Whether you're talking about you make pencils or jet them off to illiterate kids in Eritrea, there are some typical things you may say in a presentation to get people to support your work. The more these messages stick in people's minds, the more success you'll have in what you do.
The trouble is, that even those who don't technically fear public speaking, do fear saying something unprofessional. And it's understandable. If speaking in public isn't an environment you swim about in day-to-day, your nerves will be heightened by the task. You already feel pretty silly standing up to talk, your brain then chips in with a resounding 'No!' and there's that voice inside your head dying to tell you how much people are judging you. 'Don't do anything different and for god's sake, be professional.'
This desire to be professional leads to us giving exactly the same presentation as everyone else (you know the one: a powerpoint with four neat bullets down the side and a picture in the right hand corner). If professional is to fit right in with what everyone else is saying - job done. If professional is to be bland, then another job done.
But wait a minute. How many of those 'professional' presentations have you sat through? You probably don't have enough fingers. And how many of them can you remember in any detail? Do you even need any fingers to count those? Speakers who focus on being professional and mild, are in fact doing everyone in the room a disservice. Far from being pleasant and inoffensive to listen to, they are subjecting their audience to a presentation which they won't remember and their organisation is losing ground to organisations where the presenters make their message stick.
So what does it take to make your message stick?
There are three broad areas to consider to make your message stand out. Take a look at each of these below and see which you use and how you could use them differently to engage your audience.
1) Visual aids
How you use your powerpoint, flipchart, props, or physical space to engage, or disengage your audience. Do you ever do a presentation without powerpoint? What if you pre-prepared a flipchart or powerpoint with no words- only pictures and numbers?
2) 'Verbal aids'
The nuggets of gold that come out of your mouth. These could be metaphors, poems, a personal story, a famous example, a joke, quotes, powerful facts, collections of three or buzz phrases to repeat. These all add variety, depth and emotional buy-in to a presentation. They also provide a good opportunity for you to stimulate both the left, logical part of the brain and the right through powerful evidence, emotional part of the brain through rapport-building stories.
3) Interactivity
My personal favourite is to get audiences involved in information as people far & wide learn best by doing. This could be something so simple as a brainstorm, or elaborate like a challenge, quiz, team game, or role play. With any interactivity, make sure that your full energy goes behind the task, so as to motivate others to get involved.
But before you run off and play, remember the "RULE" of memorability. To be successful, any visual, verbal or interactive 'nugget' that you slot into your presentation should be:
R - Relevant
Somewhere along the line, we were told to "start with a joke." This is like saying "Start with something to distract the audience, then you can get into the really boring bit." Any tool that you use should link clearly to your message, rather than pulling away from it.
U - Unusual
The unusual or unexpected often has the effect of tricking the brain out of its stereotypes and leads to the creation of new neural pathways. This means more learning which is retained for a longer period of time.
L - Learning
The best nuggets usually take the audience forwards and teach them something new. Give your audience insight and they'll see you as an expert in your field. Repeating or reiterating key learning points reinforces them.
E - Exciting
It's not to say that you have to have your audience leaping out of their seats with thrills, but a good nugget excites, or stimulates a part of the audience's mind - whether it's their imagination, their motivation, or their logical mind. You're looking to create "ooh" and "ahah!" moments with what you say, show and do.
Stick to these rules and your presentations will start to stick. Next time you do a presentation, pick a new nugget and give it the "RULE" treatment. Give yourself permission to experiment.
For more information on how to progress with your public speaking through a coaching programme please take a peek at Ginger Training & Coaching's public speaking programme.
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Public Speaking with Wings e-book
Grim Gestures - the top 10 gestures mistakes
Awareness- the first tool to outstanding public speaking
I wrote recently about my friends Mark & Denise who entered a competition to live their dream lifestyle for six months. Did they win the Ultimate Job competition? Have a look here to see their journey and my thoughts.
Mark & Denise's efforts inspired me to think more about how dreams become reality, particularly because this is something I help my coaching clients with every day. So, just what does it take to make your dream fly?
1) Before you reach a peak, you need a mountain to climb
If we don't know where we're trying to get to, how can we complain when we don't get there? One of the biggest challenges is to work out what you really want from your life. I started to ponder dreaming based on Mark & Denise's example in this article: Give yourself the Authority to Dream. What I learned was how much we restrict ourselves to the habits of our current reality; a path we chose perhaps many years ago and perhaps without conscious choice.
If Psychologists are right in saying that 90-95% of our thoughts today are the same as our thoughts yesterday, what impact does that have on our capacity to dream up changes in our lives? Ask yourself this;
- When did I last do something that felt thrilling?
- What was the last thing I wished for?
- When I wish for things, how often are they in my usual range of habits and how often are they big, or even scary wishes?
There are plenty of techniques to help you dream outside of your habitual patterns, or comfort zone. One of my favourites that I do with my clients is to help them visualise a fantastic future, based not on their logic, but based on their deep internal desires. That, incidentally, is where Ginger came from. You can use vision boards, positive affirmation, work on personal meaning and even a shopping spree to help you strengthen your dream. By creating a rock solid dream- a future that's so utterly desirable - anything else that gets in the way will seem insignificant.
2. Build your confidence muscle
We're afraid to dream because of the risks. What if I fail? and What if I lose what I already have? are two big ones, but I believe they hide an even bigger fear - What if I get what I want?
Whatever the fear, we can train ourselves gradually to have confidence in our ability to succeed and our ability to cope with success. That confidence, of course, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But, like any muscle, your confidence muscle needs training. Of course you may not have the confidence (or opportunity) to run for Prime Minister right now, but if you set yourself tiny goals to achieve, then celebrate and reaffirm your success, you'll find that over time your self confidence grows and your ability to dream strengthens. And with your strengthening confidence muscle, bigger and more powerful dreams are possible. Not to mention the connections and possibilities you naturally come across that help you on your way over time.
Start really small and focus on your power to make something happen in your life. If you're building trust in yourself, fulfil even the tiniest of promises you make to yourself. Get up when you say you'll get up; call home when you agreed and follow up on that person asking for your help. Achieve all the goals you set for yourself in a month and you'll see the difference in your confidence.
3. Give yourself time & space
Ever given up on an idea half way through, thinking they're not working, only to find a few weeks later that if you'd kept going you would've succeeded?
Remember to build your confidence and your dream over time, without being put off. If you climb a few metres up one mountain, then decide to change to a different mountain because it looks easier, you may never reach a summit. Recogise that it often months and years to reach dreams. Here it's important you have that rock solid dream, so that you can cling on even when times get tough. And you can prepare yourself for those tough times by acknowledging the following:
- Your mind will play tricks on your to try to put you off (we call it the saboteur, the inner critic, the gremlin...)
- You will get there if you keep going
- What happens in your life is nobody's choice but yours
And finally, don't forget that it is you who makes your dreams happen, by making your dreams happen.
Related articles
Give yourself the authority to dream!
What's your point? Focus & one-pointedness in action
Sarah and a Ginger team of volunteers took out the morning of Saturday 27th to inspire a group of young campaigners for the Equality & Human Rights Commission. What we didn't expect was to leave feeling so inspired ourselves...
It's always a great privilege to be invited to train a group of motivated young people. In comparison to the sterling and long-term graft teachers and parents commit themselves to, we 
are often gifted with the 'headliner' role of coming in, saying something inspirational, dancing around a bit (sometimes literally) and then leaving again with the warm feeling of having done something good for the world.
Take Saturday morning at Project 1000 - a group of young people brought together by the Equality & Human Rights Commission. We were invited to train the group on public speaking to help them 'up' their impact as activists. I led a bit of fun theory from the front and the team of volunteers worked with small groups to practice their presentations and get feedback on their technique. To see so many young people give better performances than my adult clients was a heart warming experience. And they loved it. Debates ranged from tuition fees to full body scanners, many of them packing into their 2 minute speeches arguments that would give our MPs a firm run for their money.
But whatever excitement and inspiration we helped create, it was my team and I who left feeling inspired. With so much apathy and 'easy' entertainments distracting British youth culture away from their communities and into facebook, twitter, PS3s (and blogs...?), it was exciting to see so many fresh and ambitious faces giving up their Saturday morning for a wider cause.
With young people like this supporting equality and human rights, I only feel positive and secure about the future of my country. The question is, how can we encourage more people to take a critical look to the world around them and talk up about the things that aren't right? This is a lesson that starts with youth and ends on the doorstep of each and every adult in the country, especially with a general election looming...
When my good friend Karin Lange suggested a week day romp to Somerset House for ice-skating, my first reaction wasn't great.
"Nah-ah," I told myself, "that's ridiculous. You can't ice-skate, you should be doing proper work during the day and you'll only end up breaking something." I tried everything to convince myself. "It's not even a proper walking surface is it? It's just like trying to walk on lit barbecues- why would you do it?!" Of the (arguably) two natural fears we're born with, fear of falling is 50% and this seemed like sufficient evidence to prove to me that my fear was justified. "Don't go."
My second reaction was a little more positive, however, as I reminded myself how I love different experiences, especially when they involve facing a fear. So as I stepped tentatively onto what can only be described as very smooth, very slippery ice, I tried to learn something.
My first few minutes confirmed that I indeed didn't have the magical ice-skating gene hidden in me. I spent most of that time clinging to the side rail without being able to move. When I did manage to face the direction of the skating traffic, I felt like an elephant trying to cross a ropebridge. Meanwhilst people half my size where already whizzing past with grace and confidence. This, I realised, was part of my fear. I wasn't so much afraid of breaking a bone (because that bad things don't happen to me tendency kicked in and refused to let me believe it), but I what I was afraid of was not being all that good.
As someone who's been a bit of a swat for most of her life, I'm one of those lucky people who are used to picking up intellectual concepts as fast as anyone. I'm used to being at the front of the pack without much effort. But when it comes to physical activities, I realised that I share a common Western adult disease of being far too much in my head and not nearly enough in my body.
It wasn't comfortable to bend my needs to get more balance - I didn't like the insecure feeling when you lose balance and wobble backwards and grab madly for the nearest barrier (or child) for support. I didn't want to do my apprenticeship, I wanted to skate NOW. Or not at all. Karin reminded me it was like so many people's reaction to personal development work - many of us in the field have seen (or been!) that person who, say, meditates for 30 seconds and then give up, proclaiming it doesn't work. If we have a lifetime of bad habits built up, it's going to take more than a few seconds to destroy them.
So, after many minutes of patient Karin wheeling me around the ice rink and giving me encouraging words, I gradually, progressed from inept and scared to 1 metre away from the barrier and calm. And what helped? Actually it was distracting myself as much as possible from our subject matter. In talking about something completely different as we went round, Karin and I practiced a very smart technique of just being rather than analysing; letting our bodies do the work for once whilst our minds were distracted elsewhere.
And it's true elsewhere in our lives. How many things do we restrict ourselves from doing because we have over-active brains? How many times have you convinced yourself not to talk to that stranger because... or not to pick up the phone and ask for that because, well, you know the sorts of excuses we all make up.
If we just let our bodies guide us more, perhaps they'd guide us into situations that make us feel more alive, more capable. After all, my theory is that bones aren't generally broken on skating rinks because of stupidity. Generally the more tense we are, the more dangerous a fall is (see how kids bounce?). And if it's tension that's dangerous, it's thinking too much that creates the tension.
So it's less think, more 'do'.
