Philosophy
We’ve often heard that the average person’s greatest fear is speaking in public. That fear can ruin the most meticulously planned presentation. The nervousness, the over and under modulation, the ticks, the random hand movements, the lack of eye contact, the appearance of being unprepared are all signs to the prospect that this team is not ready for prime time. Every detail could be buttoned down, but if the pitch appears shaky it is doomed.
My workshop focuses on techniques that will make every presenter seem more confident by giving real solutions to overcoming these fears. These are simple solutions put into the context of formal training with lots of opportunities for practice in front of a live group and a video recorder. The result is that presenters become more confident, which is seen by the prospect as being more in command and self assured. And, when presenters are confident that passion is contagious and grows as they have more appearances.
Overview
My workshop has two parts. The first part is getting participants to try out techniques to help relax them as they speak. I demonstrate a technique, each person practices it in front of the group and a video recorder, the group gives instant feedback (I teach them how to give constructive feedback), then the presenter takes his tape to a side room to view his performance before returning to the main room. As we cover more techniques, we look to incorporate everything learned previously into the next exercise. Eventually, each participant gets a video tape of his performance from first to last, always showing growing confidence in the presentation style.
The second part of the work shop gets into the actual language of a presentation. It includes lessons of how to compress your remarks into the most pithy form, isolating key messages and building upon them, words and techniques to avoid, use of metaphors and similes to make the presentation more approachable, do’s and don’ts of effective Power Point presentations, and how to plan your presentation starting from the end and working backwards.
Another significant part of the training is to convey the power of story-telling as a presentation device. People will learn how to leverage the stories they already own to make the most powerful presentation possible.
There are constant exercises, recordings, and helpful evaluations.
I’ve found that one of the side benefits of a Presentation Skills Training workshop is the amount of team building that is produced by this effort. The individual members learn positive ways to give feedback and rely on each other to make their role in the presentation sensational.
People will always be intimidated by having to present in public. Learning the most successful ways to do it typically calms each person down and creates confidence. Confidence translates to success.
Confident presenters win business. My goal is to at least make you appear to be confident. The results will be the same.
