How To Evaluate A Presentation Skills Training Program

As a presenter, seniors evaluate your ability to think and communicate effectively from the quality of your presentation. Customers equate the quality of the product or service to the quality of your sales presentation. Your team will evaluate your ability to lead from your presentation skills.
Presentation Skills are critical...

As you can see, excellent presentation skills are absolutely essential for career and business. If you are looking at honing your presentation skills, there are a number of trainers, books and training videos out there. How do you evaluate the one that is best for you?

Here are 5 parameters you should use to evaluate a Presentation Skills Training Program:

1. Does it have a structured approach?

Most presenters learn from experience in college and at their workplace. They modify their presentation skills based on self-evaluation and feedback from friends or seniors. If you are one such presenter, there could be gaps in skills that you are not aware of.

Learning a structured approach ensures that you get consistent results time after time.

What to check for:

Does the workshop you are evaluating teach a structured approach to presenting? Check if they have a trademark process (e.g. Minimal Process for presentations) or format (e.g. a storytelling format) that shows they teach a clear process.

2. Is it a comprehensive program?

A good presentation is a combination of thinking skills, design skills and speaking skills. Thinking skills help you put together your thoughts and create a strong story before getting into slides.

PowerPoint or Slide Design skills help you create engaging visual content using diagrams, images and a good layout.

Speaking skills help you open strongly, deal with questions, judge audience reaction and understand your own style of presenting. All 3 parts need to be equally addressed for your skills to be honed.

What to check for:

Most training programs focus on the only a part of these skills. From the training schedule, check the amount of time allocated for each of these components. A good program allocates roughly equal time to all 3 components.

3. Does it go beyond tips and hints?

The problem with many training programs I have seen is that they teach tips and tricks. Tips include advice like, "You should appear confident on stage. Stand straight and look at your audience in the eye to appear confident."

While you may enjoy the program, you will remember nothing of the tricks a week after the training. There is no need to attend a program when you can pick up such tips even with reading free articles.

What to check for:

Watch out for programs schedules that talk about speaking tips, presentation hints, tricks to appear confident and so on. These programs are not intense enough to hone your skills.

4. Does it teach you anything creative?

To be interesting, every presentation needs to have a creative component. This could be in using an opening that grabs audience attention, using diagrams to represent ideas, using images in an unusual way.

What to check for:

No matter what it is, does the training program offer to teach you something unique and creative?

This also shows that the program will be teaching you something beyond the usual. Such creative aspects ensure that you can really sharpen your skills in the program, even if you are an experienced presenter.

5. Is the workshop practical?

This is the most important aspect that is applicable for any training program. If the program is not practical then it is a waste of time. A skill can only be learnt if it is practiced in a safe environment (not in front of the customer).

What to check for:

Check the trainer profile: Is the program being run by an experienced presenter who has experience in presenting as a manager or businessperson? If they have just been a trainer for a short while, it is possible that they do not understand the issues you face.

Check time allocated for practice in the program schedule: Does it provide ample time for practice during the course of the training? This indicates that everything that is being taught is being practiced step-by-step. If the workshop reserves a block of time at the end alone, then you can be sure that the program will not provide you enough practice.

Are there enough practice exercises and will they show you good and bad examples? All these indicate that the training will be far more effective than the run-of-the-mill training.

Once you find a program that matches these five criteria, you can be sure that it will help you hone your presentation skills.
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