). It is important that you recognize the significance of your presentations being compelling and engaging. Your short-term goal is to engage people. Make sure that your sincerity and your genuineness comes through every time and that you give your audience a clear idea of what they will gain by attending your presentation. It is a wonderful incentive for them. Your long-term goal is to eventually sell your offerings to those people with whom you have been able to establish a connection.