Articles Tagged ‘Presentation Skills’

How to Overcome Presentation Nerves

We’re now going to look at anything that might stop you being confident in your presentation. ie those nerves that can kick in the minute you start to think about having to present.

Its important to think about why people get nervous and the effects nerves can have on you when you present. There are all sorts of symptoms that can be created through nerves. And sometimes they can manifest themselves quite a lot when people present.

So the more you are aware of them and aware of the fact that its quite normal to feel nervous then the more that you can actually start to overcome them. Read more »

Improving Your Presentation Delivery Skills

A good delivery of your presentation can give you a certain uniqueness and extra edge.

The audience will make judgements about you even before you start to speak. They will do this by way you come across and how you look. They will continue to form opinions about you by the way you speak.

So the way in which you use your own personal resources is going to have a large impact on the way your audience receives you. Read more »

Answering Presentation Questions Confidently

Taking questions is an integral part of your presentation and requires the same preparation as the presentation content in order for you to manage things with confidence. There are different ways of taking questions from the audience and this will depend on the type of presentation scenario.

If you are giving a more interactive presentation, you may be taking questions throughout the presentation and it can become more of a discussion with the audience. If it is a more formal presentation, you may have a Q&A session at the end of the presentation. Read more »

Breathing Techniques to Overcome Presentation Nerves

Almost everbody starting out having to present at work feels very nervous about the prospect. A few just get on with it and slowly build up their confidence and ability through hard experience.

Many however try and put things off as long as possible or end up experiencing one or more of the very common symptoms of presentation nerves – which they might well describe as:- Read more »

Make Eye Contact to Engage Your Audience

You’re looking good, but how do you engage with the audience?

So – now you are looking good but your audience don’t seem to look that interested – how do you engage with them?

It’s no good waiting for your audience to become interested in you – you need to take the initiative. Often people tell me when they present they just see a sea of blank faces staring at them. This is because they are treating the audience as one body – of a mass of people, rather than individuals.

To start to treat the audience as individuals you need to look at them – individually. This means you need to make eye contact with individuals in the audience. People are often hesitant about using eye contact – they feel it may intimidate their audience. But it actually has the opposite effect – it draws people in and engages them more fully.

Some help making eye contact

To help develop confident, controlled use of eye contact practice this exercise. You will need to stand in the middle of a room – ideally without anyone else there – as they will probably put you off!

Start to tell a story – something like what you have done today from when you got up in the morning, travelled to work, went to lunch etc. As you recite your story – focus on different objects in the room for about three seconds at a time. For example, you can look at the door, picture on the wall, light, chair, plant etc.

What you are now doing is giving eye contact around the room in a controlled and purposeful way. This is what you need to do with your audience – to keep everyone interested and involved.

By practising this exercise it will soon become a habit to automatically share your eye contact around the audience. You will look more purposeful and you will actually start to see a response from the audience. It makes the whole experience more interesting and a lot more fun to do!

Obviously this is even more effective to practice with an audience present. On our public courses we work on using eye contact by learning to engage with the other people on the course when we are presenting to them. It is a fun exercise to do with others and once people start to do it they soon find it difficult to present without looking at their audience!

The ability to Engage with the presentation audience is a key skill that many presenters simply don’t possess. You might have a great presentation ready to deliver but if you cant really connect with the audience – engage with them – then you are unlikely to have a successful outcome.

But how do you engage with the audience? And is it a skill that can be developed? Read more »

Speak with More Confidence and Clarity

When you stand up to present you need to sound confident and in control from the very beginning. Your words need to be spoken clearly and they also need to be heard by the audience at the back of the room. And if your presentation is taking place in a room bigger than about ten square metres then its no use just using your normal conversational voice – you need to raise your game and project your voice to some extent.

Unfortunately however, at the start of a presentation, nerves can often be at their strongest and this can leave you rushing your words, speaking at a relative whisper or even being tongue tied. Learning some simple voice exercises however, can help you get overcome these obstacles. Read more »

How to Create a Presentation

If your presentation has a clear, succinct message:-

you’ll be able to remember it better,
you’ll also be less nervous when you come to present it,
and your audience will be able to understand it better.

The best way to create a clear, succinct and well designed presentation is to take a structured approach to planning and writing it. And this is one of the key steps to achieving excellent presentation skills. Read more »

43 Reasons for Not Giving a Presentation at Work

We recently asked people who hate presenting what excuses they have used to avoid giving a presentation at work. The list below is a just a sample of their responses.

My favourite is the last one!

Have you avoided presenting at work before? What excuse did you use? And have you ever regretted avoiding not giving presentations at work?

Here’s their list of excuses:- Read more »

What are Effective Presentation Skills?

Effective Presentation Skills

Have your presentation skills ever let you down in the past?

Have you ever avoided giving a presentation at work?

Might you be more successful at work if you were a better and more effective presenter?

The good news is that Effective Presentation Skills can be developed by almost anyone with the right training.

But what are Effective Presentation Skills? And how do you develop them? Read more »

Presenting Your Influential Voice

I happened to be watching Sky News this lunchtime – taking a break from my more normal working routine.

What caught my attention though wasn’t the normally slick presentation that you come to expect from most of the Sky presenters.

It was the fact that I just couldnt make out what the Business Presenter was saying! I’m quite interested in the Business News after all – especially given our livelihood is very much dependent on how quickly we can all drag ourselves and the country out of this recession! Read more »