A reader recently asked a question about using speaker notes when delivering a presentation – ‘I need to use reading glasses to see my notes and that makes it difficult to focus in on audience members’ eyes. Now what?’ My Answer – Simply create actual speaker notes instead of a copy of your outline, or … Read more
Nothing says more about your credibility, power and confidence as a presenter than what you do – and don’t do – with your eyes. Here’ are my responses to two very interesting recent reader questions about eye contact.
Question – ‘What if I look at someone in the audience who isn’t looking back at me? Then what do I do?’
What’s your point? Really – what’s the key message you’ll be delivering that you want the audience to understand, remember and agree with after the presentation? Your Main Point (MP) is the essence of your message, boiled down to one concise, specific, positive sentence. You should be able to write it on the back of your business card.
How do you get to the Presenters’ Hall of Fame? Before you all chime in with ‘Practice, man … practice‘, consider this – practice doesn’t make perfect, it only makes permanent. Only perfect practice makes perfect.
So, Best-in-Class Presenters got in the Hall of Fame by perfect practice. They also got in there by harnessing the power of Audience-Centricity, the art and science of crafting and delivering audience-centered messages. What follows is a brief summary of Best Practices learned from those presentation pros.
How you practice is often more important than how much. Last month’s ‘Communicate Confidently’ eLetter article on practicing presentations generated several reader questions. Here’s a summary of some of the comments I offered in my email responses:
Previous articles discussed some effective strategies for handling audience questions – you can choose to hold them until the end, invite them anytime or try one of the hybrid strategies described in detail. So, someone asks a question. Now what do you do? Here are some Best Practices to help you survive and thrive during Q&A.
How you use speaker support slides to reinforce and support your message has a direct impact on accomplishing your audience-centric outcomes. PowerPoint – or other similar software packages – has the capacity to provide you with efficient, effective and attractive slides. But, how and why presenters use this great tool makes all the difference. So, let’s add a few new or different tools to your Presenter Tool Kit and share PowerPoint Best Practices. To get us in the mood, let’s discuss Worse Practices first.
How many of you have been the victim of ‘Death by PowerPoint’? I see a lot of hands going up. Remember, it’s not the fault of the software, but of the user. PowerPoint will do most anything you ask it to do – even dumb things. It has user-friendly capacity, but no taste, soul or intelligence … yet.
A reader just asked me what I thought of using a laser pointer with his slides. I started the conversation with ‘Don’t let the technology tail wag the presenter dog’. The rest of my comments:
I hope you found the recent summary of Gesturing ‘Worst Practices’ an interesting and mildly amusing trip. And if too much of it sounded like you … we have an app for that. So, fasten your seat belts for a quick spin around Gesturing Best Practices and how to give your audience a hand.
‘Stand & Deliver’, a recent article on harnessing physical delivery power generated several questions from readers. I responded to them privately, but thought all of you would benefit from some excerpts of my comments.