Twenty Something Sense

In my current position, I am asked to present regularly to groups ranging from 3 to over 100. A lot of these are on-line (using webex or some other virtual meeting tool), but many are in person as well. I’ve never taken a public speaking course, but I’ve studied other speakers who I think are good and learned by doing. From my experiences, I’ll share what I believe to be the 5 must do’s for public speaking. This is in no means an exhaustive list, but should give you a good start:

1. Be serious - An easy way to think about this is lets say you are presenting for an hour to 50 people. Lets assume the average person in the audience is making $100,000 which is about $50/hour. The cost for you to present to this group is 50 times $50 = $2500. Is what you’re about to present worth $2500? To me this is always a good way to get my mind set for the information I’m about to deliver. But remember, being serious should be your first step and in general you’re going to want to lighten up during your actual presentation (see #5).

2. Know your audience - Now that you are serious about the task at hand its time to truly understand your audience and the type of information they are expecting. Getting this information is generally not difficult, but you’ll need at least two sources of information. In general, there will be some type of event coordinator for the event that you’ll want to question. I always ask the following questions; 1) How many people are expected at the event? 2) Who will be at the event? 3) What is the audiences background, experience, etc? 4) What are we telling the audience we are going to tell them? With all of these questions, you’ll have follow-up questions and this will help you to paint a very clear picture of exactly the type of audience you will have. The second source of information is the actual invitation to the event. I always look at this to ensure what is in the invite aligns with what I was told by the coordinator. Although this is more of a sanity check it again ensures that you are meeting the expectations of the audience members.

3. Use stories, visual aids and questions - There are literally thousands of books written on how to give presentations, how to structure presentations, etc. My focus here is that you’ll need to find your own style. From experience in both providing presentations and attending presentations the best presenters by far are those that tell stories and use visual aids to reinforce their points and also ask questions to engage the audience.
You don’t have to go crazy here and in fact specifically with visual aids, remember that more is less. For example, if you are making the point that something will save you time, perhaps you simply have a picture of an X43 jet on a slide with a simple title of “Minimize Time”. From here, tell a simple story about the X43 (it travels at Mach 9.6 or 7000 mph) which gets the attention of your audience - then dive into your actual point regarding minimizing time and you’ve now used a visual and a story to make your point while not putting your audience to sleep.
On asking questions, this is simple. Come up with 3 questions that you can ask your audience members to sprinkle throughout your presentation. This provides a great pause in your presentation, a way to get the audience involved, a chance for you to take a quick break and a chance for you to grab a sip of water. Focus on finding questions that are slightly open-ended unless you are trying to get a quick pulse of your audience. All of these techniques take practice, but are powerful and critical to deliver interesting, thought provoking and long lasting information.

4. Practice - Practice makes perfect and it certainly applies here. I always try to practice my full presentation 3 times unless it is a stock presentation that I’ve delivered numerous times. My main focus when practicing is to work on the flow of the presentation to ensure that I’m telling a good overall story that has enough structure for the audience to grasp. One of the best techniques for practicing your presentation is to record yourself with a webcam or a full on video camera. Watching the playback gives you more than enough information to fix simple things like swaying back and forth, hands in your pockets, not looking into the audience, etc. If you don’t have a video camera simply present to a mirror and make the focus to stand still and make eye-contact (with yourself).

5. Relax - Last but certainly not least, take a big breath, know that you are prepared and ready to go! If you’ve followed steps 1 - 4 you should not be worried about the content of the presentation and at the end of the day if you present good content in an engaging manner that meets the audiences expectations you’ll receive high marks. I still get nervous when I present, but the more I do it the better I feel. Its also very comforting to know that the vast majority of your audience are likely petrified of presenting as well which gives you instant credibility. Relate to your audience, make eye contact, have fun with the stories and enjoy.

I think I am an average presenter currently, but I find myself actually enjoying it more and more. What do others suggest? Are there any tips that really got people “over the hump”?