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Research suggests that lots of people are more afraid of speaking in public than they are of death. What if we make fools of ourselves? What if the audience laughs at us? What if tales of our stupidity are spread far and wide? The “What ifs…” go on and on… But guess what? You could also think, “What if I give a great presentation and everyone enjoys it?” Not impossible. Remember, now that they’re there, audiences want to like and enjoy your presentation. They don’t want to hate it!
Hardly anyone is born a great presenter. It’s a skill that’s built. Not all presenters are the same, so you can pick one with a style that appeals to you and observe what they do that you think works well. However, all presenters do have one thing in common. They get their audience to feel what they are feeling by communicating with conviction and sincerity. If you don’t believe in what you’re saying, how will your audience, right?
Let’s start at the very beginning. Are you too nervous? Of course, much of your nervousness can be kept under control if you know your topic thoroughly. Knowledge itself is confidence. One big mistake that nervous newcomers make is to start off talking the moment they get on stage. Almost as if they’re in a hurry to finish and disappear. When you speak while your breathing is still fast and jagged the quality of your voice suffers. Take a few seconds to slow down your breathing, look at your audience and smile before you start talking. Greet them and introduce yourself.
Part of your prep before your presentation should be finding out as much as you can about your audience. How old are they? You wouldn’t speak to your friends and your teachers with the same tone or the same jokes, would you? Are they likely to know much about your topic? Should you simplify or elevate the standard of your content?
Get your audience to participate. Ask questions that’ll elicit reactions without threatening their self-images. For example, Not: “What is the square root of 45,378?” but more like: “How many of you have been to Goa?’ Make eye contact with as many people as possible without staring at anyone for more than 3 seconds. Be natural with gestures and movements — neither pacing continuously nor making aggressive, pointy gestures. Friendly body language is with hands in front and open, rounded gestures.
Everyone says “um…” once in a while, but if every sentence gets punctuated with fillers like these, your audience will soon be counting the number of times you said ‘um’ or ‘like’ rather than actually listening to you! Choose to be slow rather than fast. An occasional mistake in pronunciation is fine, but the continuous mispronunciation of words is not. That’s why practice is important. If you’ve read your presentation aloud to yourself, you’d have realised which words you don’t know how to say and found out before the big day.
Make sure during your practice that you don’t speak in a monotone. Record yourself and see if you sound boring. Are there enough variations in your tone? Do questions sound like questions? Does your voice have emotion? Have you paid attention to stress? Look at the sentence: I didn’t steal your pen. Try saying it with the stress on each word in turn. It can give you 5 different meanings: 1. I didn’t steal it, someone else did. 2. Why accuse me? I didn’t steal it. 3. I only borrowed it. 4. It wasn’t your pen that I stole. 5. It wasn’t the pen that I stole but something else. Now, which did you want to say?
Structuring your presentation is very, very important. If you talk about bananas one second and the philosophy of Sartre the next, your audience is going to be very confused. Unless you can make a logical connection between the two. You can go from a large topic to the finer details or do it in reverse — either is fine — just ensure that all the paras connect. Use the screen or the board for difficult terms, names, dates or diagrams that will help your listeners to better understand your content. But beware of putting all your words on screen. They’ll be so intent on reading that they won’t listen!
Do not try to stuff your presentation with all the content that Google has obligingly thrown up for you. Five good points, well-explained are better than 20 points that no one will remember. And don’t make everything new and difficult. Audiences like to feel that they know a little something too.
Tell stories to illustrate your points. I bet you remember the friendship of Harry, Hermione and Ron rather better than you remember the lecture you attended on ‘How to be a good friend’. If you’re going to tell a funny story, make sure that it will be funny to everyone and not just your best pals — no racism, no sexism, no any other -ism.
It really isn’t hard to make a good presentation. It just needs a little thought and some practice. Good luck!