Essential Managers: Making Presentations

Learn all you need to know about improving your presentation skills from thorough planning and preparation to selecting the best method of presenting and dealing with audience questions. "Making Presentations" not only shows you how to relax and prepare yourself mentally but also provides practical techniques for you to use when making a presentation. Power tips help you to handle real-life situations and develop first-class presenting skills that will dramatically improve your impact. This innovative series covers a wide range of management and personal development topics. Each title is a comprehensive yet compact source of easy reference for all those in or aspiring to a position of responsibility with a focus on developing and enhancing professional management practice.

Would that all business presentations could be made as succinctly and stylishly as this nifty little 72-page thumbnail guide. It makes its own points, starting with presentation preparation (knowing your audience, location and purpose; finding, structuring, and writing your material; and using audio-visual aides, and rehearsing), then covering self-preparation (improving your appearance, body image, and voice, and eliminating tension), delivery (speaking confidently, and closing effectively), and handling an audience (judging the mood, fielding questions, and coping with hostility, should it arise). On every page, boxed tips, crisp graphics, mini case studies, sample material, and handy checklists make the whole process clear and easy to follow. Granted, if you're looking for very specific or in-depth guidance, you might find this book too cursory and general in its approach. But, if you're looking for a thumbnail guide to the basics, it'll do just fine.

It's worth mentioning that the book is part of the "Essential Managers" series by reference publisher Dorling-Kindersley--a series comprising 20 itty-bitty books on business and career topics that range from communication, leadership, and decision-making to the management of time, budgets, change, meetings, people, projects, and teams. Combining the talent of the "For Dummies" book series for breaking down a lot of information into bite-sized bits and sidebars with Dorling-Kindersley's signature design style of crisp, classy graphics on a gleaming white backdrop, the books don't represent the cutting edge of business thinking or reflect necessarily any unique individual perspective. Instead, it's as if someone had collated the best general thinking on these 20 topics, and rolled them out into 72 brightly designed and easy-to-read pages--studded along the way with boxed tips, color shots of a multiracial cast of "coworkers" animatedly hashing through the workplace issues of the day, and, on the last few pages of each volume, a self-test of one's skills in the topic at hand. Again, they're not for anyone who's looking for more in-depth or focused help on any of the covered subjects, but they're perfect as a quick general-interest reference; and, let's face it, they're so damn cute, and look so smart in a neat little stack or row, that probably you'll want to buy a whole bunch to give as gifts to your entire staff or department. --Timothy Murphy