Presentation Skills....

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....