Sunday, April 26, 2009
Week 4, Chapter 5: Presentations
Describe an effective presentation that you attended in person. This can be a meeting, a workshop, a training session, or anything where one person presented information to a group of three or more people in a business setting. In your opinion, was it effective? Why or why not? Did the speaker use visual aids such as slides, handouts, or other objects? If so, were they effective? What would you have done differently?
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Most meetings I have attended have all been work related. They usually have to do with what is happening in the daily stream of production, or what the current goals are for the quarter. So that being said, most meetings I have been a part of have been effective. I like to say that keeping a meeting short and to the point helps drive the information home to the group. Long drawn out Power Points tend to take away from the overall effectiveness of meetings, in my opinion anyway. The meetings that I have been to, usually have spreadsheets instead of Power Points. This way all the information is on the screen at once. The information can then be easily referenced without having to flip through slide after slide to find needed information. Handouts always seem to be a waste to me. Most of the time, handouts are the slides themselves and contain no extra information. This can take away from the speaker as people may be reading the handouts instead of paying attention. I like to think that in all my experience and training that I do a fairly decent job when presenting information to groups in a professional setting.
Most meetings
A presentation that I found to be very effective was given by author Jay Gilbertson. What made his presentation so effective, was his use of eye contact, hand gestures and his ability to connect with his audience. At times he had the entire audience filled with laughter. His books were available to view, as well as purchase during this time. With his books there it did add to the effectiveness of his presentation, because it allowed me to visualize the setting of his books better. I'm not sure that I would have done anything differently. Jay Gilbertson was a terrific speaker, extremely effective.
There is one speech that i recall i have been to in my life. I was in middle school and the speech was on world war two and how devistating it really was to people. He "put us in their shoes" is how you can say it. He never really had any props or anything; just words to describe it, as if you are there. It actually seemed as if it was all really happening to me. I think it was a very effective speech, and it made everyone realize how bad everything was that happened. When i went to that speech, i definately did not plan on feeling the way i did when i came out of the auditorium. Speechless, shocked, i have no idea how to explain it. I was so surprised at how the speech turned out. It definately changed my points of view on anything that happened in WWII.
An effective presentation that I attended was back in high school when an entrepreneur came to discuss his life in business. He had an effective way of presenting because he talked about how he got started and all of the elements that were involved in working up to his goal of owning his own business. He had a lot of visual aids, which added a nice picture to the presentation, and had us participate by asking any questions that we had. I think that he was very prepared for the presentation and knew what it took to become successful in running a business from the ground up.
On behalf of Rita Cheatham: "We have a safety video that is required by the company to be seen once a year by all employees of each division. We meet together in the conference room in groups of 8 people. Our human resource person, Charlotte, first hands out the sign up sheet for us to prove that we had attended the meeting. Then she hands out a test for us to take on the safety video that we are about to watch. It’s divided into either 3 or 4 sections of training. When everyone is ready, she then plays the video for us. When each section on the video is completed, we start the test for that particular section. We continue this until all of the sections have been completed. Even though many of us have done this so often, it still is a good refresher for all us. The video is actually pretty boring, but the tests are an effective way for management to see just where everyone is at when it comes to the issues of safety in the workplace. I personally would like to be able to see a livelier video, instead of listening to the same guy speak every time about the same old things."
Over time I have had the opportunity to attend several presentations. I have learned something from each. After spending a couple of days trying to decide which presentation to write about I kept coming back to one. The most effective presentation I attended was the Menards Profit Sharing meeting for 2009. It was both educational and effective. The presentation began with introduction of management. Then we watched a video showing the history of the company. It also explained what the qualifications are for receiving profit sharing from Menards. After the video the managers called our names to come on stage to receive our checks.
My husband just gave a presentation on martial arts for women at a recent event on sexual asault awareness. The aids that he used for his presentation were: pads, x-ray papers and hands on self defense simulations with female students from his karate studio. I believe it was a very succesful presentation. Because he had women approaching him with questions about joining the martial arts.
Just about all the meetings I have attended have been work related. They are either training classes or progress meetings. I would have to say that most of them have been very helpful. Like learning about a new job. I have had both handouts as well as hands on training.I personally think the hands on training works out best for me. However, handouts and listening are most of the time just as effective. I have been in the posistion of being the office manager and I have had to do several training classes. I use both handouts and hands on training , to me these are the most effective two methods.
The most important and effective meeting that I have been to, was at the Christmas party and we had 400 employees there to here Mike Ties and most of the Vikings players to speak about team work. They did role play, handouts and clips from movies and they all came around and shook everyone’s hand is for they left. It did make a huge impact on sales for the next quarter, up more than 45%.
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