Last year, after series of poor feedbacks that I get from my lecturers for my presentations in class, I’ve felt so terrible with my public speaking skill. I was terrified, consumed with fear and mentally paralyzed. I know, this fear was self-generated and it’s of course curable.
So I went for an adventure looking for antidotes to this internal monster and I met few digital crusaders along the journey. They came from different backgrounds: educators, students, and working professionals; generously shared their knowledge and experiences.
My major learning from them was that, it gave me wider perspective about the preparations, techniques, on-spot-actions, and also real life experience on public speaking or presentation delivery. With this, I started to work-on to improve my presentations delivery. Though I might not be that good yet but I know, I’m much better now.
I bet there are a lot of you out there like me. You have no problem speaking casually in front of your friends, however, it’s a big challenge when it comes to speaking in front of a crowd that attentively listening to you.
No matter how much you despise speaking in front of crowd, the time will always come that you must one day get yourself out there in the highlight delivering your thoughts and presentations.
One of the best way we can learn and improve ourselves is to learn from others’ experiences. As I’ve promised to them, I’ll share their experiences in this article as a token of appreciation for their contribution.
Let’s hear their story…
Oward
Preparation is vital. You can’t run from that part. A presentation is all about your confidence in relaying your information of your topic to be presented. Presentation is not all about the content of the material, but your interaction to audience. If you can make them smile and head nod, you obviously reaching to them.
Treat you the master of the information and audience as peasant to listen and take your order of command. While conveying, good confidence posture(standing straight) and smile(not smirking and nervous smile) is the best presentation appearance to addition with your good dress up. Use simple English word to explain. You can always show all the complicated wording and graphic in the slides but you need to explain in simple English manner.
Lastly, interaction, that’s the most valuable element in presenting. If you could interact and encourage the audience in asking question and you could answer it well, you scored big time!! Each question ask to you, reply with answers and end it with appreciation(thank you or that is a good question). You not only boost up your confidence but you also caught them by surprise with your action. That’s my two cent… and so far, it works for me…
Joachim @ This is 24/7 Life
For me, taming the monster was not that easy. It really takes a lot of experiences and time of course. First of all, understand your topic fully is the main key for me, understand of what you are presenting, if you don’t, it’s like you are speaking Japanese to Malaysian.
For if you can understand your question completely, when in times of presentation, you could just capture the audience easily. If you still don’t understand, keep on reading the question over and over again, right until you get it!
Second, keep your slides interesting, post up more pictures than words, for picture speaks a thousand words. Pictures can always keep your audience with you as well, for when they are enjoying those interesting pictures and listening to your presentation, you would automatically gain your confident for you know they all want you to go on.
In terms of speaking, I have to agree with the first person (cheers!). Keep your language simple, so that audience would stay with you. Keep it short as well, for try to be in the audiences’ shoe as well, you would not want to listen to something which is usually boring for a long time eh? Note-humour could be a really big bonus as well if you have a lots of points to go, and you know you just gonna stay there for quite sometimes.
Do insert some jokes in between those for keeping your audience smiling and laughing will definitely keeps them listening! Most important of all, for me, personally, I think that, you have to enjoy it, its like how you enjoy blogging…enjoy the presentation, enjoy speaking, therefore, presentation ain’t monster no more, its just a toy dog ready to be pet and play
Cyril Dason
I don’t know what to say coz I’m also nervous in front of new crowds. Well, maybe it would help if you treated all the audience as your friends and most importantly believe in what you want to present.
As for power point preparation, make it point form and no words. Having words in your power point will encourage you to read where as points will encourage you to elaborate more.
Mike Cheng @ Clouded Pawn
When I was in college I do have to attend a class called Public Speaking Presentation skills so I had to learn not only to prepare to speak, but how to get the volume of your voice, getting the attention of your audience, etc etc. One whole semester of that (that’s 16 presentations you’ll have to do bro!), and for the exam you have to present not only in front of your classmates and your teacher, but to the whole students & lecturers from the faculty! Lets just say I did very well prior to the exam…but I wasn’t the best speaker at the exam simply because I didn’t truly prepare for it. I did not prepare my Powerpoint assistant (I was not allowed to touch the laptop) with my content, so there’s a lot of mistiming between my speech and my slide. So if you got someone to help you with the slides, make sure he/she also very well prepared with the timing of your key words and such.
My history with public speaking aside, you don’t prepare by memorizing the slides or the content…you need to actually understand the content. Like you know it inside-out, like doing combos in Street Fighter automatically. When you do understand the content you’ll easily present the content not only without any note-cards but you’ll sound more convincing to the audience in that they believe you know what you’re talking about rather than ‘oh he’s just reading it might as well you give me your slides’!
You can practice by getting a friend to listen to your speech, and then up to a group of friends when you are more comfortable. In fact, my lecturer said you should present your speech in front of a mirror first! Look at your audience as if they’re your friends sitting in a kopitiam, where you want to share your good news to, or you can also look at your audience as little kids who are all wanting to learn something from you and be inspired! Sure, it may sound easier than it actually is, but you’ll eventually realized there’s really nothing to fear about in public speaking (other than to admit you had an affair with a Datin lah…). It’s amazing a lot more people fear public speaking than death itself!
I could go on, but I’ll love to help you out by actually meeting up with you and listening to your presentation. No theory/advices will work without applying it to practice in Public Speaking!
To tell you the truth, there are managers in the working world that also read their slides from start to finish…all in a boring monotonous voice!!! You think your lecturer is disappointed in you? He’ll FAINT over these so-called managers!
Dayah Galyn’ @ Hivihazan’s Blog
Based on my experiences, I discovered that perfect preparation is important. Make sure you know very well on the topic you’re going to present and you also need to be well-prepared with the impromptu questions!
To overcome your fear towards the audience, treat them as your friends, or just think that you’re not communicating with anyone. Just like talking to the wall. I always do that when I feel nervous and I always have this kind of thought in my mind : "well, not everybody is listening to my speech, they can get bored easily, so just talk as if no one is listening to me!". Whenever I commit mistakes during my speech, i always have this thought "why should I be nervous, or scared, or even embarrassed with myself? Why should I feel embarrassed when everybody’s laughing at me? So what? It’s my speech after all, not theirs, so it’s up to me on how am I going to present it! They don’t know what have I’ve gone through while preparing this presentation, they can’t be judgmental! If they’re presenting my speech, they also will go through this, I’m very sure of that!".
I mean, just act like you don’t care about what people will think about you. This is what I usually do whenever I encounter emergency situations such as suddenly forget my lines, etc. Meanwhile, while you’re not doing your presentation, always motivate yourself, just think optimistically and don’t care about the audience. your main goal is to impress the judge/lecturer.
If you’re too nervous to face think about that too, just think that you’re actually doing this for the sake of your loved ones. I always do that. You can imagine your loved ones, such as your parents, best friends, uncle, aunty are wall watching you at home. If you feel stupid by presenting to a ‘wall’, take another alternative which is what I’ve said previously and if you make mistakes, just apologize as if you’re seeking forgiveness from your loved ones and it will eventually turn to a friendly interaction between you and the judge/lecturer.
I gained much confidence by doing that. I don’t know whether it helps you but for me, it is very effective. I always have that kind of thoughts when I get nervous, because when I think of that, I can quickly think of a way to cool down the situation. and just relax. Don’t be panic over the situation, just take your time, take a deep breath and proceed with the next line of speech. To motivate yourself and rebuild you confidence during emergency times surely require quite an ample time. However, standing on a stage without presenting anything doesn’t make you look like an idiot, it shows that you’re a professional for you know how to handle these kinds of situation very well. Even if you’re running out of time, don’t worry about finishing the speech. It’s more important to make sure that your speech is delivered smoothly without any problem. So, time taken for you to settle down the problem is important. That’s why I said, don’t worry if you can’t finish it. (If you’re given certain duration to deliver your speech)
For me, I always think that I am the most special one on stage, because although I may not be as perfect as other competitors, I know how to overcome my nervousness when I commit my mistakes, but they don’t because they think they’re prefect enough and don’t even need to prepare for emergency situations. Let’s say they face such problems, they wouldn’t know how to handle it. That is the thing that motivates us.
The most important thing is, be prepared, just relax, and think positive!
Willie Esther @ Reptoz
It’s normal to feel that way. After years of being a lecturer and a teacher, the fear of public speaking still exist. But really, practice makes perfect. To be a good speaker, it’s not about the theory. You have to find opportunities to talk in public. Once you get the hang of it, I’m sure you’ll improve.
Professor DP Dash
One advice and one question:
ADVICE: Next time, try standing behind a chair (so that you are less "exposed").
QUESTION: Why do I worry so much about what others think of me?
Now that you have seven unique advices on delivering your public speaking or presentations. It’s a little gift from them that will help you to further improvise and setting yourself in the right mind so that you could get yourself prepared for your remarkable presentation or speech.
Have your say
Tell us your exciting story, experience, and trademark style in delivering speech or presentation. Maybe you also have some concerns that you would like to discuss. What worries you the most.
Pingback: Elisha Batuncang