by Beth Levine | Oct 31, 2016 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking
Nerves versus focus. Dread versus opportunity.
In a recent Harvard Business Review article on calming nerves before a presentation by Amy Jen Su of Paravis Partners, Amy cites a few tidbits of insight and advice I offered when she interviewed me for the article several weeks ago. One of my quotes surprised even me as I was saying it, as it actually highlighted a new twist on how to view and manage nerves.
Here’s the excerpt: Levine advises, “Think of a quarterback playing in his first Super Bowl game. Yes, he may be nervous, but he’s not dreading it or seeing it as an obligation. He’s seeing it as a great opportunity that he’s ready to sink his teeth into. The nerves are a signal that this is something that matters to him.”
What is not new about what I said is that a mindset shift – more to the positive side of things – can be incredibly helpful. Usually that mindset shift involves thinking positively about performing well or about the audience assuming you’ll be successful.
What is new about what I said is that the mindset shift should be more specific – from dreading a presentation or looking at it as an obligation and something you need to simply survive to looking forward to it as a challenge to be conquered and an opportunity to shine.
In other words, your nervousness is not a block or an annoyance, it’s a signal that you have a great opportunity ahead of you to show your stuff. For more insights, read the article here.
by Beth Levine | Sep 21, 2016 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking
More often than not, what makes people freeze before a big presentation is the nagging question, “Am I even doing this right?” and its companion, the fear of embarrassment.
I’m always taken aback when smart, successful, otherwise confident people reveal that they’re afraid to make a fool of themselves. I would never have guessed in most cases.
Trust me when I say that no one is “a natural” at speaking and presenting; even the best of the best think about it, worry, and work at it. Regardless of your style or your comfort level with public speaking, it’s wise to consider some core guiding principles for yourself as a speaker.
Below are five foolproof principles of being an effective speaker or presenter that will give you the confidence to know you’re “doing it right,” and will leave your audience quite impressed.
The five principles are:
- Audience-centricity
- Transparency
- Graciousness
- Brevity
- Preparedness
Taken together, they send two really important messages about you to your audience:
- That you care about and respect them.
- That you’re real and therefore credible and trustworthy.
Audience-centricityIt may be a new term to you, yet it’s probably the most fundamental of the five principles. Simply put, audience-centricity is making the audience’s interests and experience a top priority in the planning and execution of a talk.
Too many speakers prepare and deliver what is important and interesting to themselves without enough careful considerations of their listeners. Being audience-centric is a mindset shift that encourages the speaker to prepare and deliver content in a way that will matter to and resonate with the audience.
Transparency
It is exactly what you think it is; it’s about being open and direct — yes, and honest, too. Transparency is critical. It contributes to the levels of sincerity and trust that are accorded to you by your audience.
Graciousness
It is the art, skill, and willingness to be kind-hearted, fair and polite. As motivators and influencers, love and peace work far better than anger and war. Speaking in positives rather than negatives leaves lasting, favorable impressions.
Brevity
Brevity is a crowd-pleaser and needs no further introduction.
Preparedness
Preparedness speaks for itself as well. The unprepared speaker is the one who is most likely to be long-winded, not to mention unfocused. While the mere thought of preparation might bring feelings of dread, the feeling of approaching the front of the room ill-prepared is far worse – and it shows.
Success is in the eye of the beholder – your audience. Show care and respect, be real, and your audience is much more likely to listen, like you, and be impressed.
[Excerpted in part from Jock Talk: 5 Communication Principles for Leaders as Exemplified by Legends of the Sports World, www.jocktalkbook.com]
by Beth Levine | Sep 6, 2016 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking, smartmouth talks!
WIIFM. What’s in it for me? This is the universal question every audience member is asking themselves when they’re attending a meeting, sitting through a presentation, or listening to a speech.
WIIFM has become a popular acronym in business. It’s a reminder to business people that whatever it is they’re talking about – or let’s face it, sometimes huckstering! – they need to consider the unique needs and interests of their audience and direct their remarks so they convey the potential benefits to their audience, especially if those benefits may not be obvious.
You know from your own firsthand experience as an audience member that WIIFM runs through your own head plenty of times, that you want something in return for your time and attention, and that you feel more satisfied, more impressed (with the speaker), more “heard” and valued when you get something out of a talk.
Conscious or subconscious, people are waiting to have their self-interests met. Sometimes the “me” is more like an “us” – a collective me, as in “okay, what’ve you got to give us?” – because the group has a common self-interest. Regardless of whether it’s individual or collective, the bottom line is this: You, the speaker have a topic and an objective. The audience has a self-interest. Your work is to bring those two factors into alignment. If you can do this, it will always, always, always serve you well.
So, if you’re the speaker, here are 3 simple ways to think about addressing your audience’s WIIFM:
New. Given your topic, is there a new angle or twist? An update or a surprising bit of news? Do you have something that other people don’t know yet? Something this audience hasn’t heard or considered yet?
Useful. Given your topic, is there an application this audience could use? Can you help them sort through or think through a common problem in some way? Do you have a solution to something they face?
Beneficial. Given your topic – and, more importantly, given what keeps your audience up at night – what is it that you have that will help them? What is it about your topic that will benefit your audience? Is there a silver lining for them? A net gain?
The companion acronym to WIIFM, in SmartMouth vernacular, is IAAT – It’s all about them! No matter what, your audience’s needs and interests and experience reign supreme. Think through what you have that’s new or useful or beneficial to them, and plan accordingly for your next turn at the front of the room!
by Beth Levine | Aug 3, 2016 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking
During our recent webinar, “Getting Your Point Across,” we polled participants to find out what they were most concerned or fearful about when giving a presentation. We asked the question two different ways and both sets of answers yielded the same result. By far, the most pervasive concern of the participants was that they might appear or sound “stupid.” I found this so interesting!
So interesting for two reasons:
- The reality is that most audience members don’t go into a presentation preparing to judge whether or not a speaker is smart. They go in hoping to get something good or new or useful out of it. In fact, if anything, audience members assume that the person at the front of the room is intelligent.
- Worrying about whether you’ll sound stupid, while understandable, is a misplaced concern for a speaker. Worrying about connecting with and engaging the audience is a far more worthwhile concern. If you don’t connect and engage, it won’t matter how intelligent you sound.
If this concern resonates with you – and you are inclined to feel the way our webinar attendees did – here are some quick fixes to help you connect and engage:
- First, get to know as much about your audience as you can beforehand. That way, you will have some “entry ramps” to use in order to build connection.
- Prepare some relevant questions ahead of time – thoughtful, thought-provoking questions that might help engage your audience, build suspense, or get a dialogue going (if the group is a manageable size). One small caveat is that you’ll need to have answers to these questions at the ready in case your audience goes radio silent on you.
- Keep your points succinct and limit the amount of detail you share. Plan your time so that you can open it up for a quick Q&A after each major point or section of your talk. That way, if your audience wants more detail, they’ll ask for it, but you won’t have killed them with TMI unnecessarily!
- Tell stories. Be self-deprecating. Be open and vulnerable. And always, always be relevant – to your audience and to your topic.
- Prepare ahead so that you are familiar enough with your material that you can forget about your notes – and focus on your audience – once you start talking. (Winging it is one of the best ways to appear or sound stupid. Don’t take that risk.)
- And finally, look at your audience. Really look at them. Yes, I’m talking about eye contact. But I’m also talking about how you look at them – look at them as potential friends you want to make, not as adversaries or a firing squad. Your attitude and energy will rub off on your audience, so keep it positive!
All of this is to say, focus on your audience and the experience you want to give them rather than on how you sound. You’ll survive the event either way, so put your attention on them!
by Beth Levine | Jun 14, 2016 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking
There’s a lot of good advice out there about public speaking. Much of it is geared toward aiding the speaker. I want to throw some advice into the mix that’s helpful to the speaker
and the audience: Keep your sentences short and crisp!
Speakers do best when they prepare a talk in bullet points rather than prose. Preparing by writing a long beautiful document is problematic for a couple of reasons. For starters, speakers tend to get attached to the beautiful words, phrases and sentences they’ve composed. This is dangerous! It means the speaker is likely to feel compelled to read at the podium – which is bad for obvious reasons – or to memorize, which runs the risk of producing robotic delivery. Being conversational and staying connected with your audience, even if your delivery is imperfect, are still preferred.
On the other side of the podium, audiences need pace and rhythm and patter. For audiences, long, fancy sentences become a maze for the ears, something to get lost in. Preparing by writing a long, lovely piece of prose produces something that
readers, not listeners, would be willing and able to digest. Listeners need things to keep moving along at a clip. They need the speaker to start and finish a thought quickly in order to hang in there and actually get it.
Move from script to bullet points. You can always begin your preparation for a presentation by writing out a full-text script. It can help you establish order, organization and some of your key phrases. But then you would be wise to use that script only as a practice tool. As soon as you can, switch over to bullet points and then rehearse your talk from those.
Finally, when it’s showtime, watch yourself … keep a lid on those long-winded run-on, multi-clause sentences. Set a standard and a pace for yourself that requires you to make your sentences short, crisp, distinct units.
Good luck, your audiences will thank you!
by Beth Levine | Jun 1, 2016 | preparing for a presentation, public speaking
Hey everyone, I need to ask a favor!
If you are lucky enough to be offered training or a professional development opportunity by your organization, can you please 1) accept, and 2) go with the mindset that you want to move the needle and grow, rather than attend just to check the box and say you went?
Awesome, thanks!
Putting some of your own skin in the game – that is, committing to yourself that you will try and learn something new, try and take something away that you will employ – can make all the difference. And that would be all the difference to YOU! Your employer hopefully benefits too, but it’s really all about you. Your time is precious, so if you’re being asked to spend a chunk of it learning something, be sure to make it worth your while and mine the session for the valuable nuggets that will enhance your performance and up your game. That’s your responsibility to yourself.
Then there’s the session leader’s responsibility to you. Clearly, it’s one thing for you to sit and hear about new ideas or best practices, and it’s yet an entirely different thing to try and employ them. If you attend a training or work with a coach, it’s the trainer’s or coach’s job to ensure that you leave with some skill-building practice already under your belt, or at the very least some actionable tips and follow-on activities that will help reinforce the learning. It doesn’t always happen that way, but it should, so feel free to ask for it.
So why am I raising this issue? Well, this is the exact issue that keeps me up at night. It’s my mission as a trainer and coach to not just deliver the workshop or coaching session but to ensure that the recipients get something they feel confident they can and will try to use or do differently. The best sessions are constructed with multiple opportunities for participants to test-drive the learning and with follow-on activities that are designed to keep the concepts and best practices on participants’ radar screens for as long as possible. By definition, training and coaching are intended to encourage change (for the better), and in order to achieve change (arguably, one of the most difficult challenges out there!), there needs to be repetition, reminders, and reinforcement.
To that specific end, SmartMouth Communications will now be offering its
SmartMouth OnDemand “Presentations” course to reinforce our presentation skills trainings. While “Presentations” is also a great stand-alone training tool, it will no doubt serve as the ultimate reinforcement tool for anyone who attends a training of ours.
If you or your organization wants to be able to deliver more influential and impactful presentations, give us a shout! We’d love to bundle a live training with an e-learning experience to maximize the benefit for you!
