From the category archives:

Delivery

How to give a great presentation the hundredth time

August 28, 2008

I recently heard New York choreographer Mark Morris being interviewed on the radio. He talked about making a dance performance fresh and exciting – however much it’s been rehearsed and performed. What he said is particularly relevant to presenters who present the same information over and over again. In my work running presentation skills courses, [...]

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How to create authenticity – the inside-out approach

July 18, 2008

Be authentic, be yourself – that’s the advice of most public speaking and presentation experts. But what if your authentic self is not a particularly engaging presenter? And can you coach someone else to be a more engaging presenter and authentic at the same time? The wrong way – focus on the outside The wrong [...]

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You can learn to be a better presenter

July 14, 2008

Barack Obama is well-known for his speaking skills. But it was not always that way. Here are some comments on Barack Obama from his early days in politics: From Time magazine: [Obama's] delivery was stiff and professorial–”more Harvard than Chicago,” said an adviser who had watched Obama put a church audience to sleep. From Chicago [...]

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Business presentations – don’t take performance too far

July 12, 2008

Is a business presentation like a performance? I believe we often take the comparison too far. Garr Reynolds has often noted that the similarities between the presenting and performing and in a post on Benjamin Zander, comments: We often talk about presentations being conversations, which is what I believe they are. But they almost always [...]

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Are you missing out on half the power of your PowerPoint slides?

July 3, 2008

If you use your PowerPoint slides as your notes, you’re missing out on half the power of your slides. To make the most of them, dance with your slides. Dancing with the slides means that you and your slides are partners in creating the presentation experience for your audience. Sometimes you will be doing the talking, [...]

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The three benefits of gesturing – it’s not what you think

June 20, 2008

Why is it, that when you’re speaking in front of a group you suddenly become aware of these great clumsy appendages at the end of your arms – your hands? Why do you suddenly wonder what to do about them? Gesturing is natural In normal one-to-one conversation you never think “What shall I do with [...]

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Unlearning presenting

May 1, 2008

In my last post I wrote about conversational presenting. Conversational presenting builds on the skills most of us already have and use in normal day-to-day conversations. But for many of us, conversational presenting is hard. That used to be the case for me. I was in Toastmasters for many years and developed a formal style [...]

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Conversational Presenting

April 30, 2008

It’s easier to listen to somebody when they’re speaking in a conversational manner. This is intuitive but also backed up by research by Richard Mayer and others (there’s a nice summary of the research at the Creating Passionate Users blog). Research by Mayer showed that people learnt more when a computer-based educational game was conversational in [...]

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How to avoid waffling

April 29, 2008

Many people are concerned that they might start to waffle when they’re presenting. Waffling happens for two reasons: You haven’t prepared enough or in the right way so you’re not really sure what you want to say. You prepared your material, but your notes aren’t any help or you forget to look at them and [...]