If you're going to ask people to sit through a presentation (or if they are forced to do so by your employer), then you ought to give them one or more good reasons for doing so. Those reasons are almost always directly related to the second of Aristotle's considerations: purpose. Ask yourself, “Why are you speaking, and what can the audience hope to gain from listening to you?”

Let's begin with a review of your goals for the presentation. You don't have any goals? Well, let's back up and think about that first. What do you want from this presentation? Remember, the answer to this question must be related to the needs and interests of your audience. Presumably, you want to help them learn, understand or appreciate something. You may be trying to help them do something in particular. The success of your presentation is best measured against how well the audience understands or appreciates the subject once you finish speaking. Or, perhaps, how well they can do what you've instructed them to do. Remember, if you don't meet your bigpicture goals— your reasons for speaking to a particular group— then the clever organization and eloquent delivery of your talk don't matter at all.

In defining your goals or objective for a speech, the first rule is to “Limit yourself to one sentence.” If you need more than one sentence to state your goal, then you're not clear about your objective. Here's an example: “The objective of this speech is to convince my audience that increased free cash flow will result in a healthier balance sheet.” The objective is nicely focused and reasonably direct. You might have to define a few terms and then explain how it all works, but it does fit into one sentence. The problem, of course, it's not very specific. Here's another example of a goal: “I hope to convince my audience that reducing the age of accounts receivable to 30 days or less will make the company more profitable.” This objective is more specific and lends itself to measurement. Once you explain the terms and show the audience how accounts receivable aging works, you should be able to show the relationship to 5 profitability.

As you know by now, one of the keys to prepare for a presentation is to learn all you can about your prospective audience. Two things you most want to know about your audience are what they know about the topic of your talk and how they feel about it.

Here are a few ideas for assessing their likely reaction to what you have to say:

Research your audience in advance. Knowing who they are and what they believe can help you win them over and keep you from making serious errors along the way. Colin Quinn, the comedian from Saturday Night Live, recently spoke to a distinguished society of senior public relations and communications professionals at their annual spring meeting in New York. Without any prior research on the group he was speaking to, Quinn stood up after dinner and used his customary night club act on the crowd. Not only was the material inappropriate for the audience and occasion, he also insulted the public relations profession several times. Several attendees asked afterward if the society could get its money back from the comedian.

Look online, talk to people in the group you're going to address and find out what their values are; look for ways to connect your message to the principles and ideals of the people in your audience.

Talk to those who invited you to speak. The people likely to be most helpful in your research are those who asked you to address this group. Find out the particular purpose of their meeting, why they selected you as a speaker, and what they expect from your talk. Ask about previous speakers and the topics of their presentations. Find out if the group had strong reactions— positive or negative— to other speakers and plan your remarks accordingly.

Meet with people as they enter the room. You should arrive early before giving a talk and get to know the presentation venue. That's also an opportunity for you to meet people as they enter the room, 46 introduce yourself and get to know something about them. Knowing a little bit more about their experience, interests and expectations can help to humanize you and make you seem more personal to an important segment of the audience.

Some things that you should know well before you enter a presentation venue are your audience, your subject and your reasons for speaking. In addition, you should also know your limits. In particular, before you get up to speak, you should think about limitations of time, space and your own expertise.

Understand your time limits. There are several good reasons to know in advance how long you'll speak. First, of course, you may not be the only speaker on the program. You may, in fact, be one of several people scheduled to speak to this audience on this occasion, and you simply cannot risk taking other people's allocated speaking time. If you're given 20 minutes, plan to use 19. If questions-and-answers will be an important part of the program, plan to speak for two-thirds of the time allocated for your talk and then devote one-third of the time to audience questions.

Time limits may be important for other reasons. Your hosts may have arranged for an audio-visual crew to record your remarks. They work on a schedule and are prepared for the talk you planned to give. Don't throw them a curveball and speak for longer than your scheduled time. Finally, your audience has a set of expectations about how long this will take and they'll want you to deliver on your promise. Don't test their patience by keeping them in the lecture hall or auditorium long past the scheduled timeframe of your presentation.

Understand your space limits. You should know well in advance of your introduction just how far you can maneuver on the stage or dais, being careful not to step too close to the forward edge (or back) of the speaking platform. A few years ago, I watched a speaker work toward the back of a small platform at a luncheon in Denver. She was fine until she took one more step back and fell off the dais. Unfortunately for her, the microphone was still live and managed to capture the pain and frustration of the moment. The rest of the speech didn't go well.

Effective preparation for a presentation involves more than practice, but it's all relatively easy if you take it step-by-step.

In the fourth century BC, the Greek philosopher Aristotle gathered his students around him near the city of Athens and passed along a small bit of wisdom: things will go better during a speech if you're properly prepared. In a collection of his lectures, passed by oral tradition for many years and later written down as his Rhetoric, Aristotle explains that three considerations are particularly important for every speaker: audience, purpose and occasion.

Audience clearly comes first. A presentation is all about them. It doesn't matter what you want. It doesn't matter how interesting, important or powerful you think your message is. All that really matters is what the audience wants. If you can't deliver a presentation that they find interesting, engaging, useful, valuable or worth thinking about, then your audience will ignore you. They may be polite, of course. They may nod, smile and appear to be interested, but deep inside, they're thinking about something else. They're tuned in to their own needs and interests, not yours. You must figure out what they want or need and give it to them. Your reward is their undivided attention and, perhaps, the behavior you're hoping for.

Your purpose matters, as well. Consider these questions: Why are you speaking to this group, on this occasion, about this topic? What's your reason for being here? You may think it's to sell them a product, a concept or an idea. You may have something in mind for the audience to do (or stop doing). But your purpose is subtler than that. You should know what your intended outcome is. Aristotle gives three reasons why a speaker might address an audience: to inform, to persuade, or to inspire. Some presentations call for all three; others focus on just one. What you choose to do depends on the outcome you envision for this particular audience.

Distinguish between informative and persuasive purposes as you prepare. If your purpose is to inform, you can't become an advocate on behalf of one point of view, nor can you gratuitously toss in your 2 opinions along the way.

Dartmouth business Professor Mary Munter says that analyzing an audience involves answering four questions: (1) Who are they? (2) What do they know? (3) How do they feel? And, (4) How can you motivate them? If you can answer those, you are well on your way to crafting a presentation that's engaging, useful and worth listening to.

Who are they? Audiences may be seen according to the roles or functions they play in the communication process. Your primary audience is composed of those who will receive your message directly. They're the folks in the room who are paying attention to what you say and what you show them. The secondary audience is that collection of people who will receive your message indirectly. They could be family, friends, co-workers or associates of those in your primary audience. Consider who may be hidden from view as you speak to this particular group. Could a reporter hear about this from someone in the room? What about a competitor or a business partner? Knowing who is in the audience may be crucial to achieving your goals for the presentation.

What do they know? As you prepare for a presentation, you should ask yourself how much background information your audience will need. How much new information will they require to do what you ask of them? The more they know, the less you have to give them, provided that what they know is current, accurate and relevant.

What are their expectations and preferences? Each audience has a preference for the style, channel and format of a presentation. Even if they exhibit preferences similar to your own, it's still useful to know what they prefer. Do they like (or expect) a direct or indirect style? That's mostly a cultural determination, of course; the vast majority of North American business managers say that they prefer a direct approach: tell me what you want, then support the request. Reveal up front what your purpose is and what you expect of the audience. Only when you know (or suspect) the audience disagrees with you should you delay revealing your rhetorical purpose. Communicate with an audience in its preferred style and format and they'll reward you with their time and attention.

We're all asked to speak on occasion without benefit of any rehearsal (give an impromptu talk), but on those occasions, the audience knows that you've just been asked to “say a few words.” Their expectations are low and the demands of the occasion won't ask much of you.

If your presentation involves anything more than a brief introduction of someone else, you had better prepare yourself by rehearsing the talk— more than once. If you care about the outcome, don't even consider showing up for the speech without rehearsing your remarks.

Rehearsal provides at least three benefits for your speech. First, it points out potential timing problems. You will know after a run-through or two whether you have too much, too little, or just enough to say. Is timing important? It's crucial, actually. In most North American business meetings, the senior person in the room speaks last. That means, of course, that junior members of the organization speak first. If their presentations run long or if they overstay their welcome, the most important folks in the room will have less time to speak than they had planned, which is never a pleasant situation.

A few years ago, I was asked to join the Corporate Communication team of The Boeing Company for a meeting in the company's Chicago headquarters. The meeting began well with a few brief presentations by junior project managers and section chiefs. One young woman in the employee communication division, however, was given eight minutes to brief the group on her recent activities and instead took twenty. By the time the meeting came around to Judith Muhlberg, the senior vice president for corporate communication, very little time was left and the CEO had yet to make his remarks. “I didn't get to be a senior executive in this company by taking other people's speaking time,” she said, “so let me make this very brief.” After just a couple of minutes, she turned the floor over to her chief executive, making sure he had his full allocation of time to speak.

Some years ago a college professor took a well-organized speech and scrambled it by randomly changing the order of its sentences. He then had a speaker deliver the original version to one group of listeners and the scrambled version to another group. After the speeches, he gave a test to see how well each group understood what they had heard. Not surprisingly, the group that heard the original, unscrambled presentation scored much higher than the other group.

A few years later, two professors repeated the same experiment at another school. But instead of testing how well the listeners understood each speech, they tested to see what effects the speeches had on the listeners’ attitudes toward the speakers. They found that people who heard the well-organized speech believed the speaker to be much more competent and trustworthy than did those who heard the scrambled speech. These are just two of many studies which have shown the value of organization and structure in a presentation or speech. You undoubtedly know from personal experience that you appreciate and learn more from hearing a well-organized talk compared to one that's poorly organized or contains no internal structure.

Organization is important for two other reasons, as well. First, structure is closely connected to critical thinking. When you try to organize your presentation, you gain practice in the general skill of establishing clear relationships among your ideas. Evidence also suggests that using a clear, specific method of organization can boost your confidence as a speaker and improve your ability to deliver a message fluently.

The second, and equally important reason for organizing a presentation is that you'll save your audience the trouble of doing it for you. If you make them work at listening to and organizing your thoughts, evidence and reasoning, they won't like it. Some, as you've seen, are highly motivated to learn what you're saying and will do the work necessary to make sense of it. Others won't even try and will just give up.

Presenters benefit from organizing a presentation, too. A message 22 that unfolds as an orderly sequence of points is easier to remember, and therefore, takes less time to rehearse. As a result, the presentation itself is easy to give.

A learning curve charts the learning progression of someone who is acquiring a new skill. Educational psychologists find that most learners experience a slow rate of progress at first, followed by a rapid acceleration of new knowledge or ability, followed in turn by a flattening of the curve as time progresses. In other words, most students typically struggle at first with the concepts, vocabulary and processes involved in learning a new skill. Many discouraged students think about quitting. Consider, for example, when you tried to learn how to play the piano or ride a bicycle. Acquiring a complex motor skill requires discipline, patience and dedication.

Research on public speaking has shown two basic phenomena related to learning. First, a concentrated program of instruction, rehearsal and critique can produce significant improvements in performance in a relatively short period of time. And second, the confidence acquired early in the process can result in higher levels of achievement over time.

The lessons from these findings are simple. Learning to present in public is much easier, for example, than learning to write or becoming an informed, critical listener. Confidence also plays a huge role in motivating inexperienced speakers to continue speaking, practicing and to accept the challenge of presenting under stressful, high-stakes conditions. You gain confidence with every successful presentation, which inspires you to take on other opportunities and take additional risks. The process begins with instruction, which really means watching and listening to successful speakers. People who can stand up and present successfully in front of others— offering compelling stories, dramatic narrative or powerful evidence— seem at first to be relatively rare. Most of us don't know many people who are that good, but I'm willing to bet that you know more of those people than you think.

Think about the best speakers you know, the ones who are always good when they get up to speak. My local church has an assistant rector who is really good. When he gives a homily on Sunday, he doesn't step up in the pulpit and read from a set of prepared remarks. He steps down in front of the altar, with nothing to hide behind and nothing to take his eyes off the congregation, and speaks to us. He's confident, full-throated, and full of enthusiasm.

Audience members pay attention to a number of things as they listen to a presentation, including the words the speaker is saying, the rate at which they're spoken, the emphasis given to certain words, the depth and strength of the speaker's voice, the confidence and sincerity the speaker conveys, and much more.

The audience also pays attention to the context in which the presentation takes place. How are the seats arranged? Are they comfortable? Is the room warm or cool enough? Can all members of the audience see the speaker adequately? Can they hear the speaker? Many of them aren't paying attention to verbal issues, or the words that the speaker is saying. Much of what they are focusing on has little to do with the verbal message. These nonverbal cues are important to the audience, though, or they wouldn't pay attention to them.

How does the process of communicating nonverbally work? You can't go to a dictionary to look up a gesture or a facial expression. Human movement, eye contact and vocal tone don't always have a direct verbal translation. So what's going on here? Nonverbal communication is really a three-step process involving a cue, your own expectations and an inference.

If a presentation is a learning occasion for the audience, it's also a listening occasion. It's an opportunity for them to hear, tune into and make sense of what's being said. But listening is hard work. It involves intellectual and physical effort on the part of the listener and, unless properly motivated, is something most people would rather not do.

So, how do you get an audience to listen? As it happens, people listen to presenters for three principal reasons: self-interest, who's telling it and how it's told.

Many audience members will arrive at a presentation with personal interests that serve as powerful motivators to listen. Some of those whom you'll speak to, in fact, are actively seeking out information on the subject of your speech. They're interested, enthusiastic, and eager to hear what you have to say. Others, not so much. They're in the room because they're told to be there, because someone else more interesting to them is speaking after you, or because they have no other obligations at that time. A small fraction of the audience honestly couldn't care less. They see this as just another opportunity to get away from the office or avoid doing real work.

Sometimes, an audience will be attracted to a presentation simply because of the speaker. The subject of the talk doesn't matter to many of them; it's the speaker they've come to hear. Celebrities often draw a crowd due to name recognition alone. Movie stars, musicians, television personalities and politicians can often fill an auditorium with eager listeners without ever publishing the title of their talks. Lesser-known speakers, on the other hand, have the uphill task of drawing a crowd based on the actual content of their presentation.

Then there is the issue of how it's told. Audiences are, in many important ways, much the same the world over. At the very least, they want something worthwhile in exchange for their time; they want to feel as if the effort and energy they invest in paying attention to and trying to make sense of a presentation is worth it. Most people want 13 more, though. They want entertainment. They want to be amused, captivated, excited, inspired, thrilled and more. That's asking a lot of a public speech.

Everyone gets nervous in advance of a presentation. Yes, even seasoned professionals with years of experience in public speaking say that they get just a bit nervous beforehand. But anxiety is a natural, normal response that you can learn to manage. I talk at greater length about managing anxiety and stage fright in Truths 32– 35, but for now, focus on this principle: you'll perform better if you have confidence in your preparation.

If you thoroughly researched your topic, organized your material in a way that will make sense to the audience and rehearsed your presentation carefully, you'll be fine. You simply need to trust the work you've done in preparation for the moment when you take the stage. You'll be nervous when you step up to the microphone, even the pros say that. But if you have confidence in the work you've done in advance of that moment, you'll do well.

A lesson from behavioral psychology might be helpful here. A scientific principle developed by Robert M. Yerkes and J. D. Dodson, known as The Yerkes-Dodson Law, demonstrates a clear relationship between arousal and performance. Their principle implies that, to a certain point, a specific level of stress is healthy, useful and even beneficial. This usefulness can inspire you to not only perform well in presenting, but also can improve your health and general well-being.

The stimulus of the human stress response is often essential for success. You see this commonly in situations such as sporting events, academic pursuits and even in many creative and social activities. As stress levels increase, so does performance. This relationship between increased stress and increased performance does not continue indefinitely, however. Think of the relationship as a bell-shaped curve.

As stress increases, your performance increases until you reach the 30 top of the curve. Then it actually drops and continues dropping until it finally flattens out when it reaches conditions of intolerable stress. When stress exceeds your ability to cope, this overload contributes to diminished performance, inefficiency and even adverse health problems. Ironically, as you move from the “ten o'clock” to the “two o'clock” position on the curve, your stress doubles and you've cut your productivity in half!

For peak performance, you want to stay near the top, just to the left-hand side of the apex of the curve.

Despite your best efforts to depersonalize the issues, to modify your behavior and to practice in advance of a presentation, you may still find that you're a bit nervous just before you begin. Here's a time-honored truth about that moment: keep your nervousness to yourself.

No one in the audience cares or is interested in the fact that you're nervous. They have issues of their own to worry about. They expect, in fact, that you'll be interesting, relevant, witty and helpful. They may (or may not) have had a choice about attending your presentation. If they did so voluntarily, they've clearly voted in favor of listening to you and you should see that as a positive thing. Even if they're nonvolunteers, they're still holding out hope that this talk may, somehow, prove interesting or useful.

Sharing the depth or intensity of your anxiety with them will not help things a bit. The audience just doesn't want to hear about it. The more humane and empathetic among them will hope for the best, silently cheering for you to overcome your fears and deliver a brilliant speech, but they certainly don't want to be reminded of how difficult this is for you.

Keep in mind that your mood— that is, your emotional state— is both transparent and infectious. People in the audience will know in fairly short order just how you feel about them, your topic and the occasion. If you feel enthusiastic about being there, they'll sense that. If you're uncertain or unsure of yourself, they'll know. And, if you're hyperventilating and panicky, they'll pick up on that. You can't really hide your feelings from the audience. Even small children are adept at sensing how other humans feel. The cues are almost entirely nonverbal: your posture, gestures, facial expression, breathing rate, eye contact, pacing, phrasing, vocal control and more will reveal to the audience how you feel about being there at that moment. That's what I mean by transparent.

By infectious, I mean that the audience (or some of them, at least) 35 are likely to begin feeling just as you do. Are you antsy or unhappy with the experience of standing there? Well, so are they. Do you feel like this isn't going well? They may share that thought. Do you want this to be over? They probably do, as well.

Managers across all industries, according to consultant Deirdre Borden, spend about 75 percent of their time in verbal interaction. Those daily interactions include one-on-one dialogue, telephone conversations, video teleconferencing, presentations to small groups and— with increasing frequency– public speaking to larger audiences.

While an important fraction of a manager's work ends up in writing— notably the most important projects and ideas— much of the preparation for the decisions involved takes place orally. Managers transfer and acquire most of the information they need to do their jobs by speaking to one another. Most will tell you, in fact, that they don't leave a briefing to a group of colleagues to go back to their office to work. Those briefings, talks and presentations are their work.

So, let's understand why managers speak. Often, you don't have a choice. As a manager, you'll occasionally find yourself preparing to speak on a topic you'd rather not discuss with a particular audience. Addressing the corporate executive committee on the subject of a quarterly budget shortfall is no one's idea of a good time, but you do it because it's part of your management responsibility. You give many presentations because you are told to, or because you must. Giving a talk in these situations isn't easy, but you certainly shouldn't be afraid to do so.

Many speaking opportunities, however, are voluntary in nature. Sometimes you give the talk because you choose to do so. You drop in on a group of employees to share the good news that the company has just landed a big contract they had worked hard to secure. You could have shared that information in an e-mail message or a memo, but you'd rather see their faces, hear them cheer and watch “high fives” around the room.

On another occasion, you may explain to your daughter's elementary school class what you do for a living. (Come to think of it, that might be tougher than the employee meeting). You might also accept the 7 invitation of a local Kiwanis club to speak at their weekly luncheon. Each speaking opportunity you accept and each speech you give will increase your self-assurance and reinforce competence, confidence and ability to speak well in public.

Every presenter faces barriers to success as a speaking occasion arises. Some barriers are fairly mundane: am I available that evening? Can I reschedule another obligation? Will I be able to gather the information I need to answer their questions? Other barriers, though, are more serious and can present great difficulties for a speaker. Obstacles to success appear to fall broadly into five categories:

Stereotypes. Stereotyping is to ascribe to all members of a group or class those characteristics or behaviors observed in just one or a few. The word was coined by social scientist Walter Lippmann in 1921 when he wrote about why people so readily imagine how other people are, or why they behave as they do, even in the face of ready evidence to the contrary. The fact is people are comfortable with stereotypes. They help to explain the world around you, don't require much effort to construct and give you categories into which you can insert new experiences, new people and new ideas. Treating each person as unique or different is much more difficult and requires a great deal more reasoning and work on your part. Stereotypes may be useful as a starting point from which to understand groups and their members, but they can be very damaging when you fail to acknowledge differences within those groups or when you fail to admit that not all people act or think in the same ways.

Prejudice. This is a word derived from Latin, meaning “to judge before knowing.” You do it all the time. In fact, it's not necessarily bad. You have little prejudices that serve you well: the food you eat, the stores you shop in, your taste in clothing. Often, when you speak, you are forced to judge before you have all the facts. You simply don't have the time or the resources to gather more information. You must act now.

As we speak to others, though, it's best to acknowledge that you are working with incomplete data. Admit that you don't know as much as you might like, or, perhaps, that you simply didn't have time to gather information that might have been easily available to you. You don't want others making judgments about you too quickly.

After nearly 100 years of social science research and 5,000 years of human experience, six principles of nonverbal communication are considered to be universally true.