I've been pondering and researching all week on how to better address presentation anxiety, which if you believe the stats, is the no one fear in the US, bigger than the fear of death itself! Anxiety is largely rooted in past experiences, so in our case somewhere along the line you have had a bad presentation, or believe that you are about to give a bad presentation. The reality is that the things you fear are extremely unlikely to happen if you give yourself time to prepare, and techniques like breathing, viusualisation or simple engaging with members of the audience before your presentation will help.
I'll be talking about NLP to alleviate presentation anxiety in my next post, but please follow the attached link if you want some direct tips. http://www.oatmealtraining.co.uk/News/Scared-of-public-speaking.html
Showing posts with label executive presentation skills. Show all posts
Showing posts with label executive presentation skills. Show all posts
Monday, 18 October 2010
Thursday, 13 September 2007
The language of leadership
Sitting at my desk starring at the vast array of how to write compelling books in front of me I ask myself what exactly is the secret recipe?
An old student of mine Al Barrantine recently sent me his thesis on corporate social responsibility, his summation was brilliant, 'it should be renamed, just do the right thing'. It struck accord with me because so many terms and models exists to feed fat consultants whose role is to make small problems into huge projects, when all along the solution is simple 'just do the right thing' or in our case 'do what feels right for you'.
You can easily break down great speeches from the past and examine how they did it, the language and structure they used, but what is important is context, mis-interpret the audiences needs and you will fail every time.
I heard a funny story the other day from a BT engineer, who asked me what I did for a living; he quoted a presentation delivered by a senior BT manager to field engineers on the way forward. Sadly this senior manager had just returned from presentation bootcamp and proceeded to deliver what sounded like a Churchillian speech, rallying the troops into action in the face of great adversary. Sadly it failed miserably, the senior manager lost all credibility and quickly got moved to another division.
So the language of leadership, in a sentance, keep it simple, understand your audience, without followers you cant be a leader no matter how great your presentation is.
An old student of mine Al Barrantine recently sent me his thesis on corporate social responsibility, his summation was brilliant, 'it should be renamed, just do the right thing'. It struck accord with me because so many terms and models exists to feed fat consultants whose role is to make small problems into huge projects, when all along the solution is simple 'just do the right thing' or in our case 'do what feels right for you'.
You can easily break down great speeches from the past and examine how they did it, the language and structure they used, but what is important is context, mis-interpret the audiences needs and you will fail every time.
I heard a funny story the other day from a BT engineer, who asked me what I did for a living; he quoted a presentation delivered by a senior BT manager to field engineers on the way forward. Sadly this senior manager had just returned from presentation bootcamp and proceeded to deliver what sounded like a Churchillian speech, rallying the troops into action in the face of great adversary. Sadly it failed miserably, the senior manager lost all credibility and quickly got moved to another division.
So the language of leadership, in a sentance, keep it simple, understand your audience, without followers you cant be a leader no matter how great your presentation is.
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