I’ve received a lot of questions on how beat presentation anxiety from My Corporate Climb members lately, so I thought I’d devote a blog post to becoming a dynamic presenter.  Presentations are an important communication tool.  More than one career has been launched by a great presentation.

Tweet 117 in my career advice book Success Tweets says, “Presentation steps: 1) Determine the message; 2) Analyze the audience; 3) Organize the information; 4) Design visuals; 5) Practice.”

A lot of people suffer from presentation anxiety.  Public speaking can be frightening, although it doesn’t have to be.  Presenting is like any other process, there is a series of logical steps to follow.  The five steps to effective presentations in the Tweet have served me well for over 35 years.

In this post, I’m sharing the material I cover in a three-day workshop on presentations skills.  So this is a quick overview, but one that captures all the basics you need.

Breaking the presentation process down into the five easily manageable steps listed in Tweet 117 in Success Tweets is the best way I know to get over presentation anxiety.  Let’s look at them in some detail.

1. Determine your message.
2. Analyze your audience.
3. Organize your information for impact.
4. Design supporting visuals.
5. Practice, practice, practice.

Ask yourself these questions to help you determine your message:

• What do you want or need to communicate?
• What information does the audience need?
• Why do they need it?
• At the end of the presentation, what should the audience: Understand? Remember? Do?

Determine the best way to communicate your message by analyzing your audience.  Ask yourself these questions:

• Who is the audience for this presentation?
• Why are they attending?
• What is their general attitude toward you and the topic?
• What is their knowledge level on this topic?

Use the golden rule of journalism: “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, Tell them, Tell them what you told them” to organize your information.

• Begin at the end.  Prepare your presentation ending first.  This is helpful, because it keeps you focused on where you’re going.
• Prepare your presentation beginning.  A good beginning has two things: a hook, and an outline of your talk.
• Fill in the blanks with your content.

Design visuals to support and enhance what you are saying.  Good visuals support the points you are making, create audience interest, improve audience understanding, save you time – a picture is worth a thousand words, and they are memory aids.

Practice, Practice, Practice.  There is an old saying, “practice makes up for a lack of talent”.  Prior to getting in front of an audience, say your presentation out loud – several times.  Listen to yourself.  Consider videotaping yourself.  If you don’t have the equipment, practice in front of a mirror, or your spouse, or your dog or cat – just practice.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense.  You can beat presentation anxiety and use presentations as a way to enhance your career success.  Dynamic communicators present with impact.  Many people are frightened by the idea of standing in front of a group of people and doing a talk.  Unfortunately, presentations can make or break your success.  You can conquer your fear of public speaking by following the career advice in Tweet 117 in Success Tweets.  “Presentation steps: 1) Determine the message; 2) Analyze the audience; 3) Organize the information; 4) Design visuals; 5) Practice.  If you follow the career advice in these five steps – especially number 5, practice – you’ll become a confident, successful presenter and a career success.

That’s my career advice on becoming a dynamic presenter.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily musings on life and career success.  I really value you and appreciate you.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, please download a free copy of my popular career advice book Success Tweets and its companion piece Success Tweets Explained.  The first gives you 140 bits of career success advice tweet style — in 140 characters or less.  The second is a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.  You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.

PPS: I opened a membership site last September.  It’s called My Corporate Climb and is devoted to helping people create career success inside large corporations.  You can find out about the membership site by going to http://www.mycorporateclimb.

I had someone come to me and ask for help in developing her presentation skills recently.

She asked for my one best bit of advice when it comes to doing dynamite presentations.  I told her, “Practice out loud.”

Tweet 120 in my career advice book Success Tweets says, “Practice presentations.  You can control your nerves by practicing out loud.  The more you practice, the less afraid you’ll be.”  I think that practicing your presentations – out loud – is the most important presentation success tip.   Here’s why I think it is really important to practice your presentations out loud.

Practicing your presentations out loud…

• Calms your nerves.  When you practice several times, the presentation is familiar and comfortable to you.  This makes you less nervous.
• Helps you edit your talk for impact.  There is nothing like saying it out loud to show you the rough spots in your presentation.  Once you identify these rough spots, you can correct them before you’re in front of an audience.
• Helps you get better.  The more times you repeat a talk out loud, the better it gets.  It’s almost impossible to be over-prepared.  Practice does indeed make perfect.

These three reasons should convince you that it’s important to practice your talk out loud.  Yet, I am always amazed that so many people don’t take the time to practice.  They have some great excuses…

• It takes too much time.
• I know what I’m going to say, I don’t need to practice.
• I feel foolish talking to myself.
• I won’t get any better.
• I’ve done this talk a million times, I don’t need to practice.

And I say, “WRONG!!!”

Practice is the main ingredient of any successful presentation, not funny slides and animation – practice.

Thomas Edison is famous for saying, “Many people miss opportunity because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.”  I am semi-famous for saying, “Most people know the right thing to do in most situations, their common sense tells them.  They don’t use their common sense for a bunch of bogus reasons.”

Practicing your presentations out loud is common sense.  Don’t come up with bogus reasons for not practicing your presentations out loud.  There aren’t any.  The career success advice here is simple.  If you want to become a dynamic communicator, and create the life and career success you want and deserve, you have to practice your talks – out loud.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense.  If you want to be able to deliver dynamic presentations, you have to follow the career advice in Tweet 120 in Success Tweets.  “Practice presentations.  You can control your nerves by practicing out loud.  The more you practice, the less afraid you’ll be.”  Besides controlling your nerves, you’ll get better each time you practice.  Trust me on this one, time spent practicing a presentation is time well spent.

That’s my career advice on becoming a dynamic presenter.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with – and your presentation horror stories and triumphs – in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily musings on life and career success.  I really appreciate you.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, please download a free copy of my popular career advice book Success Tweets and its companion piece Success Tweets Explained.  The first gives you 140 bits of career success advice tweet style — in 140 characters or less.  The second is a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.  You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.

PPS: I opened a membership site on September 1.  It’s called My Corporate Climb and is devoted to helping people create career success inside large corporations.  To celebrate the grand opening, I’m giving away a new career advice book I’ve written called I Want YOU…To Succeed in Your Corporate Climb.  You can find out about the membership site and get the career advice in I Want YOU… for free by going to http://www.mycorporateclimb.

If you’ve been reading lately, you know that I’m doing a series of blog posts that further explain the career advice in Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less, my latest career success coach book.  I’m going to be sorry when this series is finished.  I hope you’re enjoying reading it as much as I’m enjoying writing it. 
 
Success Tweets  has gone into its third printing.  That really pleases me.  It has become a greater success than I thought it would be.  You can pick up a copy at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download it for free at www.SuccessTweets.com. 

Today’s career advice comes from Success Tweet 116…

Presentations are opportunities to shine.  Don’t let stage fright rob you of your opportunity.  Get control of your nerves.

The other day, I was at a workshop and one of the speakers was clearly nervous.  He began his talk by telling the old story about the survey that asked people to name their greatest fear. 

Public speaking came in first, by a large margin.  Death was fourth.  So, if you believe the results of this survey, most people would rather die than stand up and give a talk.  He was one of them.  He urged us to be kind to him because he was nervous doing this talk.

He was suffering from what is known by a number of names: presentation anxiety, stage fright, the jitters.  Whatever you call it, presentation anxiety can be the death knell for an otherwise great talk. We all get nervous before a talk, but being nervous doesn’t have to mean you’ll do a bad talk.  

Presentation anxiety is a response to fear of doing a poor talk.  It shows ups in a number of ways: blushing, shaking stuttering, preparing.  At its worst, it will lead you to feel as if you’re not making sense, or worse yet, to lose the thread of your talk.

I make speeches for a living, and I get nervous before every one of them.  In fact, if I’m not a little nervous, I start to worry that I will be flat and deliver an unenthusiastic talk. Over the years, I’ve developed a few tricks that I use to calm my nerves before a big presentation and make them work for, not against me.  Check them out…

Practice your talk out loud. This will help you get comfortable with your material and your delivery.

Think good thoughts.  Imagine yourself succeeding beyond your wildest dreams.  Imagine that you will get a standing ovation for your talk.  This is what visualization is all about.

Get there early. In this way, you’ll be able to set up your computer and run through your slides one last time.

Greet people as they arrive; exchange a few words with them. This will help you make a good first impression with members of the audience. It will also help you get control of your nerves, because you’ll feel more comfortable speaking to a group of people you know rather than a group of strangers.

Take a deep breath before you begin.  This will calm you, help center you and give you enough air to get through your opening.

Move. When you begin your presentation, move around. Use body movement to help release some of your nervous energy. Don’t get trapped behind the podium.  It can inhibit you from releasing your energy.

Just chat with the audience. Think of your presentation as a conversation. There might be 10, or 25, or 100 people in your audience. But in terms of real communication, there are only two people in the room: you and a single listener.

Tell stories to illustrate your main points.  People like listening to stories and they tend to remember points illustrated by stories.

Ask questions during your talk. This will help you build a dialogue and a participatory feeling. I try to make at least one quarter and as much as one half of my talk a discussion with the audience. In this way, it’s less of a speech and more of an expanded conversation with every person in the room.

Don’t worry if you make a mistake.  To begin with, most people won’t realize that you made a mistake.  Second, realize the audience is with you.  They’ve all been there and know that presenting can be nerve wracking.  Most people in the audience will be pulling for you to do a good job.

Last week I met a guy named Ron Balagot.  He shared his eBook, Public Speaking Fear Conquered: Your Fearless Presenter Within Unleashed, with me.  This is the perfect book for you if you suffer from fear of public speaking.  Its career advice is terrific!  You can get a free cop at http://www.publicspeakingtipsforyou.com.  You owe it to yourself to download this free eBook.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people are dynamic communicators.  They understand and use the career advice in Tweet 116 in Success Tweets.  “Presentations are opportunities to shine.  Don’t let stage fright rob you of your opportunity.  Get control of your nerves.”  Presentations really are opportunities to shine – to demonstrate that you are a dynamic communicator.  Stage fright is the biggest enemy of presentation success.  Don’t let stage fright rob you of your opportunity to shine.  One good presentation can make a career.  Presentations are the best ways to get noticed and have your name at the top of the list when promotional opportunities come up.  There are several ways to deal with presentation anxiety: be prepared, know your stuff cold; think of your talk as a conversation with the audience; tell stories to illustrate your points.    However, there is one piece of advice that trumps all when it comes to delivering dynamic presentations: practice, practice, practice!

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 116, dealing with stage fright.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud