My professional development has included learning to collaborate with a team to develop and deliver presentations and engaging in team-based problem solving. The advantage of a team-based presentation is that "different personalities complement each other with different faces, voices and styles" (Hanke, 1998, p. 1). Thus, a team can do better together than any one of its members can do alone.
Presentation skills for just one individual involve presenting the information in a clear, easy-to-understand manner in small bytes of data that viewers can easily digest and doing so in a way that captures and holds interest throughout the presentation. In a team, there are additional factors to consider. If multiple people will be delivering the presentation, there needs to be effective transition from one to the next, and a sense of continuity throughout in spite of different team member personalities and delivery styles. In addition, there must be attention to the proportion of the presentation that each person makes, so that everyone has a roughly equal opportunity to participate in the presentation. The presentation can be made with different people having different roles that are not necessarily proportional, instead of all of them having the same role that is just traded off, and when that is the case, the distinctiveness of each role is what allows all of the team members to participate equally, even if their presentation time is not the same.
Once the presentation has been developed, the key to presenting it effectively is rehearsing it. Apple employees reveal that Steve Jobs rehearses his presentations for hours to perfect them and ensure that his timing is in sync with the slides (Gallo 2), and this is even more critical in a team presentation where several people are involved. BusinessWeek reporter Carmine Gallo (2) notes that "A Steve Jobs presentation looks effortless because it is well-rehears
...