You’re a Presentation Tool
One of my goals this year was to become a better presenter. (It’s actually one of the only goals that I could actually achieve in 2020.) After working on it all year, I’m ready to share some things I’ve learned with y’all! Let’s get into it.
Just at the top, before we start. I’d like to remind you all that I’m just a regular schmegular person. I’m not going to be able to teach you how to give some sort of well-spoken TED talk that will spellbind your audience. That ain’t my expertise. The point of this blog post is to tell you what I learned from my own journey in case it resonates with any of you.
Confidence was my biggest hurdle: When I started this journey of improving my presentation skills, I thought I was one of the worst presenters on the planet. Every stutter, fumble, technical difficulty, or whatever hiccup I encountered felt like the end of the world. My heart would pound in my ears and sweat would accumulate in places I didn’t even think had sweat glands. Turns out, I’m not as bad as I thought. Literally no one I have presented to has had anything bad to say about my presenting - even when I specifically ask for negative feedback. It’s totally all in my head. Turns out Alexis Rose was right. Nobody cares. People aren’t thinking about you the way that you’re thinking about you.
Practicing is a surefire way to improve: No one gets better by sitting on their a**. And yes, it totally sucks to put yourself out there. But if you want to improve, you’re going to have to try. So I started presenting and presenting and presenting. I presented in front my mentor a few times to gain a little confidence in a very safe environment. Then I pushed myself to step it up. I took my most compelling presentation and presented to a small group of 5. They asked great questions and I was able to improve my presentation to address some of those questions. Then I pushed myself further and presented to my entire office, which is a size I never thought I’d be confident enough to present in front of. Now, I’m working towards finding bigger and scarier groups to present to... It might be hard to take the first step or to push yourself outside your comfort zone, but I can say from experience that it does get easier. Just start small and work your way up. You’ll get there!
Know your audience: I think we’re all trying to avoid that painfully awkward silence of when your joke is so far off from landing that it’s actually jetting off into space. The way to avoid this (and other issues) is to know your audience. Understand how casual or buttoned up the crowd is. What’s the demographic? Be aware of the attention rate. Are people going to be at 100% attention or will they be multitasking? Think about how well they know or don’t know the topic. Would more background slides be helpful? By taking some time to think about the audience, you can tailor your presentation accordingly.
Focus your ideas: When I’m an audience member, I frequently lose interest in people’s presentations. I think the biggest issue is when the presentation tries to do too much. You might be excited to delve into the ins and outs of a topic, but slideshows aren’t the best medium for information retention. There’s two strategies that I like. One, you can create a reference slide which you go back to with each change in topic to refresh the audience’s memory. So, you might introduce your topic and say that you’ll be talking about A, B, and C during this presentation. After you finish talking about A, you go back to the slide that shows A, B, and C, and you say something like, “And now let’s talk about B…” And you do the same before topic C. This allows the audience to better conceptualize how all the topics fit together. Or two, you can ruthlessly cut a s*** load of slides from your deck and just focus on ONE worthwhile topic.
Do some research: Ask people who you think are good at presenting for some advice. There are also plenty of resources online to give you tips on how to beat nervousness, to speak more eloquently, to avoid putting too many words on your slides... If you feel like you need more help, you can totally google it yourself. Honestly, there’s probably even a TED talk about how to give a TED talk if you’re into that sort of thing.
Good luck on your next presentation!