What are the qualities of a good presentation?
There is no single agreed list of 5 or 10 qualities. What matters is 4 cornerstones: your audience has to understand what you said, remember it, act on it, and be able to pass it on to someone else. Everything else, including story driven data and a practiced Q and A, exists to serve those four.
Start with 4 cornerstones, not a list of 10
Searches for 5 or 10 qualities of a good presentation are usually looking for a checklist, but the real starting place is 4 cornerstones for being a master communicator, one who actually conveys leadership.
One: understand
People need to understand what you say. If you lose people at level one, because you were speaking in jargon or you had too many tangents and they don't really understand your information, you've lost them, and your presentation was a waste of time.
Two: remember
People need to remember what you said. This means using story driven data. Stories are very memorable because they are visual, which is part of why we see a lot of success with our health and finance clients who use this system.
Three: act, and the doctor who never prescribes
The third cornerstone is action: bringing an audience of one or many to actual action, which means including clear calls to action. Unfortunately most trainings spend more time talking about PowerPoint than about feeling comfortable enough to be the guide and give multiple calls to action. Think of it like a doctor: a doctor examines, diagnoses, and prescribes. Imagine how silly it would be for a doctor to examine a broken arm, diagnose it, and then never prescribe what to do about it. A presentation that stops at information and never prescribes an action is doing exactly the same thing.
Four: pass it on
If somebody really understood, remembered, and was able to act on the information, they can pass it on, and that is the all-important word of mouth that carries a presentation past the room it was given in.
What sits on top of the 4 cornerstones
On top of these 4 core areas, we add story driven data, and the one part of presenting that always gets overlooked and is almost never part of a presentation program: the Q and A session. This is where a presentation wins or dies, and it takes the right frameworks and real practice to get it right.
Jess Todtfeld is a Certified Speaking Professional and former NBC, ABC, and FOX news producer with 13 years of network television experience. The 4 cornerstones come from watching thousands of guests either land a message or lose it, on camera, with no second take.