TJ Walker (live stream) gives beginner-focused advice on effective communication and presentations. He stresses that the first step is not more research or slides but to define a single, specific one-sentence objective: what you want the audience to do after your talk (hire you, buy, invest, vote, etc.). Learners are assigned to write that one-sentence objective in the course discussion.
Chapters
If you're a beginner, one of the hardest things to do when you're trying to figure out how to communicate is to think, where do I even start? Whether you're giving a PowerPoint presentation, a speech, whatever it is, there's the temptation to sort of run around the office or run around your home office gathering more information, more research, more study, getting more PowerPoint slides created or from other people. Gather, gather, gather. And certainly you have to do a little of that, but that's not what your first step should be. Anytime you're trying to communicate, whether it's communicating in a job interview, a presentation to five staff members, or the most important presentation in your life to a thousand big customer prospects, you've always got to ask yourself, what. What is the one thing I want my audience to do after I've communicated with them? That's the starting point. And you need to be able to write this down in one sentence. Do you want them to hire you? Buy from you? Invest in you? Endorse a budget for your department? Vote for you? What is it you literally want the audience to do after you've communicated with them in your presentation, your talk, your briefing, Whatever form of communication it is, that's what you need to focus on. So that's your first assignment right here. I need you to write down in the discussion group here in Udemy, what is the one thing you want your audience to do? And you can make up something, but the more realistic you make it for your own particular situation at this stage in your career, the better it needs to be something you can summarize in one sentence. The more specific, the better.