Public Speaking and Professional Presentation Skills
Course Objective
To develop practical skills in public speaking and professional presentations: from structuring an idea and creating persuasive content to confident delivery, working with the audience, voice, body language, and difficult questions.
The course focuses not on the theoretical study of rhetoric, but on practice, repeated training, and receiving personalized feedback. Participants will work with real work situations: presentations of projects, ideas, and results, speaking before management, teams, clients, and partners.
Who is this course for?
- Leaders and managers who need to confidently present decisions, results, and strategies.
- Project / Product Managers, Business Analysts, Team Leads, and other IT professionals.
- Experts, consultants, and trainers who speak before an audience.
- Professionals who conduct meetings, demos, project defenses, and pitches.
- Anyone who wants to speak in a structured, persuasive, and confident manner.
Course Outcomes
Upon completion of the course, participants will be able to:
- structure a speech according to the goal, audience, and context;
- quickly prepare a logical and persuasive presentation;
- formulate a key message and convey it to the audience;
- create a strong introduction and conclusion to a speech;
- use storytelling to present ideas, products, and results;
- speak clearly, concisely, and without unnecessary professional jargon;
- control voice, pace, pauses, intonation, and non-verbal behavior;
- speak confidently before an audience.
What will you get from the course?
Program
- What makes a speech effective
- The purpose of the speech: to inform, persuade, motivate, sell
- Three components of a persuasive speech: logic, emotion, trust
- The speaker's personal style
- Common mistakes during public speaking
- How to overcome fear and insecurity in front of the audience
- Preparation for the speech: what you need to know about the audience
Practice: short speech of the participant and initial feedback.
- How to determine the main idea of a speech
- What the audience should remember after the presentation
- The structure of the speech: Hook → Context → Message → Evidence → Action
- Introduction, body and conclusion
- How to start a speech so that you are listened to
- How to logically move between blocks
- How to end a presentation with a strong call to action
- Work with a time limit
Practice: creating the structure of one's speech.
- Why stories work better than a set of facts
- Basics of business storytelling
- Hero, problem, conflict, decision, result
- Storytelling for project presentation
- Storytelling to sell ideas
- Storytelling in the presentation of results
- How to use cases, examples and personal experience
- How to turn dry information into a story
Practice: creating and presenting your own story.
- How to form a strong position
- Facts, arguments, examples and evidence
- Logic of argumentation
- How to talk about benefits, not just features
- How to adapt arguments for different types of audiences
- Working with objections
- How to convince without pressure and manipulation
- Typical logical errors in argumentation
Practice: presentation of ideas and work with objections.
- How the voice affects the perception of the speaker
- Breathing and vocal support
- Speech rate
- Loudness and strength of voice
- Intonation and emotional expressiveness
- Pauses as a tool of influence
- Articulation and diction
- Work with monotony
- Parasite words and language fillers
- Practical exercises for voice and diction
- The pose of a confident speaker / a confident speaker
- Gestures and hand movements
- Eye contact
- Mimicry
- Movement on stage / space
- How not to create unnecessary non-verbal tension
- Working with the camera during online performances
- Non-verbal behavior during negotiations and presentations
Practice: video recording of the performance and introspection.
- The slide as a tool to support the speaker, not a speech script
- The principle "one slide - one thought"
- Visual hierarchy of information
- How to work with text, numbers, graphs and diagrams
- How to simplify complex information
- Typical mistakes in presentations
- How to use AI to prepare structure, content and visuals
Practice: redesigning a weak slide and creating your own.
- How to explain complex technology and business concepts
- Work with professional terminology
- How to talk to non-experts
- The principle "from simple to complex"
- Analogies and metaphors
- How to explain numbers and analytics
- How to present risks and problems
- How to talk about uncertainty
Practice: explanation of a complex topic in 3 minutes.
- Presentation to management
- Presentation of the project to the team
- Presentation to the client
- Presentation of results
- Product / Project Demo
- Pitch an idea or product
- Protection of the offer
- Presentation of changes
- Online presentation
- Presentation to a large audience
- How to adapt the message to a specific situation
- How to quickly establish contact with the audience
- How to keep attention
- Interaction through questions
- Rhetorical questions
- Mini-survey and interactive
- Working with audience reactions
- How to recognize attention loss
- What to do if the audience is silent
- What to do if the audience actively interrupts
- Work with large and small groups
- How to answer when you don't know the answer
- Structure of a strong response
- How to win time for thinking
- Aggressive and provocative questions
- Off topic question
- Interrupting the speaker
- Conflict participants / participants
- How not to lose control over the performance
- How to return the conversation to the main topic
Practice: Q&A in the format of a simulation of a real performance.
- Speech without preparation
- Elevator Pitch
- How to talk when there is almost no time
- How to quickly structure thoughts
- Performance with minimal preparation
- Improvisation
- Dealing with unexpected changes
- Speech before a critical audience
- Techniques for rapid recovery of concentration
Practice: impromptu speaking.
- Peculiarities of online communication
- Camera, light, sound and background
- How to create a screen presence
- Where to look during an online performance
- How not to lose the attention of participants / members of Zoom / Teams
- Using the screen demo
- Interactive tools
- Working with chat
- Online Q&A
- Typical mistakes of online speakers / speakers
- Strengths and individual style
- Authenticity vs "correct" speaker / "correct" speaker
- How to sound natural
- How to use your own experience
- Expertise without overcomplication
- How to build trust
- Work with charisma
- Personal branding through public speaking
- How to develop a recognizable communication style
- Choosing a topic and goal
- Audience analysis
- Construction of the structure
- Preparation of slides
- Rehearsal
- Work with voice and non-verbal behavior
- Performance within the specified time limit
- Q&A
- Personal feedback
- Definition of development zones
- Individual plan for further improvement of public speaking skills
The practical part
During the course, participants not only learn techniques, but perform regularly and receive feedback.
FAQ
The course is suitable for leaders, business representatives, managers, IT specialists, experts, consultants, trainers and anyone who regularly speaks in front of colleagues, clients, partners or management. Participants will develop the skills of structuring a speech, presenting ideas and results, storytelling, argumentation, working with voice and body language, interacting with the audience, and answering difficult questions.
Yes. The main focus of the program is practice and skill development. Participants will perform short speeches, pitches, improvisational exercises, storytelling, presentations and simulations of real work situations. Personal feedback from the trainer and analysis of typical mistakes are provided.
Yes. Separate modules are devoted to the structure of the presentation, work with slides, visualization of information and adaptation of material for different audiences. Participants will learn how to create presentations where slides enhance the presentation rather than replace the speaker, and how to use AI to prepare structure and content.
The course provides practical tools for working with anxiety, uncertainty and stress before a speech. Due to the gradual increase in the difficulty of the exercises, participants practice speaking in different conditions: without preparation, in a limited time, in front of an audience and during Q&A. This helps to build more confidence and control over your own pitch.
Yes. The program covers the features of presentations in Zoom, Microsoft Teams and other online formats: working with the camera, voice, screen demonstration, chat, interactive and audience attention. Special attention is paid to how to maintain presence and impact when there is a screen between the speaker and the audience.
Education provides
