I spend quite a bit of time with my nose is some kind of resource learning more about presentations. I also spend a considerable amount of time listening to other presenters, but that shouldn’t be a surprise. More often I am hearing from people that they are aspiring presenters or have just recently begun presenting more frequently and are looking for additional places to speak. If you think about it, people wanting to speak more is a bit peculiar. That is because it is well known that America’s number one social fear is public speaking. The reason more people want or need to present is because the value of presentations can be quite large, for the speaker and his/her business. In a recent survey of 170 participants, 76% of all respondents indicated that they need presentations to do their job. About 90% of the subjects indicated that they attend 1-2
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Recently I’ve embarked on a new journey, a weight loss journey. I started following the Ideal Protein weight loss plan on my own at home and managed to lose about 20 pounds. After 2 months of trying, I stopped losing weight – my weight loss flat lined. After two months of success, I had two months of nothing but dread. I felt as thought I was doing everything perfectly right, but I still wasn’t getting anywhere. After two months of patiently waiting for the weight to drop, I got frustrated not having any success that I finally broke down and went to the local dietitian’s clinic. This coach got coached! On my first visit to the clinic we went through the same diet that I had been following at home to refresh my memory. I then learned that I wasn’t doing everything perfectly right like I had thought; I was in fact
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If you have been following my blog, I’ve been talking about what presentation fear really is and what to do when you are first asked to present so your stomach doesn’t get tied in knots [see post]. Presentations get easier and less frightening the more you do them because you learn to overcome challenges and get better at preparing successful presentations. The worst thing about being a new public speaker is not knowing what you don’t know. Knowing what presentation traps to avoid helps you foresee any issues and plan ahead. It seems like a daunting task when I’m explaining it in lots of small steps, but once you get used to the checklist, planning goes quickly and smoothly. Presenters oftentimes skip a vital step that they consider too time-consuming of a task. The mediocre presentations you’ve witnessed in the past were probably caused by some of these presentation traps: Last Minute
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Once you have your presentation booked, and you’ve asked your contact person questions about logistics, room layout, and your audience, [see blog post] now you can begin really planning out your presentation. You want to start with your presentation talking points. When thinking about how to develop your presentation you want to think in terms of setting goals. What do you want the audience to learn? It’s a fundamental question that most presenters skip and the audience walks away empty and frustrated. The point of giving a presentation is to educate about something you know. Much like teachers in school, you must pinpoint what the audience already knows or begin from some basic starting point. For instance, I know that you know the answer to 2+2, so we can talk about addition, but I’m going to teach you multiplication. This is the mindset you must have when developing your presentation
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When people ask me for my advice, I suggest they talk about what they know. When you are expected to give a presentation, you need to be the expert on that topic and feel one hundred percent comfortable talking about it in depth. The biggest problem with this piece of advice is that professionals know too much, which leads me to the dangers of impromptu presentations. Business professionals spend 8-12 hours a day, 50 weeks a year, for years, which makes them very close to everything they know on the subject. When opportunities for presentations arise, professionals think that they are capable of crafting a presentation at the spur of the moment. Presenters tend to either cram their preparation steps into just a few minutes the night before or skip the steps of preparation altogether. These presenters get up in front of people and stumble through a presentation because they
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Once you have been asked, or volunteered, to give a presentation, fear may begin to bubble up causing your stomach to hurt. I suggest to think of presentations this way, you are just talking to new friends, a presentation is just a conversation and it’s time to think about what to say. So do not fear when you’re booked for a presentation. Just prepare yourself for success. Remember that psychologists agree that preparation can cure up to 75% of stage fright. The beginning stage of nervousness just means that you will have to give some extra thought until you are certain of yourself. The extra thought I’m referring to is the strategy behind your presentation. If you are now thinking, “Well I don’t know where to begin?” let me help. Once booked for a presentation, start by asking basic questions of the contact person. Even if the contact person is
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I was talking to a friend the other day that explained that she had just met a massage therapist that was holistically assisting people to overcome fears by reprograming the brain of sorts. She went on to explain that through massage and deep thought, you can train yourself to associate relaxation and positive things with whatever once caused an individual’s fears. Stop, this sounds familiar to how I talk about overcoming the fear of public speaking. So, what is the root of presentation fear? Let’s first understand where fear comes from. Fear is a response to something that is perceived as being threatening, dangerous, or harmful and fear can cause a person to feel nervous, anxious, and even impair bodily functions by interfering with thought and speaking abilities. Humans are born with two instinctual fears, falling and sudden loud noises. Learned fears, such as the fear of public speaking, begin
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I can tell you from experience, it is much easier talking to people about animals (since I worked at the zoo for five years) when they knew about animals too. The most difficult challenge I faced doing over a thousand presentations was crafting a presentation about the same animals so that a three-year-old could understand. I realize that isn’t a situation you would often encounter, but that extreme led me to help technical business professionals with presenting and to ultimately simplify their complex messages. The principle is still the same, you cannot assume that your audience knows anything. The perception being the expert in the eyes of others is contingent on your ability to explain complex items in a way that any individual outside of your field understands. If they do not understand what heck you are talking about, then you fail at being an expert. Without the discipline of
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Simple Does Not Mean Dumb! That is my rant because many speakers misunderstand “simplification” as “dumbing it down”, but that is simply not true. People avoid simplification because they think it weakens their message, in fact, it does the opposite. Thinking that you’re dumbing down your message so your audience can understand you is the wrong mindset and it is derogatory because your audience isn’t dumb. So I repeat myself, simple does not mean dumb! Sometimes this confusion about the purpose of simplification is why I do not work with some presenters. One prospective client told me, “I have to talk that way [at a higher level] because if I don’t, the prospect will doubt my expertise.” Studies about sales and understanding prove my experiences right. Have you ever heard someone say, “Wow, that person uses words and concepts that I don’t understand, he/she must be so smart that I must
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A question my clients regularly ask me while working on a specific presentation is, “Shouldn’t I include this, just in case?” Too many extras lead speakers to what I refer as the Just In Case Presentation. If you use this excuse to continue adding useless content to your presentation, then you are diluting your content and hiding your point. You must identify whom you’re talking to and what they need to hear. When you include supercilious information that benefits you, not your audience, it will stick out like a sore thumb. Your presentation must be audience-centric. It is easy and natural to talk about yourself; you could probably talk about you for days. Yes, you want to share your experiences and your viewpoint, but only to enrich the audience’s lives. Everyone has dozens of other things they should be doing or even more things they’d rather do than listen to you
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