Summer vacation is flying so fast, keeping me and Rohit very
busy. I didn’t read anything for past 3 weeks, but attended “High Impact
Presentation (HIP)” session for 2 days. Felt like sharing my experience with
you all.
HIP was an interesting session. Got a good instructor, who
encouraged all the 14 participants to try and deliver presentations on various
topics. He helped in understanding the standing posture, how to address
pressure situation and how to handle Q&A etc. The best and the worst part
of the session was, they did video recording of each participants’
presentations, replayed it to us. What a fun to watch our own presentation
being replayed?!!!
The instructor asked us to name a person whom we consider as
our role model for presentation skills. He also asked us to list the attributes
because of which we think he/she is good in presentation. During my turn, I
told him the name of the person whom I am considering as my Role model, while
listing the attributes, I said “He is very crisp in communicating the message,
his statements are unambiguous, the same message which I take 15 minutes to
convey he can convey in just 5 minutes “. (No chocolates if you guess the
person correctly J ). When I just
finished this, the instructor asked me “you mean to say he knows how to kiss”.
It took few seconds for me to really understand what he asked. The moment I
understood, I replied “yes, he knows how to Keep it short and simple (KISS)”.
My god, where do they find such crazy Abbreviations.
OK coming back to learnings from the session:
1.
It is quiet natural to have butterflies in the
stomach before any presentation. Just that we need to relax and calm down a bit
before going for the presentation
2.
Maintain eye contact with the audience
3.
If possible, get to know the audience before the
presentation so that you can handle them well
4.
Don’t allow anybody to hijack the presentation
5.
Don’t put too much of content in the deck, then
your presence will become meaningless.
6.
Don’t read from the slides. Give examples and
ensure you are able to connect with the audience
7.
Always be ready with a small version of the deck
which covers key points alone so that the presentation can be completed in less
time, as many times we will get less time than what was planned.
I read somewhere that those butterflies in stomach are
called Performance Anxiety. We get performance anxiety as we want to perform
well. It is good to have performance anxiety as long as it is positive. It is
not going to do any good to us, the moment it becomes negative. So we need to
do positive self-talk to motivate us.
So next time if you have butterflies in stomach before any
presentation, please remember it is natural and just that we need to think
positive and keep our-self calm and relaxed.
And friends from teaching profession, please share your comments and suggestions to help me in improving on this skill....
