Presentation skills
The higher you climb in your career the less you can get done personally, but the more powerful your words become. When you reach the top of very large organisations your voice is almost all you’ve got. The power or charisma of a person’s words is the main factor that distinguishes the person at the top as ‘someone who has the job now’ from ‘leader’.
Presenters divide into two types of people: those that are nervous, and those that should be! Nerves are a critical ingredient of a good presentation. They make you make an effort. There is no presenter more boring than one that thinks they are quite good at giving presentations, isn’t nervous and consequently drones on and on.
Unfortunately nerves are also the number one reason for failing to give a good presentation. They make you forget key points you planned to say, they interrupt your fluency, and they distract your audience from listening to the message to watching the style of delivery instead. Controlling nerves is therefore the most important presentation skill to develop.
The ability to control nerves is an acquired skill. Fear not if you lack the inner confidence that makes it look easy. Such confidence can be deceptive anyway. My father-in-law is a retired salesman. He has the kind of easy sociability that makes friends everywhere but he describes himself as a young man knocking on doors as if his hand was a sponge – hoping people would not be in. The portrait he paints of himself is unrecognisable from the man I know, so anyone can learn.
Here are some tips which will help control nerves:
Let out your inner crazed dictator
There’s a social dynamic at work while giving presentations that not everyone recognises, thereby missing a trick. For the duration of the time you have the floor, you are in charge. This isn’t a comedy club, no one will heckle you. People will mostly sit politely and listen. It doesn’t matter if you are very junior presenting to a group of much more senior colleagues, your audience will defer to you.
At the risk of sounding pathological, this gives you power. For the duration of your presentation you are able to assert yourself over others, often quite a large number of people. Enjoy it. We rarely have such opportunities in life. I see many presentations delivered as if the presenter is apologising for causing you the inconvenience of having to listen to them. I was brought up to think it impolite to be self-regarding but during presentations this social rule is deliberately relaxed. Use it as an opportunity. You don’t have to be an ego maniac to enjoy the power.
Have you heard the one about…
Like a wedding speech, your audience is willing you to do well. They haven’t paid to see you. Their expectations are modest. They (usually) have some personal interest in what you have to say. All this makes you are at least 23% funnier than normal. Even quite lame jokes will get a positive response. The warmth will calm you wonderfully.
I experienced this most vividly during a best man’s speech in Wales. I had tee’d up a joke at the groom’s expense and got a much bigger laugh than I thought the joke warranted. What made it special was that I knew there were two follow-up lines coming immediately afterwards. The second got an even bigger laugh than the first. Just before the third, I paused. People were still laughing from the second line and for that brief moment, knowing I was going to get a bigger laugh still, it was as if time slowed down. I was relaxed and calm. It was a great feeling and, for the first time, made me completely in control of my nerves for the remainder of the speech.
Similarly, I recall one of my first ever presentations. It was a leaving do for a popular member of my staff. All the senior people in the company attended, many not knowing who I was as I had just newly started. I made some comment that got a laugh and, afterwards, the sales director stopped me as we passed on the stairs. He said, ‘I missed Orla’s presentation. I understand you were quite funny’. And then he walked on.
Don’t get the wrong idea about my comic ability. The jokes in these stories were quite lame. Had I tried them out with my friends I would have been slaughtered. You don’t have to be funny to get a laugh during a business presentation.
Pause
Silence has an amazing effect on an audience. For its duration people worry, ‘Has he forgotten what he wants to say?’ or ‘Why’s he waiting?’ They fear you are going to fail. If you then carry on without a hiccup they think, ‘No, it’s ok.’ or ‘Ah, he knows what he’s doing’. All in a pause that lasted no more than a second or two. It’s another example of how you can assert power over your audience’s emotions.
A pause has the beneficial effect of calming you down, allowing you to catch your breath. It need not be overly mannered. You can disguise it with a slightly slow, deliberate change of slide or look at your notes or drink of water.
I once overdid the pause during a reading at a friend’s wedding. I was reading the famous passage from St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians about faith, hope and love. On walking up to the pulpit, before starting the reading, I took a moment to look at the marrying couple and take in the congregation at the church. On the bus from the church to the reception the grooms father shouted out to me, ‘By the way you gave that reading, it was as if you knew St Paul personally!’
Questions
Questions are a godsend to a presenter. Firstly, they show your audience is engaged, which is reassuring. Secondly, they gift you a pause. Finally, answering questions is a more natural thing than making presentations.
The bigger the audience, the less likely you’ll get questions. People are reluctant to risk embarrassment among their peers. To combat this, pick on someone and say, ‘You look like you were going to ask a question’. Your victim will probably look surprised, laugh nervously and reply that they were only scratching their nose. There is however a 50:50 chance they’ll go on to add, ‘Well, there was something I was wondering…’. If you get no question from the first victim, pick another. The chances are good that you’ll get a question from them or someone else. If you know members of your audience personally, you can select a victim by saying, ‘Charlie! You must have a question’. If you pick wisely, Charlie will feel a little proud and will oblige.
Physical Cues
I have observed even seasoned presenters often have some form of physical cue they use to calm themselves down. I remember an accomplished and successful marketing director giving a presentation in which I sat on the front row. He gripped our attention but about a third of the way through he took an opportunity to take a deep breath and slowly let the air out. ‘Even he’s nervous?’ I thought at the time.
I am not very good at presentations. I find it difficult to control my nerves. It messes up my delivery by making my voice and body language tighter than their natural level. I’ve found it helpful, just before speaking, if I briefly let my arms hang flaccidly by my sides. It’s not a natural position but it has the effect of pulling down my shoulders and goes some way to unwinding the tension in my posture. You’ll need to experiment to find something that works for you.
Unfortunately there is no sure way of controlling nerves. It takes practice, often years of practice. There are however other skills that are easier to learn that can be practiced at the same time:
Set up a Hitchcock-style suspense. Alfred Hitchcock once said that the most gripping film you could make was to explain to camera that you are have a bomb and that you’ve just set the timer for one minute. Then place it on a stool, go off camera, leaving the bomb as the only thing on screen. If you can think of even a tiny dramatic ‘set-up’ for your presentation, it can engage an audience. I recently heard a nice one: ‘I’ve wanting to speak to you all for a while but I’ve been waiting for the right time. Well, it’s the right time now’.
Wean yourself off powerpoint. Slides can become a crutch that makes your style ungainly. Use as few as possible, ideally none at all. The most accomplished speakers are able to stand and speak directly to an audience. Imagine the projector’s broken if you want to experiment. Moving slides along as an excuse for a pause is ok, just don’t read off your slides.
Simple Slides. The fewer the words the better. Don’t cram your slide with long sentences and lots of numbers. Ideally, you want pictures only, with maybe a few headlines.
Preparation. My worst presentations are when I thought I could ‘wing it’. Turns out, I couldn’t. Take time to put yourself in your audience’s mind and create something original and engaging to tell them.
Rhetorical devices. I’m certainly no expert in rhetoric but, from what I can tell, the repetition of specific words, or phrases, in different patterns is a particularly effective device to employ. Be careful not to overdo it. I’ve listened to a few speeches which sounded as if they had been semi-professionally prepared where overuse of these devices made the speech come over as a bit mannered. You have to be an accomplished speaker to pull this off well, ideally in a subtle way that your audience doesn’t really notice.
Summary
Presentations test your communication skills severely. Acquiring skill in this area is a must for any aspiring leader. Master your nerves and the rest is easy.