The CAPA Model and Effective Presentations

Inc. magazine interviewed me last week as part of an article about improving presentation skills. As a part of my preparation for the meeting, I put together a quick outline to help my interviewer better understand the content I wanted to review. As a loyal reader of my blog, I thought/think that you deserve to benefit from this just as much as the Inc. readers. Likewise, it is unrealistic to think that they will place all of this information in the article. As such, the Inc. readers that have found their way over can benefit from garnering the complete resource. So, I am giving you access to the structure of one of my most coveted presentation models, The CAPA model. CAPA stands for credibility, attention, and positive affect. These are the three most important end goals that one should have in mind while creating and executing a presentation.

I loathe over simplicity, so in giving you the structure alone, please don’t run away from this thinking that you have a silver bullet in hand. This is however an amazingly functional structural guideline, and the “meat” will need to be filled in by yourself (or my if I’m working with you) regarding the specifics of your presentation. Filling in the meat is really where I earn the considerable sums of money I’m paid. With that being said, I am happy to lend the structural components and some vital information regarding how best to “fill them in.” So without further adieu, let’s begin the three part series by talking about credibility and a few of the many attributes that comprise it.

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Again, keep in mind that credibility is the result of the culmination of a number of different attributes, skills and information. The above points are a strong point of reference from which to begin creating your own credibility. In my next post I move onto the next portion of the CAPA model, which is attention. We will talk about what attention is and what you can do to maintain it…

Please feel free to explore the rest of my blog The Communication Expert, or if I am online, please feel free to connect with me via Skype.

David J. Parnell | The Communication Expert

Tagged as: Effective Presentations, Presentation Models, Presentation Skills, priming, The CAPA Model