Review the video of your Leader as Communicator Group Presentation. Did you have effective content transitions between speakers? How would you evaluate the group’s body language, and eye contact? What do you think were the strengths of the presentation? What would you have liked to have done differently?
Unfortunately due to a death in the family I was unable to attend class. Therefore I can not comment on my body language or that of my group.
However I did the in-class Business Meeting simulation with my group relating to the Sloane-Harrison case, so I can discuss that.
Even though the mock business meeting was not a traditionla presentation, I feel some of the main points apply.
Effective content transitions between speakers: Jesse was the manager so he led the meeting. However he utilized eye contact and effective pausing as cues to me and Yihui that we may interrupt and speak at different moments. This was actually easy for our group because I think we are a good balance of talkers and listeners.
The group’s body language could have been better. In terms of a presentation, it would have been ideal if we were facing the audience. Yihui had his back to the class and I was obscured from view. however, as it was a business meeting and less of a presentation it made sense for us to sit in that configuration. Also, I had to be mindful of what to do with my hands as we learned that crossed arms may indicate a defensive or otherwise negative energy.
Stengths of the presentation: Our group has an ebb and flow style and the balance of personalities are such that we are cognizant of when to listen and when to speak. Therefore, interruption and speaking over one another did not occur during the business meeting. This is a strength as it made the mock meeting appear more realistic and fluent and not disjointed and scripted.
In hindsight I would have liked offered more suggestions to the manager (Jesse) for out to imporve conditions at Sloane-Harrison.
Overall, I thought our group had a strong presentation. The team prepared well, delivered the key points clearly without too much rambling, and was able to get more audience participation than the other teams. The first member did a good job introducing our team and introducing our main points. He handed off the presentation nicely to the second person, who in turn did a good job setting up the topics I was to cover.
One thing that we did well was to introduce and reintroduce key points during transitions, which helped the audience know which points were important. I think this technique made it much easier for us when we presented questions to the audience. As the audience understood what the key points were, many more people participated in our questions than they did for the other teams.
However, after watching the video, I see that our group did leave some room for improvement. In general, I think we could have done better with our body language. At times, we didn’t know what to do with our bodies: one member had his hands in his pockets while I stood rigidly in the same spot. This is one area where I want to improve. It’s difficult to know how best to use one’s body, but body movements can stress key points.
Although I think that my part of the presentation went well, there were certain things I could improve, along with body movement: I should increase eye contact and take more time to accentuate key points. I kept eye contact with people who were sitting in the corner directly in front of me, but not anywhere else. This lack of eye contact with others in the room probably made it more difficult for me to connect with a wider audience. This may be attributable to my lack of movement on the floor; I noticed that I stayed stationed in the same spot through my presentation, and this prevented me from scanning the room to gage how the audience was feeling. And, as I didn’t want to forget key points, I rushed through my presentation, without any pause. This lack of space or silence between key points may have kept the audience from knowing which was the most important.
Public speaking, like most things, takes practice to perfect. I feel that I’m a much better speaker than two years ago when I first took Bus Com I. After having experienced that class and the subsequent presentations in my other classes, I’m beginning to somewhat enjoy public speaking. While I still do fret and get the adrenaline rush, I’m also able to enjoy it more. I guess practice does make perfect… or it at least helps.
Communication Blog #2
Hey all,
After reviewing the Leader as Communicator Group presentation, I noticed some good things and other things that I can improve on. In terms of content transition, I thought that it was smooth. I gave a brief summary of what my partner Anik was going to say. The transition wasn’t abrupt and didn’t kill the flow of the presentation. In terms of body language, I thought we did a good job. I stood up straight and had a reasonable amount of hand gestures to guide the flow of the presentation. I maintained eye contact with the crowd throughout 90% of the presentation. The combination of good posture and eye contact made us appear confident in what we were saying.
The strengths of the presentation were good powerpoint slides that had no clutter of information but only the important points, good eye contact and focus with the audience, and good body language. I thought that we had some good questions for the audience.
Some things to improve on would be the delivery of the material on my part. I sometimes get tongue-tied and jibberish comes out. I need to practice on having a clear train of thought during the presentation. I should prepare more on how to keep the audience entertained. I can also improve on effective hand gestures that utilize the slides and compliment the flow of the presentation.
Overall, I thought the presentation went well. Of course in any presentation there are always thing that you can learn to improve on. Since, I have access to the video I can always look back and see what areas of the presentation that I did poorly.
This is your captain signing out.
-GK
Our team’s leader as a communicator definitely was not the best presentation. The timing was rushed, and we were missing one of our group members. This is not a wholly unrealistic situation, and I would say based upon those two handicaps we did alright, and were able to present the topic with a relative degree of success.
The body language and eye contact we both present was okay. It was clear that the presentation was rushed. I feel Yi did a decent job.
I would have very much have liked to practice more as a group, and prepare our presentation more effectively. In addition, it would have been better to be prepared in the event that the presentation was to be cut short, to know where would have been the best areas to curb, as what we had prepared was intended to be 15 minutes, and not 5 or 10.
My group’s Leader as Communicator Group Presentation was decent. There were definitely many good points as well as some bad points.
Let’s start with the good points. First of all, our group’s body language was good overall. We move our hands around as appropriate to demonstrate our points. Our body language did not really demonstrate too much nervousness such as playing around with our hair or moving around in such a way that showed that we were really nervous. We had decent eye contact with the audience throughout the presentation which was good.
The PowerPoint slides were made well. It did not seem like the audience had too much trouble understanding or looking at the slides. So at the very least the colors and texts were easy for the audience to see clearly. The materials were well organized with different sections and Jesse passed on to me very nicely to continue where he left off.
For me personally, I would like to improve in many ways. Practicing more for the presentation would have definitely helped. Because I was not familiar enough with the PowerPoint slides, I was not able to present and not look at the slides at all. Many other presenters were able to achieve this. I had to look at the slides quite often and sometimes even read off the slides before I demonstrated a point.
Another issue for me is that I speak in a very low voice. I tried speaking louder but I’m not quite confident if I spoke loud enough for everyone to hear me. Especially looking and listening to the recorded video, I was barely able to hear myself when I can hear my group member Jesse okay.
At the end of the presentation with the questions section, I was not quite familiar with the questions. So, I had to pretty much read the question and hoped that the audience would read as well. Of course, the questions were pretty lengthy and deep. I was totally prepared that no one in the audience would answer anything, especially if they want to leave at that time. Luckily, some kind-hearted classmates answered probably out of pity. Thank you very much.
Overall, the presentation went better than I expected. So next time, I’ll practice more and try not to be too nervous and hopefully my presentation will improve from this time.
Ms. Hakuta, Ms. Lin, Mr. Douglas, Mr. Liu, Mr. Kwa,
I appreciate the candor of your comments and the points you make to improve/correct the oral aspects of the group presentation. Although the communication blog is not evaluated entirely on content alone, the major thrust is to give you a platform to discuss your concerns and comments.
Your comments on the structure of the presentation are comprehensive and thoughtful. While I appreciate your comments on coordinating the group, in a real time situation you would be expected to make it work.
For all of you, I see improvement in your oral presentation skills; however, I would suggest you concentrate on editing and proofreading your written assignments. You would increase the skim value by editing to eliminate verbosity. For example, by using a word like “succeeded” you could eliminate the words “worked out well”; using “during” for “in the midst of” or the word “facilitate” for “also allowed for easier” would accomplish the same effect.
These are some suggestions which can improve your presentation dramatically. If you are investing the time to prepare a good assignment, you increase your chances of improving the grade with fewer grammatical and structural errors.
Kudos to all of you.
Emmett Green