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Presenting With Confidence
Sitting in the audience, you fight to keep your eyes open, you move again in your seat to get comfortable, looking at your watch you see that only 10 minutes has gone since the last time you looked, your mind drifts off to this morning’s meeting. Clearly this presentation is not going well, in the foyer after the talk, you eavesdrop on others’ conversations, ‘it didn’t capture my imagination…’, ‘I never got interested…’, ‘the speaker was so boring…’. Presenting to groups small and large, fills many people with terror, however it is a skill, which can be developed, by sticking to a couple of basic principles you can experience a rapid improvement in your presenting style and confidence. Understand Your Audience This is easier than you think, put yourself in amongst your audience, why do they want to listen to you, how can you help them, how do you want them to feel?Tap into this early in your presentation, by implicitly (or explicitly) connecting with their concerns and motivations, this connection will relax your audience and build a solid foundation for communication.Remember ‘people do not care how much you know until they know how much you care’. Talk to People’s Mind I want you to think about Hawaii…, what came to mind, an image or words?Now think about a helicopter…, what came to mind, an image or words?You think in pictures, pictures are the language of the mind and your senses trigger the projection of those pictures onto your mental screen.When presenting to an audience, the more you can evoke this visual magic, the more engaging your audience will find you. Stories are the best way to achieve this, stories automatically put people in a time and place and they tap into their visual imagination and emotion.By providing a metaphor representing your position, your audience will build a bridge from their pre-existing awareness and emotions to your position and with good rapport you can then lead them over this bridge. Keep Them Wanting More An accomplished public speaker was once asked his tips for speaking, his advices was: ‘Start with a great opening, finishing on a high point and get the start and the finish as close together as possible’.We mentioned above understanding how you want your audience to feel, after they leave your presentation you want them thinking and talking about your presentation.The feeling they leave with will be how they felt at the end of your presentation. If you lead them high and then confuse, bore or lose them in the last five minutes, this is what they will remember, all your good work will be to no avail, resist the temptation to add more, cut your presentation to the core most relevant material and leave them feeling they could have listened to you for longer. Success Exercise First, find an opportunity to present to a group, and determine why they would want to listen to you, what is in it for them and how you would like them to feel after your presentation. Second, based on step one, determine how you are going to build this into your presentation early so your audience are interested in your presentation. Third, determine what stories you can tell that will build a picture in your audiences’ mind that you can compare to your point, make your point as succinctly as you can and finish with a quick summary. For more articles on building your success go to successlearning.com.au If you would like to multiply your achievement consider the advantages of coaching: successlearning.com.au Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com David is a Director of Success Learning a highly successful personal and professional development company. They are specialists in helping people to improve their core skills and craft the success they are looking for. By guiding people to leverage the many resources already at their disposal they uncover new behaviours and opportunities for people. |
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