Running Effective Meetings For Dummies

Chapter 13

Delivering Your Messages Effectively

IN THIS CHAPTER

Shaping your message with the audience in mind

Knowing how to speak with influence and impact

Keeping the “visual” and “aids” in visual aids

When you need to deliver a presentation during a meeting, how do you typically start? If you’re like most business people, you probably open up your slide design software of choice, select your template, and start creating slides. If this is your standard operating procedure, you are likely missing the mark with your audience.

While most meetings should largely be dialogue based, there are times when you are going to be responsible for providing some context for the discussion. While we strongly advocate sending out materials in advance for attendees to review (see Chapter 9), that’s not always possible, especially if the topic being discussed is sensitive and needs to be kept under wraps until the live meeting. Maybe it’s a personnel matter or a product launch plan that is so secret you can’t run the risk of it being leaked.

When these situations arise, you, as the meeting leader, need to be an effective messenger, but for that to happen, you need to focus on two key elements: ...