Valuable Presentation Tips for HR Leaders

HR leaders face a unique challenge when presenting. Instead of speaking to a group of newbies, they’re often speaking to an audience of high-stakes C-suite executives with very specific concerns and no time for BS. This is why presentation tips targeted to this group are so important.

If your HR presentation goes well, it will increase the respect and profile of your department while propelling you forward in your career. If it goes poorly, however, it can seriously diminish executive trust in you and the department as a whole. Fortunately, it’s every bit doable to deliver a killer presentation to senior executives and gain their respect.

Consider What’s Important to Them, Not You

What’s important to you as an HR professional might not matter much to a senior executive. The last thing you want to do is steal their time by delivering information they don’t find valuable, Always be sure to consider their perspective when choosing topics to report on and angle those topics so that they’re catered to executive interests.

For example, let’s say you want to discuss various employee policies or changes to benefit packages. Rather than go into depth about every aspect, edit it down to the points that matter most to C-suite execs. Discussing that topic from the angle of projected turnover rates will take you a lot further with your audience than if you were to get into the minutia of the policies themselves.

Keep it Simple and Straightforward

An audience of senior executives has less time for a long, meandering talk than most others, so make sure yours gets straight to the point. Because you’re speaking to a group of savvy, in-the-know professionals, you don’t need to pad your presentation with loads of extra information to help folks understand. You just need to cut to the chase.

Cutting to the chase not only means delivering the most important info, but also cutting out unnecessary niceties. For instance, avoid a lengthy introduction about who you are or how you feel about what you’re going to present. Let your first sentence be about why everyone is there for the presentation and what decisions you’ll need them to make when it’s done.

Know Your Answers

If your presentation is designed effectively, then it will be succinct and concise. You’ll inevitably leave out some supplemental information and data that your audience has questions about. That’s why it’s critical that you prepare answers to questions that you might not be speaking directly to in the presentation.

Therefore, don’t just look at the data you’re sharing. Look at the contextual information around it and be sure you understand all aspects of the topic. Study the factors you’re not planning to talk about. If you don’t know an answer; don’t panic. Instead of bumbling your way through it, simply tell them you don’t know and will follow-up with the answer shortly after the presentation. They’ll respect that much more.

Don’t Just Practice, Rehearse

Knowing what you want to say isn’t enough to grab and keep the attention of C-suite execs; you also need to know how to say it in a way that’s compelling. The only way to know for sure what you sound like is to rehearse your presentation as though you’re speaking to your audience.

If you can, recruit a colleague to watch you run through it. Ask them to pay mind to areas where a pause for questions might be helpful, whether your message is angled to what’s relevant to senior executives, and any tips for how you can use inflections and emphasis to make your delivery more engaging.

Curious about what kind of presenter you are? Then take our Badge assessment to learn your unique presentation persona.

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