tellingpeople

Sometimes you can recover from a bad start to your presentation. Sometimes you can’t….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGZyG0Jchjo&feature=related

The worst presentation skills in the world: should I call to offer some training?

Virgin trains, in the UK, are having a big marketing kick on the TV at the moment. One of their adverts shows an apparently inept presenter writing his slides on the train and – at the same time – getting more and more ‘hyped’ so that by the time he arrives, he’s confident and ready to go.

Reasonable advert, I suppose….

…. but shockingly bad tactics as a presenter!

I’ve said it before and I’ll no doubt say it again – you need to rehearse your stuff out loud. There’s no way to know what’s going to work if you just ’say’ it in your head.

Firstly, there are combinations of words and sounds that it’s all too easy trip up over – though of course this will never happen in your head.

Secondly, it’s impossible to judge timing with things only happening in your head – and that makes it all too easy to miss-judge things.

Talking is a physical thing – you need physical practice. After all, you’d not practice playing tennis by just watching Wimbledon, would you…..?

Normally, I’d say that keeping your head down isn’t a good idea as a presenter and public speaker – too much hiding your light under a bushel doesn’t get you very far sometimes…

There is just one time though – and it’s pretty literal – when you should keep our head down though.

We all have a tendency to raise our heads when we’re anxious/nervous (and when we’re working in stepped auditoria) – we tip them backwards, raising our eyes. My hunch is that it’s something to do with wanting to see danger coming from as far away as possible but I can’t be sure. The advantage is that you get to see your audience’s eyes (always a good thing) but there is a huge downside – tipping your head back tightens your throat.

…. and a tight throat means you sound stressed and anxious (even if you’re not). It’s important for your credibility to keep your head down. By that, I don’t mean that you should pull your head down into your shoulders – but instead you should keep it it tipped down/forwards… lower your jaw so that you’re natural eye-line holds to hit the floor at about five or six metres away. If you’re like most people, that’ll probably feel very un-natural as we’re almost all conditioned to tip our heads up – it’s a natural stress response and we’re a pretty high-stressed society – but it’s worth the effort.

Other than it feeling odd, the hard part will be to keep your shoulders down and stay relaxed but with just a little practice you’ll find it can make a huge difference to how you sound when you’re presenting. Even if you’re not confident, you can sound it….

For many years I’ve been fighting the good fight about the myth that only 7% of the meaning of communication is in the words themselves; I ranted about it years ago, for example.

Just recently however, Olivia Mitchell waded in with a superb piece of writing. I commend it to you. It’s here.

In fact I pretty much commend the whole of her blog, for that matter!

Setting aside for the moment what he says (as, if you can!), it’s worth some time to look at Presedent Obama’s recent speech – if for nothing else as a masterclass of how to be relaxed and natural… It’s currently available via the Whitehouse channel on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/whitehouse