Archive for the ‘Presentations’ Category

Your Motivation

If you are in the process of researching presentation skills, then chances are you have a presentation coming up. Few people set out learning these skills unless there is some strong motivation.

Why - because most people in our society have a fear of public speaking? … and people don’t confront fear unless they have to.

When it comes to presentations skills, “have to” usually means that they are required to give a presentation for their employment or a social event (such as a wedding or a funeral).

If this is the situation that you are in, then you have come to the right place.

What are you looking for?

Most people who are confronted with an important presentation/speech are looking for help in a combination of areas:

• Help in overcoming the fear of public speaking
• Help in composing and preparing the presentation
• Help in delivering the presentation

With your permission, I would like to assist you in all of these areas. I would like to show you how you can easily:

• Overcome your fear with less effort than you thought possible.
• Confidently compose a captivating presentation
• Deliver it in a inspirational manner

These skills will not only help you in the short term – dealing with your upcoming presentation. They will also help you in the future.

Can you imagine how it will feel when you are asked to give a presentation because you are a truly skilled speaker. Think about how it will feel as you accept the task with confidence – knowing that in no time, you will be speaking confidently before an inspired audience. Can you imagine what effect this will have on your career?

Picture the admiration and recognition you will receive from others as they acknowledge your speaking skills and confidence.

STOP!

Now I want you stop for a minute. Did you really read the previous section and picture your success? Did you really imagine what it would feel like?

This is more important than you realize. One problem that we have when confronting our fear is that our subconscious keeps sensing danger and taking over to protect us. That’s why we still experience a paralyzing dread every time we have to address an audience, even when we know logically that it is not dangerous.

I cover this in depth in my course, Three Simple Concepts to Overcoming Your Fear of Public Speaking – but for now I just want to share one small tip from it. You can start to reprogram your subconscious by visualizing what you want it to believe.

So… do you really want to succeed with presentation skills? If so, then just take a moment to “feel” what it will be like to deliver an inspirational speech with confidence. Imagine the audience captivated by every word. Picture them being inspired by your every point.

This little exercise can have surprising results… believe me, I know. I too was afraid of public speaking – and had very few presentation skills.

My first speech was before an audience of 300 people. I was terrified, but I was also prepared (that’s important … as your presentation approaches, make sure that you’re as prepared as you can be).

I learned from that experience that I could overcome my fear and deliver an excellent presentation. I also learned that with a little guidance anyone else can as well. I learned as much about public speaking as I could. I also applied knowledge from other subjects that I know and developed a public speaking system.

I helped a few people on the internet and got tremendous feedback. More people wrote me and I answered them as well.  I ended up getting deluged with questions. People we’re seeking me out because of my unique approach.

I put together a course (Three Simple Concepts to Overcoming Your Fear of Public Speaking) to teach my system. I also created a membership area where people can view videos, listen to audio programs, read articles and communicate with others about presentation skills.

You can join the membership area for free. Once you sign up you will be able to access
• a series of articles I wrote about overcoming the fear of public speaking
• a couple of audio recordings of me speaking at seminars about fear and presentation skills
• some interviews with former students of mine were they discuss what ideas have helped them the most
• the complete introduction to my course, Three Simple Concepts to Overcoming Your Fear of Public Speaking.
• a couple of videos that discuss two very powerful techniques – paradigms and social proof.

… AND … my S.C.P. Public Speaking and Presentation Skills course

The S.C.P. course is delivered in short 5-7 minute audio lessons. You receive one lesson per day for 7 days. Each lesson discusses one aspect of composing a winning presentation.

On day 7 you will also receive access to a 40 minute conference call. In it we move on to preparing for the delivery. We also discuss some techniques for overcoming the fear of delivering presentations.

I have had countless people write me and tell me how much this material has helped them

If you are ready to move past the visualization exercises we just talked about, and make them reality, come on over to EffectivelySpeakingMembers.Com and join the community of people how are overcoming their fear and going on to deliver excellence in presentations.

The key to an effective presentation is preparation. The key to effective preparation is knowing how to go about doing it. You will find clear, concise information on how to do just that in the membership area.

Sign up for a free membership at http://www.EffectivelySpeakingMembers.Com

To your speaking success

What if I told you that by using some very simple techniques that you probably already know that can increase your audience’s comprehension and retention significantly (maybe even double it)? Now what if I told you it takes very little additional effort to implement these techniques – would you want to start using them?

If you tell your audience something once, their chances of recalling it tomorrow are somewhat less than 50%. If you tell it to them twice it increases to 70%-75%. A third time will increase the probability of recall up to 80%-95%. By simply repeating yourself you have increased the probability of your audience remembering what you said from %50 to close to %100. With very little effort you have almost doubled the effectiveness of your presentation in terms of recall. That’s a pretty high return on the effort that it takes to repeat yourself.

But how do you go about repeating yourself without boring or “burning out” your audience. The easiest answer is with the structure that you learned in high school English. Use an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. There is a popular phrase that goes… “In the introduction, tell them what you are going to tell them, in the body tell it to them, and in the conclusion tell them what you told them.”

It may feel to you like you are being overly repetitive (and redundant, and saying the same thing over and over again…) but to your audience it most likely won’t. Remember, you already know the concepts that you are sharing with them – but they don’t. This is their first time hearing them, so having them reinforced will seem helpful.

In addition, you can give your audience a further wake up by using your introduction to grab their attention. For example, while letting them know what you are covering you could make a controversial statement, tell a humorous story that relates to your topic, share some surprising statistics, or ask a rhetorical question that gets them thinking. All of these techniques can be used to grab your audience’s attention while and help you keep it while introduce your topic.

In the body – where you tell them what you’re telling them – give the audience the details that they need to analyze and (hopefully) accept your arguments.

Finally, in the conclusion tell them what you told them while giving them a call to action. You didn’t just give a presentation for the entertainment value, you wanted something to happen – let them know what it is that you want from them and remind them why your concepts support that action.

By simply structuring your presentation the way you learned in English class, with an introduction, a body, and a conclusion, you can almost double the retention rate of your audience. Since this technique is so easy to use, ask yourself, “Why wouldn’t you use it in your next presentation?”

Special note about the proceeding article:

I didn’t just give you some rules to follow about structure – I also gave you an example by how the article was written. I opened with a couple of rhetorical questions to grab your attention. I gave you the details in the body and finally concluded by summarizing the concept and giving you a call to action in the form of a rhetorical question.

Hopefully you found this technique to be powerful in writing – however, it is even more effective when used during presentations. Make sure that you use it.

A Case Study

After a recent newsletter I was contacted by Mamie with the following note…

I love the,” just for fun questions”! What is a good opening statement for a group of teachers? I really want to capture their attention. Thanks for your weekly articles.

And here is my response.

Hi Mamie,

Thanks for the feedback. I’m glad that you enjoyed them.

You essentially want to grab their attention. You could use a rhetorical question, a humorous story, a controversial or absurd statement as a few examples. What is your subject/theme of your speech? Let me know and we’ll brainstorm.

By the way, are you a teacher?

David.

Mamie responded with

Thanks David for your immediate response. I just retired from 31 years of teaching in Georgia. Now, I ‘m employed through an educational agency for school support as a reading consultant. I’m getting ready for a reading workshop with teachers. I still feel nervous whenever I get ready for presentations. I just want to capture and keep my audience’ attention and do the very best job. My workshop is just a “Struggling Readers” workshop. I’m just delivering information.

My suggestion for Mamie

What if you started off with a controversial statement such as:
Learning the foundations of phonics (or insert whatever appropriate skill here) at an early age has no impact on young readers abilities to overcome obstacles.

Then you could say something like:
“Ladies and gentlemen that is the thought that I had 31 years ago when I started teaching…”

or
“In his/her discussion of whole language, XXXXXX makes this startling statement.”

You could then go on and discuss why you disagree with the opening statement. Your conclusion could come back and address your thoughts from 31 years ago or XXXXX’s sentiments.

What you are essentially trying to do is shock them into paying attention. It is important to be honest. Don’t mention yourself unless you did hold that sentiment. Since people hold a wide variety of opinions it’s not usually to difficult to find someone who has an opinion contrary to yours.

Best regards

David.

Finally, Mamie responded with

Thanks David, Wow! Great suggestions! I look forward to more valuable info.

Thoughts for you, the reader…

Remember that you want to accomplish two things in your introduction. You want give the audience an idea of what you are going to be talking about. One way that this accomplished is by quickly highlighting (or listing) the points that you are going to be covering – similar to the way that radio and television news list the top stories at the beginning to try and get you to stay tuned.

The second thing you want to do is grab your audience’s attention. You want them to be so captivated by you that they wouldn’t dare take their attention off. As I mentioned to Mamie, there are a number of opening techniques that you can use to accomplish this.
A humorous story, a rhetorical question, some sort of audience interaction, or even an unusual entrance can all be effective. The quotes that I suggested to Mamie are intended to shock the audience. Why? I suspect that a large number of them will plan to pay only partial attention because is in their area of expertise. Mamie needs to get their attention right from the start and then captivate them so that they won’t want to take it off of her.

How is this useful to you? I didn’t invent this technique for Mamie. In fact, I have started off a number of talks on public speaking to audiences of 300+ members with the statement, “I have no interest in public speaking at all”. I then go on to explain that was my feeling 16 years ago.

Take this concept and apply it to a presentation that you have where you have to grab people’s attention. It is extremely effective.