This article is written by Paravasthu Jagannathan, Manager at the Department of Planning and Development in the United Arab Emirates

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I recently attended Apolitical’s webinar about public speaking for public servants. It’s something we all have to do from time to time, and being good at it can open many doors. Likewise, I am sure most of us will recognize the nervous feeling one can get when speaking in front of an audience.

A good presentation should start with a strong title that addresses the issues on hand and promises options towards finding the solutions to those issues

In this article, I cover some of the techniques I use to prepare presentations.

Finding your topic

You may not always have the privilege of being the first speaker, and if you are presenting after several others the audience might be disengaged. As such, it is good practice to begin your presentation with a contentious or a challenging topic that can potentially unseat the audience or wake them from their slumber. This often takes the form of question(s) and seeking a wider response, a synthesis of which will create a narrative for your title/topic.

A good presentation should start with a strong title that addresses the issues on hand and promises options towards finding the solutions to those issues. The importance of coining the right title cannot be overemphasized as it is this topic that serves to create the preliminary link between you and the audience. It is worth spending time listing several possible options, filtering those that are more appropriate for the event and picking that one which would appeal to the majority of the participants. Although this sounds simple, the process involves critical steps; putting on the proverbial caps of various government entities, introspection of what you as an audience and a civil servant would like to hear, how you would like to take forward the message, and of course, how strongly you are connected to the subject.

As an example, consider an event focusing on an environment where you (as a public servant working on green infrastructure) are invited as a speaker to share your experience. You, as an experienced official, are obviously aware of the most pressing issue in the field of the environment, including climate change adaptation and mitigation. The next crucial exercise is to relate buildings with climate change, its impacts and how it can be presented as an antidote for the problem. This would offer several titles such as “Policy barriers to climate change: Role of Built Environment”, “Emission Reductions and climate change mitigation through Green Buildings”, “A Greener Environment through Green Buildings” and several others.

Do your research

A value-based presentation requires a good deal of prior research on the theme as well as your topic.

Very often it can be quite tempting to use an existing presentation lock, stock and barrel and present it across several events. Nothing could be a better recipe for evoking a poor response and a disastrous outcome. Ideally, each and every presentation should be clearly customized and structured so as to align itself well with the event. Doing the initial research often involves considering the diversity of the audience, their potential interests and contemplating what exactly they would like to hear from you. This also requires a careful introspection of your own thoughts as though you are listening to your speech.

Your experience, your analysis and your advice — all coming from you — is what matters most to the audience

There would be a brief intellectual and emotional session of conflicts but in the end you can clearly visualize and feel the clarity. This would help in removing unnecessary and irrelevant subjects out of your scope and bringing out just the important ones, paving the path for a clear and concise understanding of your own role in terms of what would be the best delivery. Accordingly, you are on track towards a well-defined outline/agenda.

Create an outline

The proposed agenda should guide the audience naturally and nudge them into identifying themselves with the flow. I would recommend that the outline includes:

  • A look back in time, to help give the audience a perspective on how the issue has evolved
  • A discussion of the current issues that require their attention
  • Identifying the barriers that prevent these problems from being solved

From that point, you can narrow it down to discuss how your specific presentation would endeavour to find a solution. It is a must to conclude with a takeaway or some sort of a message that would serve as a starting point for the stakeholders to carry forward in their day to day role.

The presentation

This is the actual part where you start explaining and adding information to the points that you have outlined earlier. It is important to be conscious of the fact that there is a limit to what you can convey during the brief time allotted to you, so you should focus on what’s most important. Cramming lots of things in your slides and packing them with pictures and text and maybe even complicating them further with our own interpretation may be counterproductive and would not be received well. There should be a delicate balance which is generally achieved by having key texts on the slide (preferably in bullets for clarity and sequence) and speaking about those in a concise manner. Pictures/figures are extremely crucial to add weight to those points. As enticing as it can be to read aloud directly from the text on the slide, I’d strongly advise you not to give in to that temptation. Your experience, your analysis and your advice — all coming from you — is what matters most to the audience.

Adding case studies greatly assists in retaining the attention. The guests would always be keen to understand how others are handling similar situations. Your profile as a government servant dictates the nature of case studies that you may like to discuss. It may be other jurisdictions, other states, other countries, a specific industry or a particular policy lever. It is also pertinent to highlight specific achievements to drive the point that their policy instruments/initiatives have yielded positive results and there is no reason why it cannot be done here noting the similar circumstances/background that we both possess.

At the end of the day, what matters most is the satisfaction that you as a government servant have been able to make a difference to the community/domain that you serve. — Paravasthu Jagannathan

(Picture credit: Unsplash)