【Presentation Skills】

How to prepare your presentation for you workplace and reduce the anxiety and nervousness caused by presentation︱Presentation and Public Speaking Skills

Are you having trouble presenting in front of you audience? When the boss asked you to persuade a group of audience that consist more than ten people, or even dozens of people, are you feeling like we are super nervous? In order to present the best possible way, we rack our brains to come up with a perfect opening statement and write out our speech word by word, but our mind suddenly goes blank when it actually matter. If we want to improve the presentation of ours, here are some tips for we!

Preparing our presentation

Never memorize the script word for word

A lot of speakers fall into the trap of memorizing the whole script in order to not humiliate themselves by drawing a mental blank in front of the audience. However, this preparation method not only consume a significant proportion of time, but also destroys the effectiveness of the speech. We have been speaking spontaneously in our daily life, we speak naturally when we are thinking of ideas, not words. If our ideas are clear, the words would come as natural as we breathe, in an unconscious way. When talking to people in a private manner, we usually think what we want to say, and say it without thinking which word we should use. Therefore, why do we have to change our way of speaking just for the purpose of public speaking?

Organize our ideas beforehand

The proper preparation for public speaking is simple: Assemble our ideas, perspectives, convictions that have welled up from our life experience. The true preparation for public speaking is the comprehensive thinking of our topic. Think over our topic until our understanding on the topic is expanded and deepened, transfer all our ideas into words and organize our loose ideas, then set them in order.

Effective rehearsals

After we have organized our ideas, it is time for rehearsals. The simplest and most effective way is to talk about the content of our public speaking in a daily conversation with our friends and colleagues. However, don’t perform like we are giving a speech in the city hall. Instead, just keep a relaxed and natural way of conversation. Be aware of their reactions and listen to their ideas and perspectives. Their interesting thoughts could be valuable to we. They probably won’t know that we are having a rehearsal but may say they enjoyed the conversation a lot.

Interacting with other people is an effective way of perfecting our presentation and public speaking skills. We can also receive some valuable feedbacks and suggestions. These daily conversations could increase our confidence, making we to express our ideas and perspectives fluently.

Presentation Skills that is useful during the presentation:

Lower our anxiety level to make a positive first impression:

With so much at stake, it is vital that our audience perceive us as authentic, reliable, professional and trustworthy. The moment we start our speech, our audience has already started to look at we. If we are very nervous, our audience will think we are unreliable, and our presentation will be likely to fail. To get rid of nervousness, in addition to fully practicing the opening and the conclusion and maintaining good body gesture and eye contact, we can also meet the audience in person by arriving early. Most of us are nervous and anxious because we are speaking in an unfamiliar environment. So how about making the place OUR place!

Deliver our presentation in an interactive and natural way

As mentioned, our audience wants to feel a real, reliable, and professional speaker, but some people are too focused on acting like a speaker wrapped in a ted talk video, but instead we hold back ourselves by doing this, becoming dull and monotone. We found ourselves trying to imitate their professional gestures and tone of voice, but we didn't feel confident. We need to project a certain level of professionalism, but we should speak naturally to show our uniqueness.

Speak naturally, stay relaxed and focus on our topic and goal, because the audience determines their attitude based on the speaker's attitude, so when we are relaxed, our audience would also feel relaxed. What's more, when we are being ourselves, our confidence level will rise immediately. We can also ask more questions and interact with the audience in a more relaxed tone, making the atmosphere of the presentation more like a conversation than a lecture.

Increase credibility

Sometimes the purpose of our presentation is to sell or persuade our audience, so we will think about how to increase our credibility. For speakers, credibility is an important indicator of convincing audiences to believe in us and our team. The most effective way to increase our credibility is to cite reliable sources and evidence to support our arguments. By citing solid evidence, we can further strengthen our speech while increasing our reliability. In addition, sharing our own experience and expertise is also an effective way to show our knowledge and expertise on the topic. Finally, explaining the research and scientific rationale behind our speech can help us establish authority and credibility.

Explain complex words/terms

In most presentations or speeches, we may fall into the trap to assume that the audience understands all technical words, but in fact, some vocabulary may be too complicated for the audience to understand, so we should not assume that everyone understands complex use words. We need to explain in-depth and complex words and terms to our audience. Apart from helping our audience understand the topic, explaining technical terms can further demonstrate our knowledge and understanding. We must explain to the audience in a clear and simple way, helping them understand what we mean with the least amount of time. In addition, tools such as examples, metaphors, or images can be used to help the audience better understand abstract concepts. We want to keep our words short, so that we can provide valuable information to the audience in a short period of time

Responding to questions

For many people, the scariest part of a presentation or speech is not the beginning, the end, or even the middle of the speech. What many people really fear is the moment when the audience asks some questions that leaves you speechless. Sometimes we have difficulty answering with confidence but understanding that answering poorly will bring great impact. First, we should spend more time conducting thorough research on the topic, anticipating possible question from the audience. But there will always be times when some questions need to be answered on the spot, and we need to actively listen to each question, seek clarification when needed, and answer concisely. We can also encourage audience participation, making the conversation open to all of them, and maintaining a respectful and professional tone.

Conclusion:

In nowadays professional environment, proficiency in presentation skills is critical to our career growth. We must constantly develop and improve this skill and continue to learn and practice different skills. By honing our presentation and presentation skills, we not only become more effective communicators, but also our ability to influence and persuade others.

The skills above are very practical, and we strongly recommend that you give it a try, because these skills can have a significant impact on your career development and bring you more opportunities. If you want to know and really practice your own skills, please check the link below and contact us!