Up on stage, mouth goes dry, mind goes blank, everybody is looking at you, you struggle through your Powerpoint slides, heart beating wildly. You sit down vowing never to do it again.
But worse than that, it has reflected badly on you and yor company and disturbed the sleep of 100’s of innocent people. But conference after conference the same mistakes are made.
A little known statistic is that 42% of the population are more scared of death than speaking in public.
But for business people being able to present well is a core skill, right up there with managing people. If you can’t present then you will never be promoted as quickly, you will not make the salary you aspire to, you won’t enjoy the success you deserve.
Sadly as professional speaker I attend a huge number of conferences and witness poor (or worse) presentations.
Presentations that, based on the material, could have been engaging and entertaining. Instead they were embarrassingly boring.
Maybe you’ve watched in awe as a presenter commands the stage, works the audience, and finishes to a rousing finale. Is it nurture or nature? Is it a learnt skill or is that person ‘just a natural’.
For all those of you hiding your fears behind the excuse “It’s nature”, I’m afraid you are very very wrong. It is a skill you can, and should learn.
How do you get better? 3 simple steps
- Understand the principles
- Practice and stretch yourself
- Learn from the feedback
Understand the principles: sounds obvious. “You stand up and communicate some information using Powerpoint.”
How wrong can you be? This is where most if not everybody gets it wrong. Your job is to engage the audience. That means you want them to “Think. Feel. Do,” in that order. So how do you get the audience intrigued? Make them sit up and want to hear the end?
Practice and stretch yourself: find some safe environments to practice - the local school or college is always after outside speakers, your local sports club or Toastmasters Club. But try something different each time.
Learn from the feedback: ask someone you trust in the audience for candid feedback. Use that feedback to learn and improve not to force you back to reading Powerpoint slides.
For some more ideas on presenting listed to a quick interview on the Top 10 ways to improve your presentations here
In a blog later this month I'll explain why Powerpoint is like my 10 yr old daughter's attempts at make-up