Everyone uses it, but is it the best way to present your information?
Most people who use PowerPoint of give Presentations have not had much, if any, public speaking or presentation skills training. However, we tend to copy what others are doing. I would like to suggest stop doing what everyone else is doing and do it right. The following steps will help you stand out above the rest.
When making presentations it is often easy to overlook the importance of your voice.
But without a dynamic and strong voice you may as well not be presenting.
A friend of mine realised this last week. He makes presentations every day, but he managed to get some kind of throat infection which left him speechless - literally.I pointed him in the direction of Vocalzones, a herbal lozenge which
can help speakers and singers maintain a clear voice. He sucked on a couple of the lozenges and his voice was good enough to give his 20 minute talk.Your voice should never be neglected and be allowed to get into bad shape. You should always take care of it. To ensure you keep your voice in tip top shape see this article on
voice maintenance.
To create effective backgrounds in PowerPoint is one of the most challenging tasks for a presenter, as balancing visual impact, layout balance, properly matching colors while keeping great legibility is nothing that I would consider easy.
Gestures can make or break a presentation. Normally, they flow naturally as a person expresses their thoughts, but if they are wooden or distracting, then they spoil whatever point the speaker is trying to make.
My latest free set of tips is about gestures - how to overcome the problems of being distracting or wooden, or when they just don't work for you.
Visit the courses web page and click the button, and I'll send you the first in the series.
Public speaking tip - Remembering new jokes -- Jan McInnis (Jan@TheWorkLady.com)
happy, positive, smiling, confident woman on warm tone background with space for text
As a comedienne, I usually kick off my corporate show with 20 or more new jokes I've written for the group which means I have to have good, fast memory skills.
A couple of ways I remember these new jokes:
* Starting a few nights before the show, I review 5 or 6 jokes each night before I go to sleep. When I wake up, I know the jokes. (A friend of mine at a university is actually researching sleep and its effect on memory. It really works.)
* I go over them out loud as fast as I can. I also do this with the jokes in my act. It sort of "ingrains" the joke into my head so that when I say it, it rolls off my tongue without my having to stop and think about it.
* I group the jokes according to subject -- all jokes about the people together, all jokes about the industry together, etc.
* I use notes. I carry them up to the stage with me, but I make sure I know the first 2 or 3 jokes cold, so I don't have to refer to the notes in my hand. Then if I do, it's not as obvious as pulling the notes out of my pocket and I just glance at the sheet, saying, "I took some notes on you guys." I'll have a key word or two written on the sheet. And, even if I wrote the jokes ahead of time, it looks like I just wrote them that morning.
No I'm not promoting obesity.
I'm referring to outdoor presentations.
If you are ever forced (I say "forced" because you should try to avoid outdoor presentations at all costs) to do an outdoor presentation, then make sure you have several different kinds of weights handy to help control your presentation.
You might need a sandbag or dumbbell to hold down the easel of your flipchart.
How about taping some heavy coins to the bottom of the sheets and clamping the edges to keep the breeze from lifting up the pages?Paperweights, or in a pinch, plain old rocks are great for holding down papers you have on a table on stage.
What else do you commonly have with you on stage that could blow around in a breeze? Make sure it's secured.
Ties and scarves that look gorgeous in a no wind hotel room look terrible and distracting when flapping in the wind.
From Tom Antion Photo by Maria Molinero on Unsplash
"For anyone who has done some training with me, you’ll know that I don’t focus on body language when presenting. People can get obsessed by trying to look convincing or slick, and neglect the content of their presentation. They perform all the textbook hand gestures, and what comes out of their mouths doesn’t match up. A bit like watching 100 chavs pour out of a limo. It just doesn’t seem right.
Sometimes however I do give advice on body language for presenting - especially when it detracts from the message. Here are the 3 biggest body language presentation pitfalls, and what you can do to avoid them:
1. EYES
Sharing eye contact around the room is one of the best presentation delivery skills you can have. Meeting people’s eyes is crucial for maintaining audience interest. As an audience member we feel that you are actually talking to us - rather than talking to the PowerPoint screen or to the table.
So, what prevents you from maintaining eye contact with everyone? Well one of the reasons could be the Sympathy Nodder - the only person in the room who is nodding and paying you attention. When you’re presenting you usually gravitate towards attention and recognition. Even if you suspect someone is sympathy nodding, you probably don’t care. You will choose the Sympathy Nodder over the guy making a pen pyramid any day. So you direct your attention almost solely to that one person. This means that you have alienated the audience in favour of the Sympathy Nodder, who is probably concentrating more on nodding than listening.
In the name of research from the audience side, try the Sympathy Nod Experiment during your next boardroom presentation. Look the presenter dead in the eye and nod a couple of times. Repeat about 5 times per minute, or whenever they look at you. You will undoubtedly find the presenter draw their attention towards you, almost as if you are the only person in the room. A cruel experiment perhaps, but one which will prove to you that as a presenter you must resist the one person who seems to be giving you the attention and maximise your eye contact with everyone.
2. HANDS
One of the greatest problems you might have is knowing what to do with your hands. Quite strange really given that you never have to worry what to do with your hands when you are chatting to friends. Suddenly they become a big issue when presenting.
You have two options. You can spend thousands getting personal coaching and practicing 20+ hand gestures, such as the ‘chop’, the ‘opera singer’ or the ’sweep’, until they seem natural. Or you can hold a pen, with one or two hands. This sounds very simple, but it does the job, keeping your hands steady, professional and relaxed. With the money you save on personal coaching, you can buy yourself a better pen.
3. STANCE
There have been many books written on stance and posturing. Most of them are of little use. The best thing to remember is to stand with your feet pointed towards the audience. This solves a very big presentation skills problem, which is turning your back on the audience - such as when you are reading off PowerPoint. If you keep your feet pointed towards the audience then you be naturally inclined to twist back to face them.
The premise behind Natural Training is simple: we have fresh, relevant, practical training in presentation and sales skills that works with your natural personality rather than crunching against it. We ensure that our training focuses you on the things that matter in your role, always working to complement your natural style.
Icebreakers are little exercises that help relax tension and loosen up a formal atmosphere in a meeting where you want to have creative ideas and group participation.
This icebreaker will have everyone laughing:
Break everyone up into small groups of 2 or 3. Give each group a made-up punchline. Each group now has 5 minutes to come up with a joke or story that uses that punchline at the end. The crazier the better!
Here are some example punchlines:
1. And that is why you never let a cat go fishing!
2. That proves that elephants don't like hot dogs.
3. Finally he said, "Sir, your computer doesn't have a cigarette lighter."
4. The moral of the story is, "Always wear socks!"
Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash
When I was planning for my recent all day presentation I was considering the post lunch sleepiness that most audiences experience. I wanted to do something totally different that I knew would shock them out of their afternoon low.
So I bought a muskrat trap. I was talking about the "traps" AKA deep trouble you could get into by spam email marketing.
I set the trap with great care. Then I put a pencil into the trap to set it off. The pencil snapped showing the trap to be real . . . This got their attention.
I then reset the trap and talked about how learning what I was going to teach them in the next section would keep them from getting hurt in the email spam trap.Then, with lots of suspense building as I approached the trap, I set it off with my bare hand, I let out a fake Karate-like scream, the trap slammed on my hand and I held it up hanging from my fingers. . . . Believe me this got their attention!
DO NOT TRY THIS! DO NOT TRY THIS! DO NOT TRY THIS! I know how to do this without getting hurt. I am not responsible if you break your finger or get hurt in any way !!!
There are many other ways to shock people. You could put a needle through a balloon, you could stick a knife through one of their coats. Stop by any magic or gag shop for tons of ideas. Just don't get too outrageous and scare people unnecessarily.
From Tom Antion Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
I'm not a golfer, but I can tell you one thing for sure.
Many people in your audiences are nuts over golf.
I've seen some speakers do their entire presentation using a golf metaphor. They would say things like, "In golf if your swing is off, you'll hit the ball into the woods . . . just like if your leadership technique is off you'll be in the "rough" .. . and a lot more is at stake than just a bad scorecard." etc.
I've seen speakers carry their golf bag on stage and pull out some clubs just to have something to do with their hands.
I've seen speakers get audience members on stage to have a putting contest.
I've seen one speaker at a resort ride into his speech on a golf cart.
You don't even have to like golf to add a little bit about golf to your speeches.
I tease the golfers in the audience about all their crazy gadgets.
Tom Antion, Publisher "Great Speaking" Photo by Igor Ovsyannykov on Unsplash
