Progressing Presentations From Good To Better To Best

Your first tentative steps in to the art of public speaking are often taken from school age as a youngster.  You may be required to fine hone these initial skills throughout the rest of your educational and professional life.  Like with the evolution of most skills, practice makes perfect, as you go through many stages of the learning curve, from novice to expert.

Classroom presentations about books on the curriculum are very different to presentations you might be required to give when pitching yourself at a job interview to a panel of employees.  Likewise, interview presentations differ substantially from public speaking as an authority on your subject matter to audiences.  Yet your lifetime’s worth of presentations, as a student, an executive or an academic, is given the edge by the application of a few basic principles. 

Regardless of your age, your level of public speaking experience and your audiences, these tips form bases from which you can continuously improve from good to better to best:-

1)    Prepare To Succeed
Knowledge always equates to power, yet words are often hollow.  Audience members do not want to be bored by presenters reading out what can already be scanned on an overstuffed screen.  Minimising your materials, and maximising your knowledge of the subject at hand, are imperative to the proficient preparation quality presentations, thus enabling you to deliver them with authority and aplomb.

2)    Critique Practice Run Throughs
Video yourself doing dry run presentations, and critique yourself firmly but fairly.  Ask a trusted confidante to sit in on your rehearsals and be prepared to take their feedback on the chin.

3)    Look Them In The Eyes
Aim to gain rapport with your audience by looking directly at them - not at your laptop, your notes, or your feet.  However, avoid the unintentional temptation to make a particular audience member your focal point when public speaking.  It makes an innocent participant feel self conscious and uncomfortable.

4)    Speak With Then, Not Just At Them
Encourage audiences to interact with you during your presentations.  Allowing them to interject with doubts, questions and relevant comments is testament to the fact that they are engaged with you.  Your competent feedback further enhances their confidence in you and what you have to say.

5)    Clock The Atmosphere
Let your emotional intelligence guide you.  At certain points during your presentations, the mood of your audiences might get confrontational and heated, or down tempo and low on energy.  Drop in anecdotes or jokes at such junctures, to lighten any tension or regain waning engagement.

6)    Avoid Useless Fillers
Whether you have a tendency to “um” and “ah”, or use particular turns of phrase over frequently when you speak, weaning yourself off them will improve your public speaking.  They are often more irritating to audiences than you realise.

7)    Answer Questions Accurately
When preparing your presentations, put yourself in your audience’s shoes and anticipate the questions they might fire at you.  This is a great way of forearming and forewarning yourself.  Besides taking audience questions throughout the duration of your presentations, make sure you leave plenty of time at the end for closing questions.  The answers you provide should confirm and amplify the messages you deliver throughout the session.    

Learning To Overcome Public Speaking Palpitations

You might know or work with certain individuals who approach the delivery of presentations with unbelievable gusto – we all do.  Never fear that you are some sort lost cause if you, on the contrary, are totally daunted and flawed at the prospect.  In fact, they are in the minority and you are in the majority, as public speaking ranks highly as a universal worst case scenario, striking untold terror in to millions of people worldwide.

However, like or not – and let’s be honest, in most cases we are definitely talking about like it not – you are more than likely to be called upon to give a number of presentations throughout your personal and professional life.  Confident and proficient public speaking is realistically within your grasp when you learn to believe in yourself and aim to master your craft.  Just like any other skill, it comes naturally to a gifted few, yet requires fine honing for most mere mortals.

You can and you will beat the palpitations caused by looming presentations.  Those ‘in the know’ have done so by learning about what are known as the five Ps of public speaking and by incorporating the wisdom of these simple lessons in to their codes of conduct and plans of action.

1)    Passion
It is imperatively important that you are passionate about the subject matter of your presentations.  If you are not fired up about it, why on earth would anyone else be?  Think about the know-like-trust theory.  The more you know about the topic at hand, the more you will hopefully like it.  Consequently, the more you know and like it, the more you will not only trust it, but you will also trust yourself to share your views about it, cojently and enthusiastically, with your audiences.

2)    Persistence
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again”.  Have a little mettle and do not get too down in the mouth if your first few presentations fall slightly short of the triumphs you had envisaged.  Keep your chin up and aim to deliver your presentations repeatedly if you can, noting the vast improvements you make each time.

3)    Positivity
Just before the delivery of your presentations, focus in on your ‘can do’ rather than your ‘can’t do’ mindset. Tell yourself that you can and you will knock your audience’s socks off with your dynamic presentations and deft delivery skills.  Glasses half full are infinitely more appealing than glasses half empty, so inspire yourself to go for it and spread some joy.

4)    Practice
Going overboard with the practicing of your presentations simply does not exist, as practice makes perfect.  Go through your presentations out loud to yourself, and also in front of trusted colleagues, family members or friends who will offer you firm yet fair feedback.  Then go back to the drawing board to redress any issues with your flow and wording.  If at all possible, it is also a great nerve soother to have a practice in the actual rooms in which your presentations will be delivered.  The environments will feel less hostile and more familiar to you.

5)    Preparation
Comprehensive preparation offsets a multitude of sins.  Once your subject matter has been agreed upon, your first port of call should be your own experience, backed up by copious research.  The coupling of what you know and what you have learnt will make preparing for your presentations much easier, free flowing and logical.  Your preparation also extends to a pre-understanding of your audiences.  Knowing about their age groups and levels of proficiency in the topics under the microscope gives you the competitive edge to pitch your content and style just so.

10 steps to creating the perfect presentation

If you have ever been tasked to prepare and deliver presentations, at intimate internal meetings or large industry gatherings, you will understand nervous energy.  The jitters are generated by your acknowledgement that you will not only be judged on what you say, but also on how you say it.  Thankfully, there are tried and tested steps that can help you conquer the collywobbles, before you arrive on the public speaking stage, and whilst you are performing on it.

Step 1 – Planning
Improve the flow and organisation of your presentations by carefully targeting and pre-planning your content.  Aim to address the specific needs of your audiences by understanding that the content you include in a sales pitch is totally different from what you use for an industry conference. 
Rather than simply offering rafts of generalisations, hone your subject matter in to the theme of the event at which you are presenting, or address any topical issues that are currently big news.
Once you have decided on the main ideas you wish your presentations to impart, incorporate them in to storylines.  Make your stories audience focused and develop them in accordance with your overriding theme.  Go to great pains to ensure that your stories flow logically and sequentially, so as not to confuse your audiences by skipping backwards and forwards.  Ensure that your stories pack potent punches by embellishing them with human examples, whether they are your own, your colleagues, your clients or suppliers, even famous or historical figures.

Step 2 – Choosing Words
Avoid the temptation to throw in words and phrases simply because you like the sound of them.  They are rendered inadequate if they do not directly correlate to the core of your presentations.  Public speaking is doubtlessly enhanced by the use of richly descriptive language, but it is equally as diminished by poor word choices.  By all means make dynamic choices, but stick to the point when saying what you mean.  Your audiences will not be foiled if they are unconvinced that you do not mean what you say.

Step 3 – Cutting Jargon
A small amount of ‘industry speak’ is acceptable if your presentations are delivered to audiences who solely operate within a particular sector.  If you find that your presentations are intentionally or unintentionally peppered with jargon, ask yourself if you have included it to simply enhance your stature as an authority on your subject matter.  Will anything be lost by ditching them and speaking plainly and cojently?  Likewise, avoid using slang in a bid to sound ‘down with the kids’.

Step 4 – Avoiding Pauses
Reduce your tendency to slip annoying “Ummms” and “Errrs” in to your presentations by giving yourself alternative stalling devices.  Instead of mumbling and fumbling, take a sip of water or ask your audience if they have any questions at this stage whilst you recover from momentary concentration lapses.

Step 5 – Practicing
The spoken word is a powerful thing and, whilst practice may not immediately make your presentations perfect, it will certainly set you on the right track to getting there.  After choosing your words carefully, practice delivering them with charisma and passion.

Step 6 -  Empathising 
Your carefully planned presentations will be dead in the water if you are unable to empathise with your audiences and kindle immediate rapport with them.  From the get go, make and maintain eye contact.  Be open and smile.  Gauge their reactions by spotting if they are glazing over in confusion or nodding in concurrence. 

Step 7 – Being You
It is only natural to want to put your game face forward when public speaking.  Yet do not confuse this with false airs and graces or a feigned style of speaking.  You have been asked to speak and your audiences largely want to learn from your presentations, so do not forget to be the way you are.  Anything else is false and unnatural.

Step 8 – Performing
A natural and relaxed style is an important contributory factor to friendly and well received presentations.  You might, however, check that you do not become too casual and forget that you are under public scrutiny.  Maintain a strong and open posture, respond to your audiences, but do not allow yourself to get unnecessarily sidetracked.  Do not scratch unless you absolutely have to, fidget, mess with your hair or shuffle your papers.

Step 9 – Enlisting Humour
By all means include a few jokes if you have confidence in your ability to pull them off.  If you are naturally quick witted, a little appropriate humour will complement your presentations.  However, carefully avoid anything that audience members have the remotest chance of finding embarrassing or uncomfortable.

Step 10 – Having Confidence
Confidence inevitably grows with experience, but it is also a product of positive mental attitude.  Allow your passion for your subject matter and your enthusiasm about sharing your knowledge to shine through when public speaking.  Imagining that your audience will be inspired by what you have to say translate in to an enormous confidence boost.

The rules of using a whiteboard

I've found a new passion for my whiteboard again, forget slideshows, retro is back.

But there are some rules to obey when using our trust white steeds:

 

1. Only use 2 colours, black and red, or blue and red. Use red sparingly to highlight key points.

2. Have a maximum of 20 words per A4 sheet of paper

3. If you're right handed, stand to your left (as you are looking at the whiteboard) so you don't cover it up as you are writing, and left handers, do the opposite.

4. Draw lines in pencil to stop your writing sloping up, or down

5. Use a projector to project onto the paper during your preparation, trace outlines of complex pictures, or cartoons onto the paper. Only you will be able to see the pencil lines and your audience will be amazed when you quickly draw a perfect picture!

 

More tips at Presentation Guru

The art of the umm

Have you ever considered why we put an umm into our conversation? or like me, are you irritated by presenters who constantly utter an umm or err between sentences? There is a reason for the humble umm or voiced pause as the experts like to call them.

It stems back to the way we learn to hold a conversation, when we aren't finished, but need a little thinking time, we let our fellow conversationalists know that we haven't finished by filling the uncomfortable pause with a voiced pause. This voiced pause lets people know we haven't finished and stops people from butting into our airtime. The problem is, it doesn't quite work when you are presenting, yet how do we re-wire our brains to stop it?

Learning to stop using voiced pauses and replacing them with silent pauses takes time, but well worth the effort. Experts say that pauses however brief should be introduced every 6-9 words (depending on the audience and subject), but certainly when there is a natural break in the subject matter, or when there are key points to make.

How long should your pause be? as professional conversationalists, anything over half a second will be noticed, and as a presenter, anything up to three seconds will make a real impact. It may seem like an eternity, but it gives the audience time to digest the killer point that you have just made.