Presentation "Coups and Catastrophes"

Most of us have presented information to a group at some time in our lives; most of us have sat in the audiences of presentations, whether in the classroom or during training for a job or to pursue a personal interest. Some of these have gone well, and some have not. The goal of this activity is to share experiences that can help everyone become a more effective presenter in real workplace situations.

Here is a process that you may find useful in completing a mini-lesson on presenting:

• Open your mini-lesson with the point you want to make about presenting well, or poorly. (If you have multiple sub-points to make, use a grammatically parallel blueprint and matching headings.)
• Support your point (or the subpoints in each section) with a story, aka "narrative example," or with a series of related, concrete examples of presentation coups and catastrophes. 
• Close with a reinforcement of your advice on presenting well, based on your stories or examples.