All Presentations Should Tell Good Stories

When you think about it, the end goal of most presentations is to convince, whether that means convincing your audience to agree with your point of view, or convincing them to take the action you want them to take.  Professional presenters with vast amounts of public speaking experience are usually great story tellers.  In order for your presentations to come across convincingly to your audiences, they require the focus, logic and sequence of any engaging story.

You might or might not be aware of falling victim to some or all of the common mistakes that initially trip up novice presenters.  Most of these learners’ mistakes relate directly back to the ethos of story telling in presentations – or lack of it.  When preparing for forthcoming presentations, or looking back retrospectively at old ones, you might give yourself a confidence boost by answering a few hypothetical questions honestly.

Are you prepared to offer appropriate answers to the broad range of questions that might be posed by your audience?
If not, might your inability to appropriately answer audience questions be due to a lack of flow in your presentation?
Are your slides truly sequentially ordered?
Are you sometimes guilty of randomly leaping from one aspect of your subject matter to another without any logical connection between the two?
Do you put yourself in danger of leaving gaping holes in your presentations by trying to sound too clever, for example, by presenting answers and conclusions that lack supporting evidence?
Do you try too hard to amplify your knowledge of your subject matter by including information that is indirectly related but not directly relevant to your presentations?

Searching questions indeed and you might be wondering how they relate to the harnessing of your story telling skills to enhance your public speaking effectiveness.  They do, as they are all about focus, logic and sequence:-

Focus – keep to the point.  Identify information that seem interesting and smart, but realistically bears little relevance to the core messages you aim to send.  Once you have identified these curveballs, eradicate them, even if you desperately want to include them because you think they sound good.

Logic – tempting as it is to provide answers and conclusions first, followed by rhyme and reason afterwards, it is illogical.  Notice how the stories contained in your presentations flow so much more smoothly when you simply reverse the order of certain slides.  Questions first, arguments and evidence in the middle, answers and solutions last but not least.

Sequence – stories lacking in sequential orderliness are confusing, often to the degree that they might initially capture attention, but ultimately fail to retain it.  It is impossible for you to over check that your presentations are sequentially correct.  When going to the time and trouble that preparation for successful presentations demands, it is a crying shame if your subject matter is right, but the sequence in which you present it is erratic and disjointed.

Your ability to recognise the mistakes you are prone to making, coupled with your willingness to improve your public speaking performances, equates to half your battle being won.  So sit tight with a copy of your presentation in front of you and see how you can make instantaneously dramatic differences.     

Ten Step Public Speaking Perfection Plan

If you have ever been tasked to prepare and deliver presentations, at intimate internal meetings or large industry gatherings, you will understand nervous energy. The jitters are generated by your acknowledgement that you will not only be judged on what you say, but also on how you say it. Thankfully, there are tried and tested steps that can help you conquer the collywobbles, before you arrive on the public speaking stage, and whilst you are performing on it.

Step 1 – Planning
Improve the flow and organisation of your presentations by carefully targeting and pre-planning your content. Aim to address the specific needs of your audiences by understanding that the content you include in a sales pitch is totally different from what you use for an industry conference.
Rather than simply offering rafts of generalisations, hone your subject matter in to the theme of the event at which you are presenting, or address any topical issues that are currently big news.
Once you have decided on the main ideas you wish your presentations to impart, incorporate them in to storylines. Make your stories audience focused and develop them in accordance with your overriding theme. Go to great pains to ensure that your stories flow logically and sequentially, so as not to confuse your audiences by skipping backwards and forwards. Ensure that your stories pack potent punches by embellishing them with human examples, whether they are your own, your colleagues, your clients or suppliers, even famous or historical figures.

Step 2 – Choosing Words
Avoid the temptation to throw in words and phrases simply because you like the sound of them. They are rendered inadequate if they do not directly correlate to the core of your presentations. Public speaking is doubtlessly enhanced by the use of richly descriptive language, but it is equally as diminished by poor word choices. By all means make dynamic choices, but stick to the point when saying what you mean. Your audiences will not be foiled if they are unconvinced that you do not mean what you say.

Step 3 – Cutting Jargon
A small amount of ‘industry speak’ is acceptable if your presentations are delivered to audiences who solely operate within a particular sector. If you find that your presentations are intentionally or unintentionally peppered with jargon, ask yourself if you have included it to simply enhance your stature as an authority on your subject matter. Will anything be lost by ditching them and speaking plainly and cojently? Likewise, avoid using slang in a bid to sound ‘down with the kids’.

Step 4 – Avoiding Pauses
Reduce your tendency to slip annoying “Ummms” and “Errrs” in to your presentations by giving yourself alternative stalling devices. Instead of mumbling and fumbling, take a sip of water or ask your audience if they have any questions at this stage whilst you recover from momentary concentration lapses.

Step 5 – Practicing
The spoken word is a powerful thing and, whilst practice may not immediately make your presentations perfect, it will certainly set you on the right track to getting there. After choosing your words carefully, practice delivering them with charisma and passion.

Step 6 – Empathising
Your carefully planned presentations will be dead in the water if you are unable to empathise with your audiences and kindle immediate rapport with them. From the get go, make and maintain eye contact. Be open and smile. Gauge their reactions by spotting if they are glazing over in confusion or nodding in concurrence.

Step 7 – Being You
It is only natural to want to put your game face forward when public speaking. Yet do not confuse this with false airs and graces or a feigned style of speaking. You have been asked to speak and your audiences largely want to learn from your presentations, so do not forget to be the way you are. Anything else is false and unnatural.

Step 8 – Performing
A natural and relaxed style is an important contributory factor to friendly and well received presentations. You might, however, check that you do not become too casual and forget that you are under public scrutiny. Maintain a strong and open posture, respond to your audiences, but do not allow yourself to get unnecessarily sidetracked. Do not scratch unless you absolutely have to, fidget, mess with your hair or shuffle your papers.

Step 9 – Enlisting Humour
By all means include a few jokes if you have confidence in your ability to pull them off. If you are naturally quick witted, a little appropriate humour will complement your presentations. However, carefully avoid anything that audience members have the remotest chance of finding embarrassing or uncomfortable.

Step 10 – Having Confidence
Confidence inevitably grows with experience, but it is also a product of positive mental attitude. Allow your passion for your subject matter and your enthusiasm about sharing your knowledge to shine through when public speaking. Imagining that your audience will be inspired by what you have to say translate in to an enormous confidence boost.

How to create and share PowerPoint Presentations

All presenters have their own styles and preferred delivery methods, yet, when pondering public speaking in academic and corporate environments, it is almost impossible to hark back to life before PowerPoint. This ingenious invention has transformed the way in which presentations are both given and received. However, PowerPoint presentations, just like old school lectures and speeches, run the risk of audience disengagement if you are not well versed in a few common sense and easy to follow tenets:-

1) Definition
Never fail to keep the essence of the subject matter you hope to convey at the very forefront of your mind. Your audiences, after all, look upon you as the authority. Any ‘wishy washy’ glossing over of aspects you do not intrinsically understand can expose your lack of definitive knowledge. You can, however, give your PowerPoint presentations enhanced definition by using complementary handouts and visual representations.

2) Style
Getting your style and tone spot on is key to unlocking the engagement and respect of your audiences. If you are public speaking to students or young professionals working in a trendy sector, acknowledge that one cap does not fit all. Use different PowerPoint animations, colours and templates than those you would select when giving presentations to traditional sectors and senior personnel.

3) Animation
You will be aware of the cliché appertaining to pictures painting a thousand words. The same adage applies to all presentations and can be executed particularly effectively in PowerPoint presentations. Take the time and trouble to source relevant images, soundtracks and video clips. They confirm and amplify your subject matter and additionally entertain your audiences.

4) Minimalism
The overstuffing of slides is a cardinal sin of PowerPoint presentations, albeit a trap that it is all too easy to fall in to. Too much animation is as tedious as too little and too many points and words are nothing short of a bore. As a rule of thumb, try including between three to seven points per slide and encapsulating each point in between three to seven words.

5) Rehearsal
When preparing for any types of public speaking, including the delivery of PowerPoint presentations, practice is king. Carry our informal rehearsals in front of trusted confidantes, take their constructive criticisms on board and amend your PowerPoint presentations accordingly.

Dependent upon individual circumstances, you might be required to distribute your PowerPoint presentations amongst your audiences, either before or after delivery. There are a variety of different ways of successfully doing so, each befitting to various scenarios:-

1) Laptop Storage
Many presentations that you give for a broad spectrum of reasons often require you to simply save your PowerPoint presentations on to your laptop before ultimate delivery. If so, you might consider erring on the side of caution and having alternatives on standby to safeguard yourself against unexpected file corruption, viruses and internet connection problems.

2) Email Distribution
Pre or post emailing your presentations is a great way of electronically sharing. Yet it is worth having a back up plan in mind for recipients who may be unable to open up your presentations. Not everyone will have the same version of PowerPoint on their computers as you – or any version at all. If sounds and videos are included in your presentations, check and double check that your have safely zipped them in to your folders before emailing, to ensure that you send comprehensive versions.

3) Video Conversion
The giving of online presentations is an evolving phenomenon. Likewise, you can share your PowerPoint presentations either before or after you have delivered them publicly by using the same methods. You will need to buy in to relevant software, such as PowerPoint to Video Converter, but will then have the luxury of uploading your presentations on to your blog or website, MySpace or YouTube.

4) DVD Burning
Burning on to DVDs effectively offsets any of the potential issues you might encounter by the simple saving your PowerPoint presentations on to your laptop. DVDs additionally offer you an alternative way to share your presentations, and your audiences a simple and efficient way to view and refer back to your work.

5) PDF Conversion
Hard copy printing of PowerPoint presentations is much less laborious and stressful when you print from PDF files rather than directly from PowerPoint. PDF files are also often easier to transmit via email, although your recipients will only be able to access your PDF files if they have Acrobat Reader or PDF Viewer on their computers.

Speaking in public tips

If you have ever been tasked to prepare and deliver presentations, at intimate internal meetings or large industry gatherings, you will understand nervous energy. The jitters are generated by your acknowledgement that you will not only be judged on what you say, but also on how you say it. Thankfully, there are tried and tested steps that can help you conquer the collywobbles, before you arrive on the public speaking stage, and whilst you are performing on it.

Step 1 – Planning
Improve the flow and organisation of your presentations by carefully targeting and pre-planning your content. Aim to address the specific needs of your audiences by understanding that the content you include in a sales pitch is totally different from what you use for an industry conference.
Rather than simply offering rafts of generalisations, hone your subject matter in to the theme of the event at which you are presenting, or address any topical issues that are currently big news.
Once you have decided on the main ideas you wish your presentations to impart, incorporate them in to storylines. Make your stories audience focused and develop them in accordance with your overriding theme. Go to great pains to ensure that your stories flow logically and sequentially, so as not to confuse your audiences by skipping backwards and forwards. Ensure that your stories pack potent punches by embellishing them with human examples, whether they are your own, your colleagues, your clients or suppliers, even famous or historical figures.

Step 2 – Choosing Words
Avoid the temptation to throw in words and phrases simply because you like the sound of them. They are rendered inadequate if they do not directly correlate to the core of your presentations. Public speaking is doubtlessly enhanced by the use of richly descriptive language, but it is equally as diminished by poor word choices. By all means make dynamic choices, but stick to the point when saying what you mean. Your audiences will not be foiled if they are unconvinced that you do not mean what you say.

Step 3 – Cutting Jargon
A small amount of ‘industry speak’ is acceptable if your presentations are delivered to audiences who solely operate within a particular sector. If you find that your presentations are intentionally or unintentionally peppered with jargon, ask yourself if you have included it to simply enhance your stature as an authority on your subject matter. Will anything be lost by ditching them and speaking plainly and cojently? Likewise, avoid using slang in a bid to sound ‘down with the kids’.

Step 4 – Avoiding Pauses
Reduce your tendency to slip annoying “Ummms” and “Errrs” in to your presentations by giving yourself alternative stalling devices. Instead of mumbling and fumbling, take a sip of water or ask your audience if they have any questions at this stage whilst you recover from momentary concentration lapses.

Step 5 – Practicing
The spoken word is a powerful thing and, whilst practice may not immediately make your presentations perfect, it will certainly set you on the right track to getting there. After choosing your words carefully, practice delivering them with charisma and passion.

Step 6 – Empathising
Your carefully planned presentations will be dead in the water if you are unable to empathise with your audiences and kindle immediate rapport with them. From the get go, make and maintain eye contact. Be open and smile. Gauge their reactions by spotting if they are glazing over in confusion or nodding in concurrence.

Step 7 – Being You
It is only natural to want to put your game face forward when public speaking. Yet do not confuse this with false airs and graces or a feigned style of speaking. You have been asked to speak and your audiences largely want to learn from your presentations, so do not forget to be the way you are. Anything else is false and unnatural.

Step 8 – Performing
A natural and relaxed style is an important contributory factor to friendly and well received presentations. You might, however, check that you do not become too casual and forget that you are under public scrutiny. Maintain a strong and open posture, respond to your audiences, but do not allow yourself to get unnecessarily sidetracked. Do not scratch unless you absolutely have to, fidget, mess with your hair or shuffle your papers.

Step 9 – Enlisting Humour
By all means include a few jokes if you have confidence in your ability to pull them off. If you are naturally quick witted, a little appropriate humour will complement your presentations. However, carefully avoid anything that audience members have the remotest chance of finding embarrassing or uncomfortable.

Step 10 – Having Confidence
Confidence inevitably grows with experience, but it is also a product of positive mental attitude. Allow your passion for your subject matter and your enthusiasm about sharing your knowledge to shine through when public speaking. Imagining that your audience will be inspired by what you have to say translate in to an enormous confidence boost.

Fail to prepare for presentation costs

 

A staggering 78% of CEOs from Standard & Poor’s 500 companies recently surveyed ranked excellent communication as the single most important facet for their Managers to possess.  Hence, when you know you have a presentation to give, no matter how far in the future it might loom, there are many factors that you need to start thinking about.  None is to be kept further at the forefront of your mind than your absolute golden rule – prepare, prepare and prepare even more! 

Some of the most competent presenters learnt this lesson through bitter experience and turned their initial mortification to its best advantage.  If you have ever been in the unenviable position of failing to adequately prepare for a presentation… well, most folks know what failing to prepare leads to.  You probably don’t need any reminding of the embarrassment you suffered as a result of blithering off the cuff.

A lack of preparation costs.  It costs you in ‘face’, pride in yourself and your professional credibility in the eyes of your beholders.  It also costs your audience by unnecessarily robbing them of their precious time – and probably also their wills to live as they are forced to endure your precariously rattling on.  A lose:lose situation that you can’t risk recurring, as the ability to communicate effectively is a highly coveted skill in modern working environments. 

It shouldn’t and doesn’t have to be a lost cause.  High quality presentation training and coaching provides common sense keys to unlocking not only your speaking skills, but also your preparation modus operandi.  This involves guiding you through the way your approach your brief with emotional intelligence, a clear understanding of what is required and how your presentation relates to the audience you will be speaking to.  It also forewarns and forearms you to anticipate when contentious audience feedback might arise and how to engagingly deal with it if it does.

Furthermore, presentation training and coaching assists with the all important visual aspects of your presentation.  Novices to presenting are generally tempted to cram as much text as possible on to each page of their Powerpoint presentations and simply read it all back to their audiences, occasionally adding a few asides.  It is a common mistake for beginners to make if you are nodding your head resignedly.  Yet make no bones that it is not engaging, it is rather boring.  And nothing is more demotivating for relatively inexperienced presenters than noticing their audiences doze off, doodling and switch their attentions elsewhere.

It is not just about what you say or even how convincingly you say it in today’s high tech world where everything is about instant gratification.  Great visuals are known to increase comprehension and ingestion by up to 400%.  When looking at a screen, audiences are able to process visuals 60,000 faster than they can text, regardless of whether images are hard hitting, humorous or simply create mental associations.

At Presentation Guru, our presentation training and coaching services dig deeper than the talking of a good talk, although that is undeniably part and parcel of the process.  We don’t only guide beginner to intermediate levels through presentation preparation.  We also host polishing up sessions with experienced presenters, besides the rehearsal and revision of major sales pitches and Board presentations with senior management teams. 

Notes to editors:

Presentation Guru is a company specializing in providing communication excellence to the executive workplace.
More information on company can be found on www.presentationguru.co.uk
Further enquiries to:
John Davies (Marketing) – 0845 899 1248

Stand out from the crowd with your public speaking skills

Public speaking invariably comes at or near the top of the list whenever people are asked about their greatest fears. Given that so many people are unable or unwilling to speak in public; does it really make a difference if you too are not confident about giving presentations? After all, surely if public speaking training or presentation training and coaching were so beneficial, everyone would be doing it; wouldn’t they? Sadly, this is not the case – for many people, their worries and fears outweigh the benefits that an ability to speak in public can bring.

So, what are these benefits?
When you are nervous about speaking in public or unsure of your presentation skills, you will be in a constant state of anxiety in any situation where you may be called upon to speak. Toasts at weddings, an invitation to present at a conference, a meeting with a valued client or supplier – the prospect of these scenarios will make you shudder. If you can rely on your presentation training and coaching and know that you will make an effective speech, you can embrace these opportunities.
It’s the very fact that the majority of people are not accomplished public speakers that makes you stand out if you are able to do so. By volunteering to take on the dreaded and challenging job of speaking to a crowd, your superiors will be impressed and your co-workers will be beyond grateful that they will not have to do so. You immediately stand out from the crowd as a confident, assertive and team-oriented individual.

Even those who hate giving presentations and speaking in public will probably have to do so at some point. If you have prepared for this possibility by undergoing presentation training and coaching you will be able to do more than simply stammer through your notes. You will be able to concentrate on the meaning of what you are saying, focus on your audience and respond to their body language and questions. By being confident in your verbal communication you are free to concentrate on the non-verbal communication that is key to making a good impression.

The ability to make presentations and speak in public opens up a wealth of different career paths. Sales, marketing, management and more are all career directions which are much more easily accessed when you have confidence in your public speaking skills and are able to give clear, effective presentations. Your co-workers and subordinates are better able to understand and follow your plans and visions, while your clients and suppliers can follow your line of reasoning and know exactly what you are trying to communicate to them.
Public speaking skills, enhanced by presentation training and coaching, bring so many benefits that you will find it hard to understand why it took you so long to take the steps you need to stand out from the crowd.
Editor notes

Presentation Guru is a specialist presentation training and coaching company aimed at senior managers. Further information can be found at www.presentationguru.co.uk or email john@presentationguru.co.uk, telephone 0845 899 1248.

Busting the biggest myth about presentations and public speaking

If you were planning on running a marathon, you wouldn’t think that the fact that you have been walking since you were a toddler meant that you had all the experience and training that you needed. Should one of your friends have that attitude, they would quite obviously be gasping for air and suffering from muscle cramps after only a short distance but you certainly wouldn’t consider them to simply be “naturally “ bad at running. Instead you would advise them that long distance running is a skill that requires training and practice if you are to be successful.

And yet, many people hold exactly this attitude about public speaking and presentation skills. They do not see the point in seeking public speaking training or presentation training and coaching, because they do not see how it could do any good. They believe that talking is the same as speaking in public, and that one poor showing means that they simply do not have the talent. This is as ridiculous as the analogy above. There are of course some people who have a particular innate talent for public speaking in the same way that some people are naturally athletic, but all successful public speakers and presenters have had hours of presentation training and coaching in order to become as accomplished as they are.

Any fears that you might have about speaking in public or giving presentations are perfectly natural – it is unlikely that you have had the levels of presentation training and coaching that the professionals have had, so of course it seems absurd to you that you could ever perform at that level. However, this barrier is one that can easily be overcome once you realise that speaking in public is a skill like any other, and like other skills you will need to practice and train if you are to reach your potential. This knowledge allows you to understand your current level of ability as not a “natural” incapability or innate lack of talent. Instead, you are simply untrained.

With proper presentation training and coaching, you can easily become an accomplished presenter or public speaker. Successful public speakers make the entire process seem effortless as they deliver an entire presentation without notes and with panache and style.

However, it is this very element of public speaking that requires the most amount of effort. These speakers will have spent serious amounts of time preparing their presentation, training and coaching themselves not to forget any of their planned turns of phrase or body language.
The next time you begin to worry about speaking in public or making presentations, take a step back and consider how much of this worry is based on the myth that successful public speakers are simply innately talented. You will find that a little presentation training and coaching will show you just how untrue that is.

Editor notes

Presentation Guru is a specialist presentation training and coaching company aimed at senior managers. Further information can be found at www.presentationguru.co.uk or email john@presentationguru.co.uk, telephone 0845 899 1248.

Overcoming Palpitations Caused By Pending Presentations

Many charismatic and commanding professionals are reduced to quivering wrecks when having to speak publicly to small or large audiences made up of people they either know or do not know. Whatever shape or size their public platform takes, they are unable to switch their mindsets positively. Their regular daily aptitude to speak cojently and confidently evades them. They feel isolated by their fears. They battle on, hoping against hope that the day will finally dawn when they do not transform in to the human equivalents of Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse whilst presenting.

In modern working environments, you don’t have to be a Senior Manager of an organisation to be asked to give a presentation. On the contrary, it is not unusual to finding yourself being asked to present during job interviews, making it all the more imperative that you tackle the fears that you share with many people. Your employment prospects can potentially hinge on your ability to deliver an engaging presentation – or not. And if you are lucky enough to bag your dream job, chances are that that there will be much of the same to follow, both internally and externally. You will be far from out of the woods, but you are not alone!

Resultantly and very understandably, many professionals at a variety of different levels call loudly for presentation training and coaching. What the pros have leant from experience and understand intrinsically is why people like you are stricken with terror when faced with presenting. Whatever your own personal reasons might be, anyone’s and everyone’s reasons generally stem from a natural reluctance to sound silly.

This is a human universal that blights many people, whether during an informal chat with friends or in the workplace. You might be loathe to venture your ideas and opinions in case others don’t agree with you or fail to value your contributions – so you keep them to yourself. You are afraid of sounding stupid or showing yourself up as a charlatan who doesn’t know what they are talking about. Keeping it zipped is preferential.

You might admire those people who seem to ooze uber confidence and have inimitable knacks of always quipping in with dazzling one liners at just the right moments. Remember that they are often faking and quaking, too, but have conquered their inhibitions. Presentation training and coaching professionals know this and can share with you practical techniques to unlock your hidden potential, engage your audiences and move forward in all aspects of your life.

At Presentation Guru, we offer presentation training and coaching that goes far beyond the giving a humorous talk before sending you on your way. Our twenty years of experience in the art of presentations has not only benefited FTSE 100 companies; our deep insight has challenged and influenced the training of trainers. We do not claim to be the cheapest, yet we do pride ourselves in being market leaders. Our time served methods and techniques constitute your very own box of tricks to banish your presentation butterflies and jettison your jitters.

Editor notes

Presentation Guru is a specialist presentation training and coaching company aimed at senior managers. Further information can be found at http://www.presentationguru.co.uk or email john@presentationguru.co.uk, telephone 0845 899 1248.

Presentation with impact and style

There was a once famous psychologist who quoted ‘things that are different or unique will be remembered’ and presentations that follow this rule will make an impact. Take the last presentation you did, how did you start it? was it a general welcome or a dull introduction to you company? I recently worked with a client who needed to make an impact as the chair of a large organisation on the theme of change. After consulting on the audience and expected outcomes, we chose to follow a purely pictorial introduction of her recent personal upheaval having bought a dog. This was indeed unexpected for the audience, but made it personal, memorable and directly relevant to the topic in hand.

The introduction was an outstanding success, and to this day people still talk about the dog and the upheaval, which comes back to the point, be different, and be remembered.

Make your point, briefly.

I’ve just been listening to Pakistans presidents response to the recent Osama drama on Sky and was amused by the summation of his speech which he illustrated in point form. He did’nt make 1 point, 3 or 5, but a massive 15 points! thats longer than a lot of presentations that I’ve seen.

If you need to make a point, keep it brief, no more than 3 please, your audience needs to be reminded of your key overriding messages only.

Simply presentations for clearer presentations.