Could your body language be more expressive? Do you inhibit your natural body language when you’re public speaking because of your self-consciousness?

Or maybe you’ve been told (by a well-meaning but misguided person) that you wave your arms around too much? As a result you’ve shut down your natural gestures and become stiff and boring.

The secret to curing boring body language in public speaking is to replicate the state you’re in when you’re in an animated one-on-one conversation. When you’re in that state your gestures unconsciously complement what you’re saying and give your message energy and persuasive power. You’ll look and feel more confident. And there’s even evidence that natural gesturing makes you more fluent.

Here’s what to do to develop natural, expressive body language when you’re speaking:

1. Empty your hands

Put down anything you’re holding, whether it be a pen, the remote or your notes (once you’re gesturing naturally you can hold your notes or the remote, but for the moment they just make the task of freeing up your gestures more difficult).

2. Keep your hands free

Holding your hands together, putting them in your pockets, or hanging onto the lectern will stop you gesturing.

So where should you put your hands? For the moment just let them hang loosely at your sides (this is a default position – this is not where your hands will stay). I know that this feels awkward. You probably feel a bit like a gorilla! But have a look at the photo to the right… do most of these global leaders look like gorillas? No. The only one who looks awkward is the one who doesn’t have his arms hanging loosely at his sides!

Your hands will probably creep together without you noticing. When that happens, immediately separate them again.

OK. We’ve got rid of the barriers to expressive body language. Now what?

3. Talk to one person at a time

When you’re in a one-on-one animated conversation, your hands naturally gesture. So kick-start your hands into gesturing by replicating that animated state. Do this by looking at one person and feeling in that moment that you’re just talking to them – and to no-one else. At the end of a phrase or short sentence, talk to someone else in the audience. But always be talking to someone (for more tips like this see: 8 presentation tips to make your eye contact more powerful).

4. Move your feet

To enlarge your body language, move your feet. You could for example, move towards the person you’re talking to. The larger body movement will free up your body and will encourage you to make larger gestures. For more ideas on moving while you’re public speaking click here: 9 ways to use space in your presentation.

5. Vary your gestures

Once you’ve opened up your body language, check that you’re not making repetitive gestures. Either ask someone to give you feedback, or video yourself. In my early public speaking days, I watched back a video and saw that my most common gesture was moving my right arm from the elbow outwards – like I was constantly opening and closing a door. Once I was aware of it, I caught myself doing it and was able to change what I was doing.

Remove distracting and repetitive gestures but don’t try and choreograph what you’re saying with specific gestures. It will look forced and unnatural.

Follow these five steps and you’ll develop natural body language that will add energy, engagement and persuasive power to your presentations.

Photo credit: AndiH

Live performances are magic. We pay to see our favorite bands performing even though we can listen to the songs anytime for free. We travel long distances to hear a famous speaker live, even though we can watch their speech online at home. We pay more for a Broadway show than to see a film.

Live is Magic.

Presentations are Live. So why aren’t they always magic? That’s because there are three types of live. And only one of them is Magic. Which do your presentations fit into?

1. Pseudo-Live

This type of presentation is “technically” live but everything else about the presentation is dead. You can kill your presentation by reading from a script – whether it be on paper, in your head, or in abbreviated format on your slides.

Some presenters and speakers think that too much rehearsal produces a dead presentation. Seth Godin said in a post entitled Rehearsing is for Cowards:

I’m talking about the repetition of doing it before you do it, again and again. Just drilling it in so you can regurgitate later. Better, I think, as they say, “…let’s do it live.”

But that’s the wrong kind of rehearsal. There’s a better way to rehearse (yes, I talk about it below) that ensures you deliver value and come across as “live”.

2. Winging it Live

Under the misguided impression that rehearsal will make them stale, some presenters believe that they’re at their best when they’re winging it. Most of these people are wrong. Winging it generally comes across to the audience as disorganized rambling chaos. I say “most people” and “generally” because occasional flashes of brilliance can come from this type of presentation.

Chris Brogan is an experienced speaker, who’s unusually honest about his performance.  He experimented with “winging it”:

I’ve worked strictly in the moment, like an improv actor or an artist or a cook. I take all the raw pieces of my conversations and work them into pieces of information on the fly and in real time. I enjoy it. My audience doesn’t seem to like it as much. They come away appreciative of my passion but no more ready to take action.

Here’s his comment on another presentation he gave:

On the day of the event, I felt like I killed it. Like the entire audience was eating out of my hands. Watching it now, I see that I rambled too much, that my narrative kept falling under the weight of all my asides, that people in that audience didn’t get their $129 worth out of me.

Sometimes you may come across an experienced speaker who appears to be winging it and produces a brilliant result. Before you assume that winging it is a winning strategy realise that they may have given a similar speech hundreds of times before.

3. Magic Live

This is the type of Live to strive for. It feels like the performers or speaker are creating something new and special for their audience. It’s not because they haven’t rehearsed. Cirque de Soleil shows are masterful performances which are choreographed and rehearsed down to the last detail and performed by talented people. Yet despite all the rehearsal, Cirque de Soleil shows have us on the edge of our seats.

How can you combine the usefulness of rehearsal with the magic of Live to be a compelling speaker.

1. Rehearse the right way

About 10 years ago, when my partner Tony and I were just starting our presentation training business we were having a chat with an experienced professional speaker. He said to us:

Every time you give your speech, give it a different way

Similarly, when you rehearse say it differently every time. You’re sharing ideas, not sentences. Even if you’ve crafted a fantastic line, let go of the need to use it. If it comes out that way, that’s great. But if it doesn’t, it’s not a big deal. The effort of trying to get it exactly right will kill your presentation.

As Michael Caine said:

Rehearsal is the work, performance is the relaxation.

2. Make your heart beat faster

Many people spout about being authentic, being real. I agree, but it’s not a very useful instruction.

Years ago, I used to take part in a gathering called Heart Politics. Part of the gathering was a Talking Circle. This was a place that people shared their experiences.  The Talking Circle was for deep, meaningful sharing, not for trite stories, showing off or telling jokes. There was no predetermined order of speakers. You got up when you were ready. You were ready when your heart started beating faster.  That kind of sharing is riveting.

Say something that makes your heart beat faster. It could be sharing a personal experience, it might be being bold in the statement of your opinions. You’ll be compelling.

3. Create something

Watching an artist create a piece of art is captivating. You can plug into that.

Create something for the audience

The flipchart is a magic tool for creation. Use a flipchart or other live drawing tool to create images in front of your audience instead of prepared PowerPoint slides and feel the energy lift in the room.

Create something with the audience

Co-create your presentation with your audience by asking for their input and wisdom. Audience participation is an art – check out this post on audience participation for tips on how to make it work

4. Do something that might fail

The possibility that something may go wrong is fascinating to an audience.

On our presentation courses, we carry out one-on-one coaching in front of the audience. We’re working on the edge. Our aim is to stretch the coachee just the right amount to unleash their brilliance , but there’s always the possibility of failure. That keeps the observers riveted.

Use the Magic of Live and you’ll be a compelling speaker.

Having to deliver a presentation to people who are older than you, more important than you, or more expert than you, can make you doubt yourself. To look more credible and authoritative do the opposite of what a person lacking in confidence would do. Typically, they would:

• compare themselves unfavorably to other people
• be shy about meeting people
• stand behind a lectern or as far away as they can from the audience
• stand stiff and frozen or move in a fidgety, uncontrolled way
• not look anybody in the eye or shift quickly from person to person
• rush through their presentation as quickly as possible.

Here are some tips to help you do the opposite and look credible and authoritative:

1. Focus on what you know

Don’t compare yourself to people in the audience who may know more than you. There’s always the potential for other people to know more about a topic than you, so this is a losing battle. Focus on why you’ve been asked to speak – your expertise or knowledge. For more on speaking to experts, see this post The four secrets to speaking with experts in the room.

2. Chat to the VIPs

Behave as if you’re the host or hostess of a party. Welcome people as they come in and make a point of chatting to people who you perceive as important or find intimidating. This will turn them into human beings in your eyes rather than objects of awe. And that will make it easier for you when you start your presentation. You’ll also build your credibility in their eyes.

3. Have someone else introduce you

Find someone that your audience respects to introduce you. This has two benefits:

• Someone else, rather than you, talking about your expertise and qualifications will establish your credibility more effectively.
• Listening to the credibility-building introduction just before you get up to speak will give you a confidence boost.

However, you should write the introduction for them. For more on how to do this, read this post How to establish your credibility without bragging. In it, I outline the research showing it’s more effective to have someone else introduce you and also step you through how to write the introduction. Denise Graveline also has great advice on establishing your credibility before you start your presentation: “How do I establish credibility as a speaker when my age and looks work against me?”

4. Claim your space

Start your presentation with a black slide. Stand at the center of the stage, close to the audience. This is the most powerful position to talk from. By standing in this position, with no distracting slide, you’ll look confident and credible.

5. Stand square

Whenever you’re standing still, stand square to the audience with your feet slightly apart. If you’re presenting with PowerPoint, beware the “PowerPoint angle” – that’s when the presenter stands with their body permanently angled toward the screen.

6. Own the stage

But don’t stand still all of the time, move around the stage as if you own it. For example, move towards the person you’re talking to. Move to the screen when you want to point something out.  Moving has multiple benefits:

• makes you look confident
• helps dissipate your nervous energy
• the large movements cover up the small movements (ie: shaking).

For more ideas on moving such as mapping your structure, showing a timeline, and picking a storytelling spot, check out this post 9 ways to use space in your presentation.

7. Keep your hands apart

Clasping your hands together looks like pleading and also stops you from gesturing. Gesturing is a natural part of speaking so if you just  keep your hands apart they will naturally start to gesture to support your points.

8. Finish your sentences

Does the pitch of your voice goes up at the end of a sentence, as if you were asking a question? This makes you sound as if you’re asking for approval and so makes you seem less authoritative. The reason for this problem – called a high rising terminal or uptalk – may be because you’re thinking of what you want to say next and so you’re not focusing on finishing your current sentence. The way to get rid of the high rising terminal is to consciously finish each sentence. Your voice will automatically come down in pitch and you will sound more authoritative.

9. Make eye connection

Instead of eye contact, make eye connection. Eye contact has you flitting between people. That’s less authoritative. Making eye connection means speaking to a person until you have made a genuine connection with them. Holding of your eye contact in this way will make you look more authoritative.

10. Chunk

Authoritative speakers often talk in a style of speaking I call “chunking”. They speak in short bursts of words with silence in between. A chunk of words can be a phrase or a short sentence. Listen to Tony Blair in this segment:

An awesome benefit of chunking is that you’ll stop using filler words such as um’s and ah’s.

11. Take your time

Don’t rush through your presentation. Rushing looks like you just want to get off the stage as quickly as possible (which might be true, but don’t let the audience see that!). Think of getting your message through not just getting through your message. Taking your time is not the same as going slowly. Don’t slow down – you’ll lose energy. Instead chunk.

12. Appreciate the applause

Don’t run away as soon as you’re done!

In my last post on presentation handouts I suggested that it’s best to distribute your handout before your presentation. The comments to that post identified three situations when it makes sense to distribute your handout after the presentation. As not everyone wades through comments I’ve decided to highlight them in this post:

1. Surprise

Mike Slater

Personally I don’t like giving out handouts in presentations as there is usually some element of “surprise”. I “reveal” points during the presentation and if the audience had copies of the slides (or even a more detailed handout) in advance the effect is ruined.

Adam Lawrence

We use surprise as one of our main tools in presentations. With a handout – goodbye surprise and the attention boost it guarantees. Put it like this – would you want the full plot and punchline written on the back of your DVD cover?

2. Brainstorming and discussion

Cathy Moore

I use visual slides to set up a dilemma and then have participants brainstorm how to solve the dilemma. Then I reveal slides that show some solutions, and we discuss how those fit in with the solutions we brainstormed. If participants had the handout at the beginning, the brainstorming about dilemmas would be empty, because all the participants would have to do is look at the next few slides and see the suggested answers.

3. Co-creation of presentation

Adam Lawrence

We try to keep our presentations highly flexible, and to follow up on ideas that come from the dialogue with the audience. Any preprepared handout is dated the moment we start.

Instead, we sit down later to produce a handout that reflects the true content of the session, and the folks ideally get it some days afterwards. The advantages:

It doesn’t get lost in the pile of mostly useless paperwork from that conference day or whatever;

It serves to refresh the memory of the session just at the moment it would otherwise be forgotten (ie a few days later); and

As said, it reflects the true content, not the planned content.

Thank you, Cathy, Mike and Adam for your contribution.

Phil Waknell has written an excellent blog post detailing his reasons for distributing handouts after a presentation (it has also many other excellent tips).

Have you got another good reason for distributing handouts after the presentation? Add it in the comments of this post.

Your presentation handout is the lasting concrete manifestation of your presentation. It’s an important part of the total experience for the audience:

But most of us focus on preparing what happens during the presentation, not what happens afterwards. Here are the benefits of having handouts:

Benefits for the presenter

1. They allow you to cut down on the amount of material you cover in your presentation and so not commit information overload.
2. They allow you to stop worrying about forgetting what you want to say.
3. Audience members will have a concrete reminder making your presentation more memorable.
4. Audience members can easily contact you later.

Benefits for audience members

1. They allow audience members to relax about having to note down what you’re saying.
2. If they like taking notes, they’ve got a place to do it.
3. If they’re inspired by your topic, they’ve got more information on it.
4. If they want to refresh themselves later on what you covered they’ve got a place to go.

Tips for Presentation Handouts

1. Prepare your handouts in plenty of time

Don’t leave it till the last moment to create your handout. I’ve been guilty of this. We’re most concerned about the actual presentation and not making a fool of ourselves up on the stage so you work on what you’re going to say and the slides, and then 30 mins before your presentation you realise you should have a handout and hurriedly put something together. Handouts are much too important to be relegated to an afterthought.

2. Don’t just print out your slides

This is lazy and not effective. If your slides are bullet-point slides (not recommended) then they will often be cut-down sentences which will no longer make sense to the reader a week later. And if they are visual slides (recommended) then they’re also unlikely to make sense without additional text. If you’re presenting with visual PowerPoint slides, one of the easiest ways of creating a handout is to type the text of the handout in the “Notes” pane of the PowerPoint edit screen. Then print your slides as “Notes”. You’ll have an effective handout.

3. Ensure your handout reflects your presentation

An audience member should be able to relate the handout to the presentation they’ve just attended. If you use the Notes pane of PowerPoint as I’ve suggested above this will happen naturally as you’ll be guided by the visuals you’re using in the presentation. You handout should have the same title as your presentation and should follow the same structure so that audience members can easily find the information they want.

4. Add more information

Presentations are not a good format for transferring a lot of information. However, they are good for inspiring people to find out more about a topic. That extra information can be in the handout. And if you’re the sort of person who wants to tell the audience everything you know about the topic… you can put it in the handout.

5. Include references

If you’re citing research do include the references in the handout. For most presentations (scientific presentations to a scientific audience would be an exception), don’t clutter up your presentation or your slides with references. But do be able to say: “The reference for this research is in your handout.” Let your audience know where they can find out more: books, websites, blogs etc.

6. Consider creating an action sheet

Handouts are a great place to help people put ideas from your presentation into action. You could either list a series of actions that people can take, or provide a worksheet that people fill in on what actions they will take as a result of your presentation. Have people fill in the action sheet near the end of your presentation.

7. Make your handout stand-alone

The handout may be passed onto people who were not at your presentation. Or an audience member may look at it a year from now when they’ve forgotten most of your presentation. Make sure that it will make sense to them. For people who weren’t present include brief credibility-establishing information about you.

8. Provide white space

Some people like to take notes during a presentation. Provide plenty of white space (or even some blank pages at the back) so that they can take notes on the handout and so keep all the information related to your presentation in one place.

9. Make your handout look professional

The handout is the concrete reminder of your presentation. It may also get passed onto other people who were not at your presentation. So it should enhance the perception people have of you:

• Have someone proofread it
• Create a consistent look and feel with your brand (this may include a logo and colors)

10. Consider what additional resources you can provide for your audience

You’re not limited to paper. My bioethics teacher friend who presents at bioethics and education conferences across the globe provides each of her attendees with a DVD with lesson plans and resources.

11. Consider creating a webpage

Cliff Atkinson suggests creating a “home page” for your presentation in his book The Backchannel. If you don’t have a website, you could create a squidoo lens or a Facebook Fan page. Or if you’d like to do more than that, create a wiki website (try pbworks or wikispaces) or use blog software. Both of these can be done for free and just a little technical courage (techphobics shouldn’t try this). All of these options allow readers to comment on what you’ve written, so it’s a great way of continuing the conversation with audience members. For instance, audience members can ask you questions they weren’t able to ask at the time.

If you decide to go the web way, you can cut down the hard copy handout to one page with the most important points from your presentation, your contact details and the web address.

12. Distribute the handout at the beginning of your presentation

This is a perennial topic of debate amongst presenters. Some people are concerned that if they distribute the handout first, people will stop listening and start leafing through it. The problem here is not the handout, it’s that your presentation is not engaging enough.

Not distributing it till after the presentation suggests that you think you know best how people should pay attention to your information. Let your audience decide for themselves.

Recent research suggests that providing handouts to university students before the lecture does not harm their learning.

Update: In the comments to this post, Cathy Moore, Mike Slater and Adam Lawrence have identified three good reasons for distributing your handout after your presentation. I’ve highlighted these reasons in a new post: Three good reasons to distribute your handout after your presentation.

13. Do tell people if it’s not in the handout

Finally, if you go off on a tangent in reply to a question, do let them know that the answer is not in the handout.

Do you have a fear of missing out something critical from your presentation? This concern can sabotage your presentation in three ways:

1. To alleviate your concern you put everything you want to say on your slides
2. You write a script and read from it.
3. You spend the whole presentation worrying instead of connecting with your audience.

There’s a simple way of dealing with this:

Have only one thing that is really important to say.

And then make it impossible for you to forget to say it.

The one thing that is really important for you to say is called the key message of your presentation. It makes life easier for you because you know there’s only one thing you absolutely have to say and so you’re less concerned about forgetting to say other things. It’s also useful for the audience because there’s only one thing they have to grasp and remember and it provides focus for the presentation.

For help with crafting your key message, see this post: How to craft a memorable key message in 10 minutes.

How to make it impossible not to say it

1. Plan to say your key message several times

Plan to say your key message near the beginning of the presentation, refer back to it in your presentation, and say it at the end. Then if you skip over it by mistake at one point, you’ll be saying it elsewhere, so it won’t matter.

That repetition is also useful for your audience.

2. Put the key message on a slide

Yes, it’s OK to have some words on a slide. And if it’s one of the few slides with words on in your presentation, then it will help people in your audience to remember the words. And if you forget to say your key message, it’s on the slide. So it’s helpful both for you and your audience.

BIG WARNING: This is not an excuse to put everything you want to say on a slide. If you put everything you want to say on a slide, nothing stands out. It no longer works.

What about the rest of your presentation

So yes, there is more to your presentation than the key message. But everything else that you want to say is “nice-to-say” rather than “must-say”. Here are some tips to help you remember what you want to say:

1. Use notes

Notes help you remember what you want to say. If you’re concerned about missing something out, it makes sense to have some notes to keep you on track. I see no shame in having notes. If you have a mind blank, notes are the safety net that can get you started again. For help with constructing your notes see this post: The lost art of notes.

2. Rehearse

Rehearsal is always useful. Rehearse the transitions between your points. This is because you tend to miss something out when you’ve just finished a point and are struggling to think about what comes next.

3. Have a handout

You can let go of worrying about missing something out by having a handout or website to refer people to. If you forget to cover it they can look it up.

Now you can focus on connecting with your audience, rather than be constantly worrying about missing something out.

Waffling happens when your brain stops working but your mouth keeps going.

The solution to waffling is simple: When you have nothing ready to say, stop, look at your notes, work out what you to say, look up again and start talking.

Easy to say. Difficult to do. That’s because when you start waffling, rather than thinking logically about what you should do, you’re driven to keep talking.

The voices that keep you waffling

You’re driven by voices inside your head. They’re saying to you:

“You must keep talking during your presentation. If there’s any silence that would be awful and uncomfortable and you couldn’t stand that.”

“Don’t take your eyes off the audience. You’ve got to keep looking at them all the time.”

“Don’t look at your notes. If you look at your notes people will think you don’t know this stuff. You’ll look like a loser.”

Until you rid yourself of these voices, you’ll keep waffling. So let’s examine each of these voices and see if they’re true.

“You must keep talking. Silence is horrible”

Have you heard the public advice speaking that pausing is good! Hmmm… pausing=silence. Audiences like pausing (silence), because during that pause they can process what you’ve just said. Studies of people listening to classical music while having their brains scanned in MRI machines show that they’re brains light up during the silences between movements. That indicates that they’re brains are actively processing during those silences.

You can probably get this at an intellectual level. But still that silence can feel horrible when you’re standing in front of a group. It feels like the silence is stretching forever. To get over your fear of silence at a gut level, you need to experience the silence from an audience perspective. The way to do that is to video yourself presenting in front of a friendly audience of a few friends or family. Pause until you start feeling uncomfortable. Ask your audience how they experienced the pause. Sometimes they may even say “what pause?” Now watch back your pause. How long was it really?

Practice this until you can pause for about 5 seconds. That’s how long you’ll need to look at your notes and work out what you want to say. That’s what it will take for you to stop waffling.

“Keep an eye on the audience”

As well as stopping talking, you’ll also need to look down to look at your notes. This can be quite hard to do for more than a millisecond. That’s because when you’re speaking in front of a group, you’re in a high-stress situation and the stress is caused by the threat of the group judging you. And when we’re threatened our instinct is to keep an eye on the threat. So to look down for more than a millisecond you have to override your instinct to keep looking at the threat. Practice looking down in front of your friendly audience.

Because that’s what  it takes to stop waffling – taking your eye off the audience so that you can look at your notes.

“Don’t look at your notes”

Yep, in an ideal world, we’d all have a perfect memory and none of us would need notes. But that’s not the case.

You may look at professional speakers, see that they don’t use notes and assume that you shouldn’t either. But politicians have teleprompters and paid professional speakers deliver the same presentation over and over again. Don’t measure yourself against them.

Which is the greater evil? Looking at your notes or waffling? If you want to stop waffling, get used to the idea of looking at your notes. That’s what it will take.

So next time you realize the words aren’t ready and you might start waffling:

1. Stop talking
2. Look down at your notes
3. Work out what you want to say next
4. Look up again and find someone to talk to
5. Start talking.

Easy… once you’ve got rid of those voices.

Photo credit: zoutedrop

Do you regularly go over time when you’re delivering a presentation? If a time limit has been set for your presentation, then it’s your responsibility to finish it within that time. Consider it as part of the contract between you and your audience.

Here are some tips to help you keep to time:

1. Decide on your “talking time”

You can’t keep to time unless you know beforehand how long you should be talking. Your “talking time” is different than the total time you’ve been given for your presentation for two reasons:

• You need to allow time for questions. This may be decided by the meeting organizer. If not, as a rule of thumb I would allow 20-25% of your presentation time for questions.
• Generally, live  presentations take longer than the rehearsal.  This is because of a combination of factors. You might start a couple of minutes late, you might take longer to make a point, and there may be other interruptions that delay you.

So if your presentation time is one hour, your talking time will be 40 minutes (15 minutes for questions and 5 minutes for interruptions and delays).

2. Find out how long it takes to deliver your material

This is a prerequisite to being able to keep to time. If you don’t know long your talk takes how can you hope to meet the time limit. Many presenters are very bad at judging how long it will take to deliver something. Seriously bad. On our courses, we ask participants to prepare a five minute talk. One time, a participant talked for 23 minutes! When we asked how long it was she thought that she had been talking for about seven minutes.

Time yourself early on in your planning process. This will save you time and agony. If you leave timing your presentation till the end of your planning process you’re likely to find that you’ve prepared too much material which will mean you have to edit your presentation. And editing is can be agonizing when you’ve grown attached to your material.

3. Write a timed schedule for your presentation

When you do a final rehearsal, note down the time that each segment takes and then take that information to prepare a timed schedule. So say your presentation started at 3pm your schedule would look like this:

3 pm Opening
3.05 Part 1
3.15 Part 2
3.25 Part 3
3.35 Closing
3.40 Stop talking

That means that during the live presentation, you’ll be able to easily tell whether you’re keeping to time. Note that it’s not enough to know that each part takes 10 minutes. In the presentation itself you won’t have the head space available to calculate whether you’re ahead or behind.

4. Write assertions so that you don’t waffle

Waffling is one of the things that can make a live presentation go longer than the rehearsal. Here’s what can happen: you make your point but the audience looks blank. So you elaborate on it some more, and then some more… and before you know it you’re waffling. The antidote to this is proper planning. During you’re planning, write each point as a full sentence (not a bullet-point) which expresses what you want to get across. You may later reduce this to a keyword or phrase in your notes but you’ll have done the hard thinking required.  It’s much better to do your thinking before, rather than during, the presentation. For more on this see How to avoid waffling.

5. Have a clock or timekeeper

You can’t manage your time unless you can see the time. And you can’t rely on every meeting or conference room having a clock. Have a small, but easily readable, travel clock that you can put on the lectern or even in front of you on the stage. Make sure you can read it at  a distance without your glasses on. There are remotes that also have a countdown timer and that will buzz you at 5 minutes and 2 minutes before the end of your presentation.

6. Start on time

Many presentations go over time simply because they started late. Lisa Braithwaite recently wrote about this issue in her post: You never have as much time as you want. Often that’s because the presenter or meeting organizer has decided to wait for late-comers. Like Lisa, if I’m in control then I’ll start on time. I don’t see why people who have made the effort to be on time should be penalized by having to wait for people who are late.

You may be concerned that people who are late will miss out on crucial information. So don’t start with crucial material. Instead open with a relevant and engaging story which leads into your first main point. The stragglers will come in while you’re telling your story.

7. Be ready to adapt

Despite all your advance preparations you may still run out of time. The solution is not simply to talk faster! Work out ahead of time what segment you will drop if this should happen. Make a note of the first slide number after the dropped segment. By keying in the number of that slide and then pressing ‘Enter’ you will jump straight to that slide. This is much more professional than clicking through your slides. Your audience need never know that you had to edit on the fly.

Go well with keeping to time in your next presentation! If you have any other tips that have helped you keep to time share them in the comments.

Even a newbie at public speaking knows they should make eye contact.

But the term eye contact is rather vague. It can infer just making fleeting “contact” with a person then moving on. Don’t make eye contact – make “eye connection”.  Eye connection means spending time with each person so that person feels like you’re just talking to them. Eye connection has two major benefits:

1. People in your audience will feel that you have genuinely connected with them and that you care about their reaction.
2. Because you’re talking to people as if you were in a one-on-one conversation, you’ll come across as conversational. That makes you easy to listen to and engaging.

Here are my tips on how to make eye connection:

1. See people

A lot of people we work with confess that they don’t really see individual people in their audience. They’re just aware of a blur of faces. If you can relate to this, next time you present, experiment with seeing people. Look at their facial expressions, look for their reactions to what you’re saying. We call this ‘listening to your audience.”

2. Shrink the room

Imagine that the person you’re looking at is the only person in the room. For those few seconds you’re having a one-on-one conversation with just that person. This has two benefits. You’re likely to talk in a more conversational style because you’re drawing on the conversational skills you already have. It may also reduce your nervousness because you’ll no longer feel like you’re talking to this big audience – but just to one person.

3. Find out how long it takes to make genuine eye connection

It can be difficult to judge how much time is enough to make eye connection. And you may be concerned that if you spend too much time with one person they’ll start to feel uncomfortable. To find out how long it takes, gather together a few friends and deliver your presentation. Ask each person to rest their elbow on the table and raise their hand (resting the elbow is so that their arm doesn’t get too tired). Ask them to drop their hand when they feel you’ve made eye connection with them. You’re likely to find that the length of time needed to make that eye connection is longer than you think.

4. Move to another person at an appropriate time

If you carried out the experiment above, you probably found that your friends dropped their hands at the end of your sentences. That’s also an appropriate time to move onto another person. By doing this you’re adding “formatting”. In a written document there’s punctuation, paragraphs, and headings to guide the reader. In a presentation, the presenter adds the formatting by the way they deliver. The movement of your eyes is one way to add verbal formatting.

Note: If you tend to talk in long sentences, you may find that making eye connection with one person for a whole sentence is too long. If that’s the case, move to another person at the end of a phrase. (And work on making your sentences shorter – that will make it easier for your audience to digest what you’re saying.)

5. Look for the reaction

After important points look for the person’s reaction to what you’ve just said. If the person feels like you’ve been talking to them, they’ll nod. People nod when they’ve processed what you’ve just said. “Waiting for the nod” is an effective way of pacing your delivery to the rate at which your audience can take it in.

6. Keep your eyes up at the end

The most powerful time to have your eyes up is at the end of a sentence. Unfortunately, it’s also the time when you’ll be most tempted to drop your eyes so that you can look at your notes. Discipline yourself to keep your eyes up till you’ve finished your sentence, then look down. Look at your notes in silence. When you’re ready to continue, look up, find someone to talk to and then start talking.

7. Don’t be a lighthouse or a tennis umpire

A lighthouse presenter goes systematically around the room. A tennis umpire presenters looks first to the left, then to the right. Mix it up – be random!

8. Respect people who are uncomfortable

Some people in your audience may show that they’re uncomfortable with eye connection by looking away. Different cultures have different norms regarding eye connection. Respect that by spending less eye connection time with them – but don’t ignore them!

Public speaking and presenting are full of silly rules. One such silly rule is that you shouldn’t walk into into the beam of the projector. I disagree – it can be incredibly effective to get in the beam.

Hans Rosling gets in the beam

Why you should get in the beam

1. You show your energy and passion

One of the classic TED videos is Hans Rosling’s 2006 presentation. If you’ve never seen it before, do take the time to watch this amazing presentation:

Can you imagine if Hans Rosling had stood passively by the side of the screen as he explained his statistics? Lifeless! By getting in the beam and physically showing us the statistics, Hans Rosling demonstrated his energy and his passion for his topic and the audience loved it!

Interacting physically with your slides like Hans Rosling gives you a way of demonstrating your passion – and your audiences will love  it too.

2. You can dance with your slides

The slides should not be the wallpaper of your presentation. See your slides as your co-presenter, as your dancing partner – and dance with them. That means you’ll be interacting with them, explaining them, pointing out the key parts to your audience. And yes, you’ll get in the beam. But that’s a much better alternative to standing beside your screen like a lifeless doll.

3. It’s better than using a laser pointer

Some people recommend using a laser pointer. But just because remote mouse manufacturers put laser pointers into their remotes doesn’t mean you should use it. You have to make silly little circles around what you’re pointing to so that people can see it. This is wimpy compared to getting in there and showing people physically. Even when you have a big screen you can do this, as Hans Rosling shows. Mike Pulsifer has written an indepth post on the ineffectiveness of using a  laser pointer.

Tips on getting in the beam

1. Don’t inadvertently get into the beam

There’s one situation when you shouldn’t get in the beam. That’s when you don’t know you’re doing it. It can be very distracting to the audience. Being human beings we start focusing on the silly shadows instead of your wise words.

So be aware of the position of the beam. The closer you are to the projector the more central you can be without getting in the beam:

2. Be aware of blocking the screen from members of the audience

You also have to be aware that depending on where you stand, you may block part of the screen from people in your audience. This has a lot of people become projectionists instead of presenters. They spend all their time to frozen by the side of the screen. But, if your slides are primarily visual (as opposed to text) you don’t have to do this.

When you first show a slide, make sure you stand in a spot where all of the audience can see it. But once the audience has seen your visual, it doesn’t matter if you block part of the slide. The energy and passion you’ll show from interacting with your slides is far more important than not being able to see all of the slide all of the time.

3. Don’t explain your slide to the slide

As you get into explaining the slide, it can be incredibly easy to forget about your audience and direct all your focus to the slide. Look at the slide so that you can point to the right place then as you start your explanation turn back to the audience and talk to them.

So get into that beam, show your passion, explain your slides – your audience will love it.