How can people overcome stage fright or Presentation Anxiety (PA), the clinical term? Short answer – they can’t – it’s a perfectly normal human response to fear or stress. But what I help my executive coaching clients accomplish is managing their PA through Minimizing and Masking techniques.
Presentation Skills
Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Presentations
Actually, that should be ‘Phil’s Practical Principle – Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Presentations.’ I do love alliteration.
Let’s narrow the topic to workplace presentations – team or company updates, customer updates, sales pitches, etc. And let’s assume that you are initiating the presentation, rather than responding to an instruction from management to deliver one. We can cover that topic next time. Here are best practices for successful planning:
101 Presentation Tips
‘Making Presentations’, by Tim Hindle, part of the DK Essential Managers series, DK Publishing, NY, 1998. A quick review of 101 tips for creating and delivering presentations … a good simple refresher.
Smile Through the Pain
One simple way to deal with Presentation Anxiety is to Smile Through the Pain. My good friend Jim Smith, the Executive Happiness Coach here in Cleveland knows a lot about how smiles can impact your happiness. And his current blog discusses the Power of Smiles – https://mail.aol.com/webmail-std/en-us/suite.
Speak Up!
One easy way to become a more engaging audience-centric presenter us to effectively harness your Vocal Power and simply Speak Up! Volume, inflection and rate of speaking combined can significantly impact your audience’s attention, interest in your message … and positive impression of you, the messenger.
I Don’t Get It – Quotes
I Don’t Get It why people use quotes so poorly! Clients tell me that my use of quotes is effective in my training and speaking engagements and in the articles I write, probably because I don’t overuse them and they relate to and support my content.
Smile Through the Pain
One simple way to deal with Presentation Anxiety is to Smile Through the Pain. My good friend Jim Smith, the Executive Happiness Coach here in Cleveland knows a lot about how smiles can impact your happiness. And his current blog discusses the Power of Smiles – https://mail.aol.com/webmail-std/en-us/suite.
Stand & Deliver!
Your audience only knows what it sees. That’s why Audience-Centric presenters harness the physical energy of their bodies by standing and delivering with credibility and confidence. Your body can be a great natural visual aid, but it can also show nervousness or lack of confidence very quickly and clearly. So … look the part you’re playing – a confident and credible presenter.
Creating Audience Centered Presentations
Creating Audience-Centered Presentations can be a key to your career success in the job you have … or the job you want. And adding some new, different or better tools to your Workplace Presenter Tool Kits is simple … but not necessarily easy.
Gesturing BEST Practices
Looks like you enjoyed our discussion of Gesturing Worst Practices last month. Except, of course, for those of you who thought I was describing what you do – sorry about that! So, how do you gesture more effectively? Fasten your seat belts for a quick spin around Gesturing BEST Practices.