The Presentation Skills That Survive a Change of Slides

When I first looked for work in Korea, an application seemed to require one credential on top of another. Applicants accumulated qualifications and companies added ways to decide between them.

In the early 2010s, I remember assembling the expected set of credentials, writing the personal statement and then preparing for another hurdle, the presentation interview.

The Years of the Presentation Interview

Most of the companies I applied to asked me to give a presentation. Those that didn’t often held a group discussion.

I found myself doing presentations after I joined the Human Resources Development Service of Korea, too. It was a skill that came up on both sides of the interview.

A Presentation Book from 2005

Ha U-seok’s book appeared in 2005, when much of the technology and the prevailing style of a presentation looked different. Companies still had to show new employees how to put a talk together.

In the Korean presentations I remember, a slide might contain most of what the speaker planned to say. Steve Jobs introduced the original iPhone in January 2007, and the keynote made another style unusually visible.

People began studying the way Jobs built a presentation around sparse slides and a spoken explanation. It gave speakers another example to work from.

Two Ways to Use a Slide

One approach puts a lot of information where the audience can read it. Another uses a single image or phrase and leaves the speaker to carry the detail. They can be useful for different kinds of work.

Ha does not prescribe either visual style. The things he pays attention to apply before the first slide is made.

What the Book Asks a Speaker to Practise

The book covers the broad work of getting ready to speak in front of people. Its main points include:

• Train your voice so people can hear and follow it.
• Use posture and hand movements with purpose.
• A confident bearing can help before you reach the substance.
• Practise the opening greeting and decide what the audience needs to know about your role or organisation.
• Use a script as a support.
• Learn to feel at home in front of the room.
• Find gestures that feel natural to you.
• Use examples that clarify the point.
• Choose a phrase people can remember.
• Know the figures behind what you say.
• Consider how your clothes will read in the room.
• Develop the ability to hold the room’s attention.
• Learn how to put the same material into a report.
• Try giving a talk three parts.

Giving a Presentation Three Parts

A substantial part of the book is devoted to grouping ideas in threes. The proposal is that a listener can more easily remember a point if the speaker gives it a clear place in a short sequence.

The same device turns up in books about Steve Jobs, where it is often described as organising a presentation in three acts.

• Kim Gyeong-tae, volume one Steve Jobs’s Presentations
• Kim Gyeong-tae, volume two Steve Jobs’s Presentations 2

An introduction, body and conclusion is one version. A talk about a disagreement could move from a position through an opposing view to a synthesis. A plan might be broken into short-, medium- and long-term work.

Other sequences include:

• Introduction, body, conclusion
• Thesis, antithesis, synthesis
• Short term, medium term, long term
• Purpose, outline, details
• Planning, execution, evaluation
• Hypothesis, investigation, verification
• Example, general principle, conclusion

A book from 2005 inevitably shows its age in places. Its advice on voice, composure and sequence still makes sense in a room where one person has to help other people follow an idea.

Book Information

Presentation Techniques That Move an Audience (Korean title, translated)

Author

Ha U-seok

Publication date

8 January 2005

ISBN13

9788947525145

View the book on YES24

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