MBA - MANAGERIAL COMMUNICATION (MC)
PUBLIC SPEAKING AND PRESENTATION OF REPORT
“Nothing in life is more important than the ability to communicate effectively.”
– Gerald R. Ford
Communications in their multiple forms pervade today’s business environment. With numerous job interviews, conference calls, meetings, product presentations, workshops, and public events, more and more leaders realize the importance of developing good interpersonal communication skills within their company.
Whether your goal is to enhance your professional growth, take your business to the next level, or inspire, persuade and motivate other people to follow your lead, you will have to learn how to convey your ideas in front of a group of people in a clear, structured and captivating manner.
What is public speaking?
Public speaking is a process, an act and the art of making a speech before an audience. Absolutely everyone from the age of 10 to 90 has found themselves in situations where they have had to speak publicly. However, telling an anecdote at a corporate party, introducing yourself in class or delivering a paper at a conference does not necessarily make you a public speaker.
The positive outcome of a speech does not depend solely on the oratory skills of the speaker. It is influenced by many factors such as the topic of the presentation, the attitude of the audience, the quality of the material, the length of the speech and so on. Some of the factors are out of the speaker’s control. However, the remaining 98% of the success will depend on how well the presenter follows the Three P’s:
-- Preparation
-- Practice
-- Performance
At each of these stages, public speakers should watch out for pitfalls that can trip them up.
Preparation
“Only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident.” - Dale Carnegie
Here is why the most experienced public speakers never go to talk in front of an audience unprepared - they know that speech preparation is their credibility.
If you have not done your homework well, it will show on the day of the speech.
Just like hours of material research, preparation and planning will help you to reduce nervousness and appear more confident and more knowledgeable to your listeners. As you walk onto the podium feeling the eyes of your audience on you, you will be grateful for every bit of effort you have invested into your speech preparation.
The basic speech outline template contains 5 main elements:
-- Attention grabber
- - Introduction
- - Body
- - Conclusion
- - Call-to-action
Practice
“If I don’t practice the way I should, I won’t play the way that I know I can.” - Ivan Lendl
Public speaking, just as any other skill, requires constant practise in order to be improved. The more you talk in public, the more you train your mind and body to recognize speaking as a familiar and safe situation, the more confident you will feel in the spotlight.
As paradoxically as it may sound, practicing your speech ten, twenty and even thirty times before the actual speaking engagement is what will make your presentation look a lot more spontaneous, natural and effortless. Of course, practice alone will not necessarily make your performance stress-free, but practising your speech at least a couple of times before the presentation holds 3 Significant Benefits:
• It allows you to discover awkward phrases and tongue twisters that are hard to notice when you first write your speech.
• It reduces nervousness and helps to transform anxiety into excitement on the day of the presentation.
• It helps you to gauge your timing.
So practise alone, practise in front of other people, and do the final rehearsal with aids.
Performance
“If something can go wrong it will.” - Murphy’s law
When getting ready for your speech, become a long-term optimist and a short-term pessimist. Believe in your heart that your presentation will go wonderfully and that the audience will love it, but prepare yourself for little slips, unexpected technical troubles, and other problems that may arise on the day of your performance.
Leave the house early, to avoid traffic. Check your computer and LCD projector ahead of time. Think of unexpected and challenging questions that you could be asked during your presentation. Avoid eating a heavy meal or drinking coffee before the presentation, as doing so affects your vocal cords and your energy level.
Here are some tips that will allow you to improve your performance even more:
• Relax before you get up to talk. Remember to stop and take a few deep breaths to slow down your heart rate and reduce muscle tension. Feel your feet on the floor. Gently roll your shoulders back. This opens your chest, drops your shoulders, opens your throat, releasing tension and making you look more confident.
• Greet your audience with a smile. Even if the topic of your business presentation is a serious one, you can still greet your listeners with a genuine, welcoming smile to win their favour and regain your confidence.
• Do not rush through your presentation. Give your listeners time to absorb your concepts and key ideas.
• Make yourself be heard. Speak to the person sitting farthest away from you so that your speech can be easily heard by everyone in the room.
• Face your audience at all times. In presentations where visuals are used avoid turning your back to the listeners and looking at the slides too much. The audience is the focal point of your speech. Visuals are merely a tool to convey a message. Besides, speaking towards the screen or the wall makes it hard for your listeners to hear you.
• Talk to people, not at them. Find a few people that you know in the audience and imagine yourself talking directly to them. Shift your gaze through your audience and as you feel more confident, establish eye contact with other listeners as well.
• Claim attention. The attention span of an average person lasts about 5-10 minutes. It is the task of the speaker to keep the listeners focused on the presentation by bringing their attention back through the fluctuation of the voice, storytelling, questions, and body language.
• Do not stick your hands in your pockets, hook your thumbs under your belt, or engage in other creative diversions as you speak.
• Do not introduce a topic with “Just real quick,” “Briefly,” or similar words. The subconscious message that your audience receives is “this isn’t really important or relevant, but I’m going to inflict it on you anyway.”
• Answer any questions as succinctly and briefly as possible. Not everyone may be interested in this specific question.
• Do not diminish or underestimate your audience. Even if you are a world-known expert in your area of expertise, it is still not a good idea to use phrases like “this is probably new to you” or “you probably don’t know what this means”, unless you are sharing groundbreaking news that nobody has heard of.
• Wrap up your talk on time. People rarely want to listen to someone, who talks longer than was expected. Therefore, assign to a person that you know the task of giving you time cues, indicating when you have ten minutes left, five minutes, two minutes and when you should stop talking.
• Never apologize for anything: be it your presentation, your accent or your lack of knowledge in certain areas or your mistakes. You will quickly lose your credibility.
• Be flexible. Organize your business presentation and know it well enough to have the flexibility to skip certain parts or expand on others depending on the circumstances and non-verbal cues that you receive from your audience.
• Be your best self. Too often, people giving business presentations believe that to look professionally they need to act or speak in a certain way, a stiff way. There is a huge difference between being professional and being downright boring. People came to listen to YOU, so let your personality shine through. Share something real about yourself, either in words or delivery, which connects you to your listeners.
• Have fun. If a speaker is relaxed and enjoying every moment of their speech, it will make the speech much more enjoyable for the audience as well.
• Connect with people after the presentation. At the end of the speech, instead of recoiling backstage and doing a vicious deconstruction of every little mistake made during the presentation, continue to be fully present with your listeners. Talk to people, answer questions, accept invitations, exchange business cards, network and so on.
Reference book-
Nikitina, Arina. Successful public speaking. Bookboon, 2011.
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