Who are you? How will you be remembered after this presentation? Are you professional, poised, articulate? Are you warm, folksy, creative, nurturing? Maybe you want to be seen as ballistic, confronting, no-nonsense, boot camp material. What message will your clothes and your grooming convey? What will your choice of language say about you?
You cannot be someone you are not, when you present, unless you are prepared to be a performer for the entire production. Insincerity will detract from your speech as quickly as a joke in bad taste. But you can present a side of yourself as the highlight – the side you want your audience to remember.
And the most powerful choice you will make is how you get that image to support your message – how you put the two together.
Great speakers seem to stay on track effortlessly. Their presentations are tight and focused. Do you find yourself, on the other hand, sometimes, with too much information, or getting off the point of your story or presentation?
One simple trick to tighten and focus your presentation is to define the message; the central message of your presentation – what one thing do you want the audience to take away?
This message can be called a thesis statement or a theme. It can be given a number of names, but you need to be able to state it in one sentence. One sentence. That way you will stay focused on the outcome when you are planning.
Keep the sentence in front of you as you are preparing your content. Whenever you find a useful piece of information, ask yourself if it contributes to your one-sentence message and how well. When you are choosing the parts of your story, or the supports for your points, ask if they contribute to your one-sentence message and how well. When you are interacting with your audience in Q&A or an ad lib session, ask yourself that same question. Am I contributing to that one-sentence message and how well is what I am saying supporting it?
One sentence – one of the secrets to tightening and focusing your presentations.
Presentations in Action
Jerry Weissman
Want to make outstanding presentations? See how others have done it! Legendary presentations coach Jerry Weissman shares powerful examples from the media, sports, politics, science, art, music, literature, the military, and beyond. Weissman’s examples reveal universal truths about effective communication–and help you supercharge everything from content and graphics to delivery! => http://bit.ly/ONyZLv
The success of any speech or presentation depends on making a connection with the audience. Good speakers establish that connection from the very beginning and use many techniques to maintain it right through to the end. It is through that connection, made with our audiences, that we can achieve the outcomes we want.
Making eye contact and scanning the audience to achieve it is one of those techniques and a powerful one.
Firstly, make eye contact with each member of the audience. Be present. Though this conversation is a stylised one, it is a conversation, nevertheless. So make the audience feel you are talking to them, not just presenting your material.
The eye contact also builds your authenticity. One of the main signs of a person who is not authentic – not sincere – is lack of eye contact, and that would be a guarantee of losing any hard-won connection!
If you use notes, use them sparingly, or they will diminish your eye contact. If you must look at the projection screen, look briefly, or that, too, will diminish your eye contact. Any time that you look away from the audience make it a choice, make it deliberate, to support the point you are making.
Secondly, while you are scanning the audience to make eye contact, you can evaluate your connection with them. The connection you are making with your audience – is, mainly, nonverbal on their part. So you are not receiving a continuous flow of verbal feedback by which to monitor that connection.
You will have to rely on their nonverbal feedback to make sure the connection is still strong. As you scan, monitor how they are sitting, what they are doing, if they are talking or listening, whether their eyes are glazed or not. Then, if you see the connection waning, you can re-establish it.
One of the best ways is to make a change – a change relevant to what has gone before, relevant to your material and relevant to that audience. Change your presentation style, change their state, change your visuals.
© Bronwyn Ritchie If you want to include this article in your publication, please do, but please include the following information with it:
Bronwyn Ritchie is a professional librarian, writer, award-winning speaker and trainer. She is a certified corporate trainer and speech contest judge with POWERtalk, a certified World Class Speaking coach, and has had 30 years’ experience speaking to audiences and training in public speaking. In just 6 months time, you could be well on the way to being admired, rehired as a speaker, confident and sucessful, with the 30 speaking tips. Click here for 30 speaking tips for FREE. Join now or go to http://www.30speakingtips.com
What do you want the impact of our presentation to be?
That impact is not an accidental by-product of what you say and do. It is not something that occurs by chance, or through luck. It is something you create deliberately. So before you think about what you will say and what you will do, you need to define what it is that you want to create.
What exactly is the impact going to be? In other words, you need to define:
How will your audience respond to your speech or presentation?
What will they take away with them and remember?
What will they remember of you?
Why will they think “Wow what a fabulous presentation!”?
Sometimes, as speakers, we need to make a point that is just too new, or strange, or huge or threatening for our audience to grasp. It can certainly be a challenge and I am so grateful for analogies and the way they can easily and simply and cleanly do the job that we need to do in sharing that information.
An analogy works by relating the element that we want the audience to understand to something that they do understand, something with which they are familiar. It works because we are not very good at remembering concepts that come as words or as numbers, but we retain and understand far better if something is left in our minds as a picture or an image, particularly if it is something we have already seen or experienced. And that’s what analogies can do, leave your audience with an image and an understanding that they will remember long after your presentation has finished.
Analogies are extended similes and metaphors, and because they link your new or difficult concept to something that is familiar and understood by your audience they create a very human aspect to your point – and, by extension, to you as the presenter. Martin Luther King, in his “I have a dream” speech, compared the needs for civil rights to cashing a cheque. He said,
“In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a cheque. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of colour are concerned…”
This is a metaphor, but it cannot stand on its own. King could have said “We have come to our nation’s capital to cash a cheque.” But to make it understood and easily grasped he extended it with an explanation and it became an analogy, a powerful analogy.
As speakers we can all do this – compare our concepts that might be difficult to understand and remember with something that is relevant to our audience, something that resonates with them, something they can picture. And because it is their right brains that process that picture, it will remain with them after we have finished the speech. We have used an analogy to create a connection that will guarantee success for the point we are making.
And finally, to make that connection more powerful, make it relevant, make it resonate. Choose something that will appeal to your audience, something they understand, something they relate to. Use your research into your audience to guide the choice.
When it comes to finding analogies, look to your own life. Keep the major points of your speeches in the front of your mind as you move around your day. Look to the things around you, the people, the stories, the events, particularly with those points in mind. You will find that there are analogies everywhere, once you start thinking about things in that way. And because they are your own comparisons, from your own thoughts and your own life, they will have a powerful authenticity to them.
It can be a lot of fun, finding those analogies, and in the process you have a very useful tool to use.
© Bronwyn Ritchie If you want to include this article in your publication, please do, but please include the following information with it:
Bronwyn Ritchie is a professional librarian, writer, award-winning speaker and trainer. She is a certified corporate trainer and speech contest judge with POWERtalk, a certified World Class Speaking coach, and has had 30 years’ experience speaking to audiences and training in public speaking. In just 6 months time, you could be well on the way to being admired, rehired as a speaker, confident and sucessful, with the 30 speaking tips. Click here for 30 speaking tips for FREE. Join now or go to http://www.30speakingtips.com
That terrible moment when someone loses complete track of what they are saying – there is a blank, their face drops, and then becomes more and more frantic. This is painful not only for the speaker but for the audience.
Develop a strategy now so that if, despite your best preparations, a blank happens, you have something to say. You could remark, “Oops I’ve lost it” and maybe you can add some appropriate humour (“Must have left the speech in front of the mirror!”) and then add something like “Now where was I?”
Look at your notes if necessary – “We were talking about …”
If it’s really bad, ask the audience.
Whatever strategy you use along these lines, you keep the audience, and yourself, moving on, returning to target and none of you is embarrassed. So if you fear the blank moment, be prepared with a strategy that will allow you to deal smoothly with the situation.
“The audience only pays attention as long as you know where you are going.”
– Phil Crosby
Stories are a subtly powerful way to support your speaking outcomes. You can use them to support the points you want to make, but you can also use them to position yourself in the eyes of your audience. When you speak you need to be seen as an expert, though an approachable expert, and the audience needs to understand you and your why. They need to know why they should listen to you and why they should do what you expect form them at the conclusion of your speech. You also have an opportunity to establish yourself and your brand in their memories, through the power of storytelling.
Here are 4 specific ways you can use storytelling to build your brand.
1. Identity
Tell stories about yourself. There are several benefits to this. You can identify yourself as someone your audience can relate to – someone with credibility. You can also show that you are not perfect – reveal a flaw (though not a serious one!!) or a mistake you have made. This makes you seem human, and by revealing vulnerability, you build trust. You can use self-effacing humour here, and if it is the sort of mistake that your audience has made, then they can relate to you, and your story will be the stronger for it. This same story or another one, should progress to show your authority in your subject, establish you as the expert or the source of expertise your audience needs to solve their problems.
2. Why
Use a story to reveal your why – why it is you are in business. This, too, builds trust and shows that you do not have a hidden agenda – are authentic – and makes you appear less “salesy”. People have more empathy with you once they know your why, particularly if it is similar to their own.
3. Understanding
In a business speech, particularly, but in any speech, you are working to break down resistance to your persuasion. If you can tell a story that shows you recognise your audience’s thoughts – their objections – you can show you respect them – understand and respect them and their views. You will, of course, show that those objections are not applicable to this situation, but you will have communicated your respect and therefore established more trust.
4. Authenticity
Find stories about yourself and about your business – true stories. Everyone has a story – from the past, from the present and about the future. And so do businesses – stories about their beginnings, their present and their futures. Spend time finding the ones you can use to establish your brand. Because you have chosen true stories, their authenticity will not be compromised. Beyond that, create stories, do things that are story-worthy – or tell stories about other businesses that indicate the values you hold in your own.
Stories position you as someone the audience can relate to on their own level. Stories position you as someone to whom they can go to solve their problems. Stories position you as someone they can trust. And they do this very subtly but very powerfully. What are your brand stories – personal or business?
© Bronwyn Ritchie If you want to include this article in your publication, please do, but please include the following information with it:
Bronwyn Ritchie is a professional librarian, writer, award-winning speaker and trainer. She is a certified corporate trainer and speech contest judge with POWERtalk, a certified World Class Speaking coach, and has had 30 years’ experience speaking to audiences and training in public speaking. In just 6 months time, you could be well on the way to being admired, rehired as a speaker, with the 30 speaking tips. Click here for 30 speaking tips for FREE. Join now or go to http://www.30speakingtips.com
For all sorts of reasons, speakers will decide not to use a microphone. They are not confident that they know how to use it, they believe their audience will be able to hear them, they consider that they have projection skills, they have spoken in the venue before … and more.
For all sorts of reasons, though, a microphone can enhance a speaker’s success. Here are three….
1. It is very easy to take our voices for granted. Vocal chords are, in fact, easily damaged and that damage can be permanent, irreversible. Even though you are capable of projecting, the sustained effort of projecting can contribute to damage. A microphone will help prevent you straining your voice.
2. Generally, you become familiar with the size of group you can speak to comfortably, without straining your voice, and so that everyone can hear. There are, however, other reasons that people may not hear, beyond the size of the group. It may be that your audience is elderly and hard of hearing. It may be that there is a little child or children in the audience who are noisy. It may be that there is machinery either within the room, like an air conditioner, or outside. It may be that there is another function or a noisy kitchen beside your room. It may be that people in your audience do not share your native language or do not understand some of your terminology.
Obviously, you need to research your audience to discover how they will affect your need for a microphone. Visit the room before your presentation if you can. Find out what is happening on the day and at the time you will be speaking. Test the acoustics. High ceilings can make it more difficult to be heard, for example.
And yet, despite all your research, you cannot always foresee what is going to be happening on the day. So if at all possible have a microphone available, and then if something unexpected happens or the audience is too large for your comfortable projection, then you will be prepared.
3 A microphone has the ability to improve your voice, not just prevent it being damaged. It will give you the ability to speak in a more conversational, more personal way and connect more strongly with your audience. If you have a lapel or handheld microphone it will also allow you to get closer to your audience for an even more personal approach. It is also a great way to add power to the points you want to emphasise.
It can also improve a soft voice, although this is difficult. Generally a person with a softer voice needs to speak directly into the microphone, always. Because of the inability to project, if they turn their head away at all, the voice will be lost.
So learn to project, but always ask for or accept the offer of a microphone. It will add impact to your speech and help save your voice. And you can always leave it off if you so choose.
© Bronwyn Ritchie If you want to include this article in your publication, please do, but please include the following information with it:
Bronwyn Ritchie is a professional librarian, writer, award-winning speaker and trainer. She is a certified corporate trainer and speech contest judge with POWERtalk, a certified World Class Speaking coach, and has had 30 years’ experience speaking to audiences and training in public speaking. In just 6 months time, you could be well on the way to being admired, rehired as a speaker, with the 30 speaking tips. Click here for 30 speaking tips for FREE. Join now or go to http://www.30speakingtips.com