Setting your goals

- [Instructor] When you are asked to prepare a presentation, it can sometimes be difficult to know where to start. Without a clear plan, presentations can end up being too long, unfocused and easily forgotten by the audience. So before you start putting your presentation together it's important to set your goal and think about what you want to achieve. Presentations can serve different purposes. They may be used to inform, to train or educate, to persuade, to report on progress, to facilitate decision making or to motivate or inspire. Start your preparations by thinking about which of these main purposes your presentation will serve. An informational presentation is one where you simply provide facts about a topic. An example would be a presentation where you introduce your department and explain its mission or responsibilities. An educational presentation goes beyond providing basic information. With this type of presentation, you teach the audience how to do something. An example of this would be a presentation for new employees in which you explain how to correctly complete a time sheet. A persuasive presentation is designed to convince the audience of something. Maybe you want them to agree to a course of action or maybe you want them to buy something. A sales pitch for a new product is a perfect example of a persuasive presentation. With a progress presentation, you talk about the status of a project or plan and what has already been accomplished. If you are working on a long term project, there may be several of these presentations at specific points during the project. A decision making presentation is meant to provide information about problems and potential solutions and help the audience come to an agreement on how to proceed. A motivational presentation inspires the audience to take action or to feel good about something. A presentation given by a top manager at an annual general meeting is a typical example. These types of presentations are meant to leave the audience feeling excited and ready to do their parts in the work ahead. So as you start to plan your presentation, the first thing to do is think about which category it will fit in. Refer to the worksheet called setting your goals for the full list of categories. The category you choose will help you decide what and how much information to include, how many visual elements to incorporate, and the type of language that you use. If you start by determining your goal for the presentation, the rest of your preparation will be much easier.