Presentation Skills for Fire & EMS Leaders: Becoming a Powerful Communicator for Your Organization

Fire and EMS organizations, large and small, are in the communication business. Leaders and managers within those organizations have the opportunity to deliver oral, media-supported presentations to a wide variety of audiences for an equally wide variety of situations. Some examples include: - Speaking before a meeting of the local governing body to obtain support for operational resources; - Speaking before a group of civic leaders to respond to allegations that the department's response to a recent fire where several children died was inadequate; - Speaking to a group of journalists to announce the "kick off" of an injury prevention program to reduce juvenile head injuries; - Speaking before a group of employees to announce how the department will respond to reductions to the department's operating budget; and - Speaking before a group of senior departmental managers to gain support for a new program. This eBook is not a manual on how to use presentation software, e.g., Microsoft(R) PowerPoint(TM), per se; many other authors have done a much better job of that with books like PowerPoint for Dummies(TM). Rather, my purpose with this eBook is to equip you with the ability to communicate using oral presentations in a way that captures the attention of your audience so that you fulfill your role as a communicator for your organization. To that end, my focus is on helping you to develop and deliver oral presentations using methodology similar to that which we've all used to deliver emergency services to our customers: planning, preparation, and practice.