Many students come into the college classroom with bad skills that they have learned over the years of presenting. Businesspeople suffer from the same bad skills as when they were college students.
While you may know when a presentation is terrible, you may not know how to make your own great. Here is what you need to do to transform yourself into a great presenter.
1. Do Not Turn Off the Lights During Presentations
A large presentation is always scary in the beginning. People try to find a way to weave together all the material that you have learned in a way that is dynamic and engaging. However, at the last minute there is always a little nagging fear which leads others to want to turn off the lights.
The answer is always to leave the lights on. The bad habit of turning the lights comes from when we are students and have watched our teachers lecturing with the lights off. Students generally feel more comfortable when the lights are off because people are looking at the presentation and not at them.
How to Get Rid of This Habit?
Turning the lights off is a habit you must get rid of. You should always be the focus when you are presenting. That means that if the audience is not able to see you, you are not going to be able to connect with them.
You also are not going to be engaging with them. It is important to ensure that you are always able to engage with the audience. The slides are important for you as talking points; however, you should always be the one who has the attention as the speaker.
2. Using a Leg of the Stool
Jim Endicott shared that there was a presentation stool, and this was composed of: the message, the delivery, and the visual presentation. Speakers have the habit to focus too much on the content often and they do not pay attention to the deliver. In addition to this, other speakers will take the time to create a great presentation, but they do not take the time to work on their delivery.
There are also some folks who just think about the delivery, they then are not developing the best presentation that they can, they are relying on their speaking ability to carry them through the presentation. To be successful, you must have the whole stool in place so that you are really going to resonate with the audience. When there is one part that is too heavily focused on, the whole thing will fall apart.
How to Get Rid of This Habit?
3. Thinking That a Topic That is Informative Will Bore Your Audience
Informative Speeches can be difficult because many times people forget to really create engaging content. You never have to give a boring speech because something is informative. One method that I have used in the past is sharing excerpts from a Ted Talk and asking people to analyze the content by answering questions.
It is important to make sure that you can layer any information that you are sharing with story. If you use storytelling you are going to create content that your audience can relate to and that will mean that the audience will remember it. The reason why people love Ted Talks and why they are so popular is that they weave in information and, they have a very large story telling component to them that will keep the audience plugged in.
How to Get Rid of This Habit?
4. Choosing Boring or Bad Topics
There are some topics that are just over done, and they are boring. When you are giving a presentation, you want to always focus on covering something that is new and not something that has been overdone. That means that you need to always bring something new to the conversation.
You also need to look at creating content where you have an audience that is invested in the content that you are doing. Passion in the delivery can only happen when you like the topic. If there is a certain topic that has a very clear message it is important to ensure that you can deliver that message in a way that will inspire your audience.
How to Get Rid of This Habit?
Sometimes there is nothing that you can do about the topic you have to cover, you must find a way to make it work. The reason for that is if you have a topic that you cannot do anything with you are also going to set your audience up to be bored. You need to do what you can to make the topic work and that means adding in humor as well as finding a way to always use your storytelling.
You need to also add in humor. One of the main reasons television shows like the Colbert Report and Last Week Tonight are so successful is they are using boring topics, but they are also finding ways to communicate with their audiences in a way that is meaningful.
5. Write and Read a Script to Deliver
When you are working on delivery, you want it to be natural. That means that you may need to write out a script. That script means that you are going to always engage with the audience, and you are not going to read your slides.
The thing that you need to think about is that you will lose the audience right away if you are reading a script. Your audience will always feel cheated in that moment. It is critical that you instead take the time that you need and really make things from the heart.
Plan on going through and putting your points on paper. Then after you do that go back and really engage to ensure that you are always coming across as sincere.
How to Get Rid of This Habit?
