Tag Archive for 'presentations'

Would You Rather Die Than Speak in Public? Minimize the Nerves.

Are you a little nervous when you have to make a presentation to a group? Or perhaps scared witless? Would you rather get a root canal than stand up in front of group and talk? Speaking in public has commonly been recognized as our greatest fear—surpassing snakes, the dark, the unknown, and yes, even death. Apparently people would rather die than give a speech!

But you can minimize and master your anxiety. Let’s start with things you can do to quell the qualms before you even speak. I have seven key advance strategies that I call the 7 Ps:

1. Prepare. Know your main points. Organize them in an outline form with key words and phrases. Then talk-not read-from it.

2. Plan to use Props or visuals. This technique is important because it gives you purpose. It gives you something to do with your hands, diminishing the helplessness that comes with anxiety.

3. Picture your success. Just as picturing the worst can be self-fulfilling, so can anticipating success. Picture your poise and confidence and the audience’s rapt attention and reception. It will be more likely to happen that way.

4. Be more than Punctual. Get to the location early to check out the room and the equipment. It minimizes surprises, which will always notch up the anxiety.

5. Polyester-proof yourself. Anxiety raises our body temperature. So wear natural fabrics—cotton, linen, silk, wool—because they breathe better than manmade fabrics and will keep you more comfortable in the heat of the moment.

6. Practice, practice, practice. The more you hear the words roll off your tongue, the more comfortable you’re going to be saying them. You’ll also learn exactly how long your talk is, which is crucial if you’re going to fit within the time limits you’ve been given.

7. Present often. Like any skill, you will get better and more comfortable at it the more you do it.

These are all behaviors or choices you can make that can help keep the butterflies at bay.  See the article, “What to do When the Butterflies Turn into Barracudas,” to learn specific tips to manage the anxiety when you’re experiencing it.

Published on Thursday January 11, 2007 in Anxiety and Presentation Skills. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Simple, but Powerful, Way to Organize Your Presentation

My client met with me stressed and flustered. She had the biggest presentation of her life coming up in four days. She had collected tons of research, compiled spreadsheets of financials, commissioned elaborate illustrations, and created dozens of PowerPoint slides. But, there we were just 96 hours before her big moment, and she had not organized any of it. It was just a massive collection of facts and figures with no sense of order…

What to do? Begin at the beginning. And this should be the beginning of any presentation you prepare for: Get everything down “PAT.”

1.      Clarify your Purpose. Are you setting out to persuade your audience or to simply provide information that will inform them?

2.      Identify your Audience. How much do they know about your subject? What’s their attitude towards it? Towards you?

3.      Find out what your Time allotment is. Having 15 minutes to speak means more work than having 30.

Once you’re clear on three elements, you can begin to organize your talk. Start by identifying your main points and then what you want—and have time—to say about each point. Arrange them in some kind of logical order: topical, sequential, problem-solution.

Now you can wield the most powerful tool for organizing your thoughts for any presentation—from a major talk before a large audience to a message you need to leave for someone on voice mail—the Outline Form.

Here are the elements of the Outline:

I. Introduction – sets the stage, engages your audience

A. Hook – Gets your audience’s attention right at the start.

Use a question, startling statement, story or anecdote, audience involvement, demonstration, prop or visual.

B. Reason to Listen – What’s in it for them?

    Why should they listen to you?  Tell them.

    II. Body – the meat of your talk, what you want to tell them

    A. Road Map – “Tell ‘em what you’re going to tell ‘em.”

    Then “Tell ‘em”:

    B. Main Point

    C. Main Point

    D. Main Point

    III. Conclusion – wraps it all up, a call to action if necessary

    A. Summary – “Tell ‘em what you told ‘em.”

    B. Close – Convey a sense of closure

    Use a story, anecdote, quote, visual-anything that’s meaningful and memorable.

    Are you familiar with Dagwood from the comics and his famous tall sandwich? Dagwood’s sandwich has a top and bottom with some condiments for flavor and interest that hold the whole thing together, and then all the meat and goodies in the middle. That’s a great analogy to your presentation: your Introduction and Conclusion add flavor and interest and hold the talk together. The Body is where the meat—the bulk—of your talk is.


    Published on Thursday August 10, 2006 in Content and Presentation Skills. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

    Purpose Solves Many Presentation Problems

    Think about some of the presentations you’ve seen that were, shall we say, less than ideal. I’m going to guess the problems fell into one of three areas: Dull delivery; Wordy wanderlust; and PowerPoint poisoning.

    At first blush, it’s probably not clear what these areas have in common, other than they all have the potential to sabotage your presentation’s success. What’s the common culprit, or more importantly, the common solution?

    In a word, purposeful. Let’s look at how applying that adjective can solve each of these problems.

    Dull Delivery. When gripped with the anxiety that’s so common with public speaking, a speaker can often just shut down. But if your delivery has purpose, you become much more powerful. Purposeful delivery means: You look at and talk to individual members of the audience as if your purpose was to have a one-on-one conversation with each of them. You use purposeful gestures, painting pictures with your hands and highlighting or underscoring points. You use props for demonstration purposes. You have purposeful movement where you stride across the front of the room, not pace. You step to the screen to refer to something specific on a slide. You put purposeful inflection in your voice-by varying your rate, volume, and inflection. You minimize the uhs and ums, because they have no purpose. Continue reading ‘Purpose Solves Many Presentation Problems’

    Published on Monday April 10, 2006 in Anxiety, Content, Delivery, Presentation Skills and Visual Aids. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

    Just Say No to PowerPoint

    There’s actually a week in February called that: “Just Say No to PowerPoint Week.”  Really.  Initiated by a communication consultant in California, it’s her attempt to get presenters to focus on one-on-one communication instead of hiding behind the crutch that PowerPoint can be.

    While I can understand her thinking—PowerPoint can really suck the life out of presentations—I won’t go so far as to admonish presenters to “just say no to PowerPoint.”

    Instead, I’d like to offer some guidelines for PowerPoint quality that I wish more presenters would say “yes” to!

    1. Be purposeful. Use a visual only when it fulfills what I call the UR rule. In other words, will it help the audience Understand or Remember something?  If not, it has no purpose. And with no purpose, it detracts from your presentation.

    2.  Keep it simple . Use just key words and phrases.  You never need to use full sentences on a PowerPoint slide.

    3.  Use large type. Minimum 30 pt. for text, 40 pt. for headlines.

    4.   Follow the six by six rule: no more than six lines per visual, no more than six words per line.

    5.   Use pictorials. By this I don’t necessarily mean pictures, although photos can be great choices. I’m thinking in terms of the
    visual representation of text and numbers, such as charts and graphs. I’d stay away from clip art, which seldom fulfills the UR Rule.

    6. Use appropriate contrast in your color choices: light type (white or yellow) on a dark (blue) background is the most readable.

    7.  Be careful of animation. It takes up time and takes the focus off of you. In fact, you can say that about most of the “bells and whistles” of PPt, whether animated, flying bullets, timed slide transitions, or sound effects.

    8.  Insert a black slide occasionally. When there’s nothing on the screen, it means the audience will be paying attention to you, not the visual. That should always be your objective!

    My guiding philosophy about being a presenter is that the focus should be on you.  Visuals that are complex, hard to read, busy, noisy or never-ending don’t allow that to happen.  Visuals should complement and enhance your presentation, but never stand alone or take away from it.



    Published on Friday February 10, 2006 in Presentation Skills and Visual Aids. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .