Making Effective Presentations:
Body Language and Dealing with Questions

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Body Language

Remember that a message is conveyed not only by words but also by facial expression, posture, gestures. People say that as much of 75 percent of a message is conveyed by body language. If you are nervous, you will betray this in your body language, perhaps by pacing or repeating some gesture like touching your ear or fingering your clothing. All this can be distracting for your audience, so you might need to practice in front of a mirror or a video camera. Aim for a clear, steady gaze and look at individuals in the audience from time to time. Don't pace or fidget or tap your toe. Try to match your facial expressions to the tone of your subject. If you find you are becoming nervous, pause for a second and take a sip of water to give you time to recover.

Dealing with questions

Questions at the end of the presentation are of four main kinds:

1. questions you can answer on the spot
2. questions that require further information you don't have with you
3. questions you wish to avoid
4. aggressive questions.

The first kind is no problem and you will deal with them as efficiently as you can. For the second kind, you should acknowledge the question as useful/important/interesting and offer to send the information on, or provide another source of information, if the questioner gives you an address after the presentation. For questions you wish to avoid, you should find some formulae for politely declining to answer:

1. that's really too complicated an issue to discuss right now
2. that's beyond my brief for today
3. I'm not really the best person to deal with that question.

If someone in the audience is asking aggressive questions, then acknowledge their anger and politely decline to get involved:

I can see you are upset/angry/disturbed by this, but this not the time to engage in an argument.

 
 

For a teaching lesson plan for this lesson see: Effective Presentations Lesson Plan For teaching lessons on business and careers see:  Teaching Business Lessons and Careers

 

 

 

Go back to Part 1: Making Effective Presentations

 

 

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