|
|
| Presentation Information |
|
Audience-Friendly Presentation Style Habits in Three Easy Steps
You have presentation style habits that automatically appear when you are speaking in public. Where did these habits come from? Most likely you picked them up from watching other people give presentations, or they are carry-overs from your own conversational style. They tend to be so automatic that you aren't really aware of them. Many presentation habits are not audience-friendly. They prevent you from connecting with the audience; they bore the audience, or they make it hard for the audience to pay attention to you. If the audience feels remote and bored, it calculates a low Return on Investment for attending the presentation and will not follow your call-to-action. The list below describes the poor habit and the audience-friendly habit you can use instead. These are habits my coaching clients frequently need to replace with better habits. Poor presentation habits Audience-friendly presentation habits The best speakers analyze their presentation habits and make a plan to change their poor habits, one by one. How can you do the same? Once you know your content fluently you can begin the analysis of your presentation style habits. Have a colleague video tape your presentation. Your helper should record your opening and 5 minutes following it, then about 5 minutes in the middle, and then the last 5 minutes. Short stretches spread out over the whole presentation will give you enough material to work with, but you won't be overwhelmed with trying to analyze the whole thing. Use these three techniques to add audience-friendly habits to your presentations: 1. Look at the video clips. Identify which of these poor habits you have. Be specific. The worst thing you can do to yourself is to make a general evaluation such as "I look terrible." 2. Create an affirmative plan for change. Select one habit to improve. In order of importance, 1) start with habits that ignore the audience, such as lack of eye contact, and facing the slide/screen as you speak; 2) improve your oral content, so you say things in your own words; 3) work on substituting silent pauses for "uhs" and "ums" and using gestures/nods instead of "next slide, please." Your plan to improve eye contact could be to select two different people to look at during your next practice. Exaggerate at first, perhaps by actually counting to 3 or 4 while making eye contact, so you really get a feel for it. Ask your audience if they could tell who you were looking at. Practice again with other people. The goal is to look at each individual in a group for 2-3 seconds several times throughout your presentation. When you're speaking to a large group, you will want to make eye contact with a number of different people throughout the room. 3. Once you have added one audience-friendly habit to your presentation style, move on to another one. Taking your habits one at a time and creating a strategy for change for each one is more effective than trying to change many things at the same time. When you Put the Audience first, and focus on how to increase the Return on Investment of every audience member, every time, you will find it easy to replace your poor speaking habits with audience-friendly ones. Susan's expertise is coaching speakers from all industries, in all types of companies, and for every reason, so their presentations provide high value to the audience, and the presenter's standing is elevated. Call 703-790-1424 for your coaching appointment today. Susan G. Trivers has helped hundreds of people learn great presentation habits, and coached them to use their new habits to replace poor ones. In fact, people she has helped have won over $7 billion worth of new business, giving them an extraordinary return on their invenstment. Learn more about Susan's communication consulting and coaching at http://www.susantrivers.com. Sign up for her monthly newsletter, Create Magic in a Minute, download complimentary samples of her ebooks, and log on to Trivers Communications Group's Resources and Tips at http://blog.susantrivers.com CopyrightŠ2005 Susan G. Trivers
|
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Facilitating Panel Discussions A client recently called to say she was going to facilitate a panel for the next business meeting. She had never done so before and asked if I could coach her. After the session, she realized that there are some basic skills needed when facilitating a panel of speaker. Ten Fun Ways to Liven up Any Presentation Most of us would agree that having humor in our lives increases rapport, strengthens our relationships and overcomes communication barriers. People who work in a positive, often playful environment are more likely to stay. Productivity and creativity increase while stress is reduced. We just feel better after a good laugh. Think funny! Dump Your Speeches For Leadership Talks The CEO of a worldwide business asked me to help him develop a talk he planned to give to several hundred of his top executives. He said, "I feel as if I'm Daniel going into the lion's den." Top Ten Rules for Effective Presentations I am of the belief that the majority of people can improve their presentations dramatically by focusing on eliminating bad habits and presentation skills more than seeking to add anything on. How often have you come out of a seminar and overheard someone say, "Wow, she was great! Did you see how effectively she used her hand gestures?" Media Training 101: Mastering the Television Interview As I travel around the world I always enjoy sampling the media in different countries. Be Bold, Branded, and Bespoke - Your Customers Want You to Choose I had been working on a logo idea for several weeks before I finally realized that it would take from several months to never before I came up with something that would work for me. Scanning the Internet for sites that resembled Logos 'R Us, I found one that had a portfolio that I liked. I contracted for 10 logo ideas figuring that there would be at least one that would suit me. Create A Better Impresion With Your Emails How do you come across in your emails? Kvetching Behavior and How it Hinders Success Kvetching is the Yiddish word for complaining, hand to the forehead, why is this happening to me, complaining, griping, and mental misery. In marketing it's always time for us to take a serious look at how our attitude affects our business. Studies show that you become the words you speak, and that the difference between people who succeed and those who fail is their ATTITUDE. For just one day, try to rid yourself of kvetching. Conducting Successful Training Activities Whether you are training preschoolers in the classroom or executives in the board room, here are 15 premises you might want to keep in mind the next time you're designing training activities. The Seven Deadly Sins of Presentations Every day, so many tens of thousands of innocent clients and employees are bored to tears by presentations that it ought to be considered a crime against humanity. Shamus Browns Top 5 Sales Presentation Tips When its time to give your next sales presentation, here are my favorite tips for delivering powerful, charismatic, and engaging sales presentations. #1 - PLANT YOUR FEET SQUARELY ON THE FLOOR The Who, What, Where and When of Color In Your Documents This article will help you to assess and maximise the impact your use of color in your documents and presentations will have on the readers. First of all you need to identify the following; who your readers are what your purpose is when to use color where to use color Data Visualization Flash Charts: Information in a Flash Flash chart, flash map, flash graph may be mistaken for flashy visual aids. It is true that many data visualization tools are flashy and consequently overwhelming and counterproductive, but the market has produced data visualization capable of simplicity and speed-thus "flash" does not stand for flashy; it stands for information in a flash. Keeping Meetings Productive KEEPING MEETINGS PRODUCTIVE: Whether participants approve or disapprove of an idea, they shouldn't be penalized or given a raise. If you start criticizing people who disapprove, then you're only making your meetings less productive. Likewise, if you start handing out raises to everyone who agrees with you. This kind of behavior conditions participants to contributing only to win approval, rather than honestly contributing. Participants may focus more on developing ideas that meet approval, rather than generating their own creative ideas. To promote a free and creative sharing of ideas, the chairperson needs to exercise support of authority. Their role is to encourage participants to express their own ideas freely and fully. Powerpoint Sales Presentations Are Boring - Stop It! As the meeting began, the project manager of the buying committee told me that the key decision-maker would miss the first 20 minutes or so of my presentation. This was a very competitive sale that I was working on at the time. There were about a dozen or so business-people from the prospect company that I was selling to in this meeting. The presentation was scheduled to last about 90 minutes. During the first 20 minutes I had planned to cover my "persuasive arguments" (that is my company and product benefits). How to Prevent Presentation and Speaking Disasters I just got back from my whirlwind speaking engagements and it occurred to me that you might be interested in these recent experiences (especially since speaking in the number one way to increase to raise your visibility and credibility in the industry). In a matter of two weeks, I spoke at two different conferences. Although the topic was the same the audience for each was different. The Missing Link in Presentation Skills Training Imagine you are the most amazing figure skater who ever lived. When rehearsing in a peaceful, empty rink, you demonstrate the ultimate in athleticism and artistry. You defy the laws of gravity as you leap in the air, landing with flawless precision. You spin with effortless grace and power; you execute jumps other skaters only dream about. On that ice, you are in your element, doing what you love to do and doing it perfectly. Why You Need a Lesson Plan LESSON PLAN DEVELOPMENT: Lesson plans, believe it or not, are a lot like the maps you have in the back seat of your car. They're probably not covered with the ketchup and pencil marks that your maps are, but they are directional guides. You need some way of checking to see if you are on the right road in your classroom or on the highway. A lesson plan is really nothing more than a map of where you and your students will be heading for the time you are together. To paraphrase the American Express Card commercial, "Lesson plans -- don't leave home without them." Total Recall: How to Remember Your Speech Without Memorizing We all fear that moment. You look out on a sea of faces and your mind goes blank. You can't remember your next point and you wish you could disappear with your memory. After the Speech Usually the emphasis on making an effective speech is what you do in preparation before the presentation begins. But if you speak very much, what you do after the speech can help you become a more effective speaker. As soon as possible after the speech, write down impressions of how you felt the speech went. Answer at least two questions about the speech: What was the best part of the speech? What part of the speech can be improved the next time? Some of your best ideas will come to you as you are speaking. Write them down as soon as the speech is over so you can be prepared to use those lines or ideas the next time you speak. Think about the peaks and valleys in the speech. Consider when the audience seemed to listen best and when the audience seemed restless and disinterested. Write down your reactions while they are fresh on your mind. Talk to someone about the speech within the first day after your presentation. You'll remember best what you talked about and you might discover a better way of telling a story or making a point as you summarize your speech to a friend or colleague. Keep track of stories you tell and case studies you include so you'll not repeat yourself if ou speak to that audience again. In addition, keep records of how long you spoke, what you wore, key people you met, and anything unusual about the speaking context. Occasionally look back over your records of individual speeches and look for trends in your speaking that you are unaware of. When you speak to this group again, this information will be the basis for your audience analysis. This is especially important if you speak frequently within your company and your audience will be made up of listeners who have heard you before. You don't want to develop a reputation for telling the same stories over and over. If the group has speaker evaluations, ask that a copy of the summary be sent to you. Look for any pattern in the comments as you analyze the summary. If one person said you talked too slowly, it may be a personal preference and you don't need to give much consideration to the critique. If four or five people make that comment, however, then you might want to consider changing the pace of your speaking for the next speech. Certainly your main concern should be with your preparation before the speech. However, don't underestimate the effort of what you do in analyzing the speech after the audience has left the room.
|
|
|
| Home | Site Map | Salesmanship Ebook | Motivational Ebook | Job and Resume Posting| Affiliate program | |
|
| 2006 All Rights Reserved. by Mp.sg Term of use and service for the articles and information |