Ultimate Tips to Make More Confident Presentations
7 Best tips to give more confident tips
Seven tips for more confident presentations
Stumbling over words. Fumbling with notes and equipment.
It’s no wonder an estimated 75 per cent of us dread public speaking.
Fortunately, there are ways to help you build confidence
when presentation anxiety strikes. The first thing to remember? Presenting
often has less to do with what we say than how we say it, said Mark Bowden, an
expert in human behaviour and body language.
“We make judgments about each other immediately, and often
those gut instincts are based on behaviour alone,” he said.
Mr. Bowden’s training company, Truth Plane, helps business
leaders and politicians to improve their communication and presentation skills.
A client may approach his company after receiving negative
feedback from her colleagues. What she may not know, Mr. Bowden said, is that
she’s not being rejected for her idea, but rather for the way she’s delivering
the message.
“Even before she’s opened her mouth to explain the idea,
most people have already decided whether it’s a good idea or not. But the
content is the only thing that the organization is aware or conscious of. We’re
not generally conscious of our responses to other people’s behaviour delivering
that content,” Mr. Bowden says.
To improve your body language, and ultimately your ability
to deliver confident, polished and professional presentations, Mr. Bowden
offered the following seven tips:
1.
Think like an athlete.
In the same way a professional athlete is able to move her
body in such a way that she gets the result she wants, a business professional
should be able to move herself in a way to achieve a certain goal.
2. Know
your options.
To get results, whether on the track or in the boardroom,
training is required.
“It’s very easy for me to decide exactly where to put my
hands when talking to an audience, but if I don’t know the options, it can be
difficult,” Mr. Bowden said.
Those who haven’t been trained may not know what to do with
their hands, he explained, and poor trainers may advise people to let them hang
by their sides. But that’s just one of many options, Mr. Bowden said. A good
trainer will be able to present you with several more appropriate options.
3.
Treat your material with respect.
Mr. Bowden provided an example of a client who used to do
presentations of financial data to the board of directors. Normally his client
would hold the binder at what he called “the grotesque plane” – a position by
his side that suggests the quality of the material is not worth holding high.
Instead, Mr. Bowden advised his client to start supporting the binder at “the
truth plane” or belly height, which immediately sends a message to viewers that
the numbers are something of value.
4. Be
aware of your surroundings.
If you’re planning to sit while presenting, make sure that
the seat is set up so you don’t have to fumble with it. It sends out an
unconscious message to the audience that the speaker knows where all the
furniture is and everything has been arranged, Mr. Bowden explained.
5. Take
up space.
When you sit down, don’t pull in your chair. Give yourself
extra room, which signals you’re in a position of power, much like the alpha
male or female in a group.
6. Be
economical with your movement.
If you’re turning to a page in the binder, or presenting
something on a laptop, make sure everything is bookmarked and cued up.
Preparedness means you can flick open the binder or power up the presentation
in one swift movement, all the while looking the audience in the eye. What the
audience sees is someone who’s in total control, economical with their
movements and has strong eye contact at all times.
7.
You’re more important than the data
The audience isn’t buying the data, they’re buying the
person presenting the data, Mr. Bowden said. “If anything was really about the
data, we’d never do presentations. … Always keep in mind that when we go live
in front of an audience, it’s about the event, the personality, the
relationship and trust.”
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