NAIL THAT PRESENTATION
My Top 5 Tips (in the
space of 25 minutes!)
I recently had a journalist ask
me for my top 5 tips to public speaking. They gave me 25 minutes
to get it to them so I had to think on my feet. Having never
really thought about it before, I decided to go with my
unconscious mind and I stuck with what I had! I wrote down the 5
most valuable tips I could think of to help people overcome
their fears and here they are...
1 Be Yourself
Not always, but in most talks
people will be judging you. That's just the way it is. What we
need to do is be comfortable with ourselves. When we put on
'armor' or whenever we try to be someone else, it's because we
think that the audience is out to expose us. We've got to ask
ourselves then - expose what? I'm sure if you saw somebody come
on stage and deliver their presentation being completely
themselves you would admire them. You might even envy them. My
tip then is to work out what's causing your fear. Then you can
start to do something about it! So, take a few moments and have
a think.
Do you worry about:
• The venue?
• The people that are there?
• The size of the audience?
• Your past performances?
• Your capabilities?
• What's possible and what's
not possible for you? I.e. you start sentences with the words,
"I can't...", "I must..." and so on.
• Yourself? Do you feel
unworthy?
• Who you are in front of
others?
Now there may be more fears
than one, but identify them now and decide what action needs to
be taken. Then take action and you'll soon find you start to
destroy the limiting beliefs. You must take action now though.
Question your beliefs and think about how you might need to
think about yourself differently. A great way of learning to be
yourself is to bring in a story to your talk, maybe an
experience in your life that is relevant for your message. You
will find that not only do you reveal a bit about yourself, but
you'll also settle down as it's easy to talk about and people
will connect with you. Which brings me onto my next tip...
2 Turn your speaking
into conversation
Too often I see people giving
talks at the audience instead of to the audience. To really
enjoy your public speaking you will need to get a rapport with
everybody there. Ask your audience questions, rhetorical or not,
and make sure you connect with them. Tell them stories, ask them
to participate, include members of your audience into your
talks. Do this from the very beginning. Even take a show of
hands - it makes it look as if you genuinely care about
communicating your message. All of this will settle you down
very quickly and you'll find you feel more comfortable with each
performance. You'll find that all the best speakers in the world
do this. Having studied endless speakers, the best speakers
engage their audience and keep them captivated (even with the
driest information) by asking them questions and having a
conversation with them. Speak to your audience like you were
having a coffee with them 10 minutes ago. No need for armor just
let you be yourself.
3 Informing versus
Performing
A key skill is to remember what
your message is (try and make it have impact) and give your
audience that message. It's as simple as that. When you have a
clear message there will be no need to dress it up in a perfect
performance. Think about the best singers in the world - there
is a time a place for the big performances, but an acoustic
version of their song can be more powerful. True greats know
this. Therefore think about your message and what you want the
audience to go home with. Then you'll find everything flows much
more easily and you will give a better 'performance'. Inform
your audience. You don't have to give them an all singing, all
dancing performance.
4 Prepare
This is for me, the biggest
part of your speaking. You will have to prepare. Failing to
prepare is preparing to fail. A good friend always tells me
about the 6 P's. Piss Poor Preparation = Piss Poor Performance.
He's right and I've learnt this lesson the hard way! Look, you
have to prepare in the right way. Mental and Physical. Without
going into all the in's and out's, there are 3 steps I
recommend: 1. Get your content down (using a system e.g. 4MAT)
2. Think about how you look - body, hands, movement 3. Practice
in front of the mirror and in front of others There is so much
you can do, but these steps are fundamental for a good
performance.
5 Mind Set
As it is 'the 5 top tips', I
have combined two together to give you bonus information! The
first point is that if you truly want to lose your fear for
good, you'll need to begin by changing your motivation. No
longer do I want you to think about losing the fear, but gaining
the confidence. There are two ways of looking at motivation -
'towards' or 'away from'. Towards is when you want something
really bad you'll end up getting there no matter what it takes.
Away from is when you want to get rid of something so bad; you
are unconsciously keeping it with you. Let me explain.
If you want to make money, as
you want to be rich and live a certain lifestyle then you'll do
anything to get there. You'll be open to opportunities as your
mind will be primed for those chances. This is towards
motivation. If you want to make money because you are fed up of
being poor, you'll get comfortable and then lose all your
motivation and become poor again. This is away from motivation
and is very common.
Often you might have away from
motivation when trying to lose weight, and also trying to get
rid of fears. If you try and lose the fear because you just
don't want that feeling anymore, then you might eventually get
lucky. One bad day though and the fear can come flooding back.
Instead, think about how you can gain the confidence you would
love to have and then start focusing on exactly what that would
be like. Your mind can then start giving you what you truly
want.
My second point is about
anxiety and how you can start to unlearn the feelings associated
with public speaking. I want you to look at public speaking as a
skill or a science - logical steps to go through for your mind.
Somewhere along the line, you will have learnt to 'do' public
speaking in an anxious way. In other words, we have learned to
be anxious. The exciting thing about this perspective is that if
you have learned how to be anxious then you can relearn how not
to be anxious! When your mind is willing to change, many will
find that their public-speaking anxiety has suddenly become more
manageable! However, for many of us the mind has to convince the
body that it can stand in front of an audience and survive.
Unfortunately, this does
require some courage and the usual feelings of discomfort that
show up when we decide to move outside our comfort zone. The
secret is to take small, supervised steps as we move outside our
comfort zone. For those who experience a lot of public-speaking
anxiety this is best done in a seminar with an experienced
facilitator. However, many individuals can start their
desensitization or graduated-risk programs by joining
public-speaking organizations like Toastmasters or go on an
Intensive Public Speaking Day, which Tom Breeze from Nail That
Presentation might run!!
