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How do we overcome our nerves and become a much more competent, natural speaker?

Join our discussion group on presentation skills, this week, were we will be talking about speaking with a natural style, overcoming nerves and dealing with those pesky Q&A sessions.

Wednesday 20th February
1:00 - 2:00
Global Lounge Resources Center

Bring along your group members or come as an individual, all are welcome.

I wanted to take a few minutes and summarize some of the main points that we talked about.

1. The three elements of a passionate and engaging speaker

Physical - the physical aspects of our presentation
Content - the content of the presentation
Delivery - all non-physical aspects of the delivery

2. The characteristics that make us passionate and engaging.

Using the three headings above we began to discuss some of the characteristics that make us an engaging and passionate speaker.

Physical
- Smile
- Eye Contact
- Posture
- Gestures
- Square up to the audience
- Stand up

Content
- Create a good structure
- Speak to the interests of the audience
- Use stories, examples and case studies
- Use current events
- Use humor

Delivery
- Read the audience
- Involve the audience
- Eliminate Verbal Graffiti
- Demonstrate Voice Control

3. Areas of weakness

Of the characteristics mentioned above (as well as some other) the areas we highlighted as weaknesses included:

- Voice Control
- Dealing with nerves
- Eye Contact
- Dependence on PowerPoint slides

4. How do we deal with the weaknesses?

Here were some of the things that came out of our discussion that would help us work on the areas above.

Voice Control
This consists of three things; volume, intonation and pace. When presenting it is important that we speak up but we don’t shout, vary the tone of our voice to emphasize key words and phrases and control our pace.

This is something we can practice on a daily basis. As you engage in conversation with people, take note of your voice control.

Dealing with nerves
Nerves often make us speed up our speech or lose our place completely.

We talked about viewing the presentation from the perspective of the audience. The reality is that 9 out of 10 times, no one in the audience is that bothered whether you are nervous or not or lose your place. Taking this viewpoint allows us to cut out some of the nerves.

To counter the inclination to talk faster than usual we return to voice control. If we follow the pattern of:

speak, pause, breathe, speak

we can slow down our speech and emphasize the key points that we want to make.

Eye Contact
On this area there are a couple of things we can do.

- Looking at one person directly will give the appearance that we are looking at those around them
- Share your eye contact with people around the room, don’t just stick to one face
- Don’t rely on your notes, this will allow you to look up more!
- Don’t let negative reactions throw you off! React and adjust your delivery accordingly.

Dependence on PowerPoint
It is very easy to get sucked into reading your PowerPoint like a script. It is important that you limit the words on your slides to one or two key points. This will take away that convenience of relying on your slide. Using visuals can also be an effective way to engage your audience.

Check out Presentation Zen for more tips on effective presentations.

Next week we will be discussing how to be a natural speaker. We will also have two of the group members give a short presentation on the topic of their choice for the rest of the group to evaluate. So come along and join in the discussion.

See you next week

What were your thoughts on the session? Did we cover something you could relate to? Would you like us to cover something else? Leave a comment and let us know!

This makes you more anxious, you become very aware of your own
voice, it IS boring! No wonder people are falling asleep! You don’t
know what to do and all of a sudden your presentation which you
have prepared, and practiced for weeks, is falling apart.

If you can relate to this, if you feel like your presentations lack
passion or that you have trouble engaging with your audience, if you
feel that far too often you lose your audience, then come along to
our peer discussion group on presentation skills.

We will be holding the second group in our series as follows:

Wednesday 13th February
1:00 - 2:00
Global Lounge Resources Corner

Using ‘The Exceptional Presenter’ by Timothy Koegel as a foundation,
we will be discussing how to become a more passionate presenter and
how to engage with the audience.

Bring along your group members or come as an individual, all are
welcome

I’d love to hear your comments on the session this afternoon.

What did you like, what did you not like?
Did we talk about something too much or not talk about something enough?

Whatever your thoughts are, Id love to here them. You can do this by leaving your comment below.

In return I’ll send you a copy of the resources from today’s session.

I wanted to summarize some of the main points we talked about.

1. How to OPEN UP

Using Timothy Koegel’s OPEN UP acronym, we discussed the various traits and characteristics of an exceptional presenter. They were:

Organized
Passionate
Engaging
Natural

And how an exceptional presenter must:

Understand the Audience
Practice

2. Organizing Your Presentation

Structure

A basic structure we can use in our presentations is:

1. Start with a purpose
2. State your Objectives
3. Explain the current situation
4. Describe the end result
5. Detail the next action
6. End with your purpose statement

Our discussions highlighted the importance of starting with a strong purpose statement, that is telling the audience the one or two most important things you want them to remember or take away from the presentation.

If you start with a clearly defined purpose, then everything else in your presentation should fit naturally around this purpose. If it doesn’t then it probably shouldn’t be in the presentation.

Technology

It is imperative that we are not over-reliant on technology, in particular powerpoint or other media tools that we use.

It is important that we know our presentation enough to do it without looking to these tools for help. They should only be used to re-inforce the points we are making, not to make them for us!

3. Understanding the Audience

At this stage of life most of our presentations are going to be given to our fellow classmates. In order to engage with them and keep their attention it is important that we understand their needs and what they are expecting from us.

Three things came up during the discussion

Who’s doing the marking?
An important but often overlooked fact is that it may not be the lecturer who will be giving us our final presentation grade. Part (or perhaps all) of this may come from peer review. As a result we must gear the presentation to the needs of however is doing the marking. If we want to get a good grade that is

Presentation Fatigue
Often class presentations are often held one after another. When this occurs, it is easy for much of the audience to tire and begin to zone out. It is important that we understand this and that we aim to engage the audience early and often. Getting active audience participation is a must!

But we already know this?
Many times when we are presenting a theory or concept, much of the class will already be familiar with this. We must make sure not to bore the audience by telling them things that they already know. Rather than explaining the theory or concept in great detail, we must show how this is applicable in a real life example. Something that will benefit their learning. After all, as presenters we should be aiming to educate our audience.

There were a lot of great points raised during the discussion today and I hope you can implement one or two of them in order to improve your next presentation.

Looking forward to seeing you at the next session!

Wednesday January 30th

1.00 - 2.00 PM

Whether you are looking to engage your lecturer and class mates in a group presentation, put forward your points in a class discussion or impress at a job interview, you need to be prepared, confident and in control to achieve your goal.

Over the next few weeks we will be holding a series of four Presentation Skills discussion groups at the Global Lounge at HKU. The first session is next Wednesday, January 30th.

Using ‘The Exceptional Presenter’ by Timothy Koegel as a basis for discussion, the first session will concentrate on organizing your presentation and understanding your audience as the foundation needed for a successful presentation.

Start right now!

If you’re planning to attend the discussion group (or even if you’re not) we’d love to hear from you. We’d like you to tell us the one area of your public speaking or presentation skills that you would most like to improve. This will help us shape the discussions to your needs!

To do this simply leave a comment on this posting, or, if you would prefer to do it anonymously, send us a message via our Contact Us Page.

We look forward to seeing you at the session

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Note: You don’t need the book to take part in the discussion groups but it would certainly benefit you as you aim to improve your speaking and presentation skills. You can pick up a copy at your local Dymocks bookstore.

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