Best Practices to improve your
public speaking and presentation skills
Hi everyone, thank you for tuning in! In link with my Free tips being released on my Facebook Page, I’d like to share the tips with you, here as well. Feel free to contact me for further elaboration, or follow My Page for more information.
I’m very excited about presenting you with the first of my 4 free communication tips. I hope you find it useful, please feel free to Like, Comment and Share!
Public Speaking and Presentation Skills
When it comes to Public Speaking and doing successful presentations, there are many skills that need to be mastered, such as:
- Building and Establishing Credibility
- Prep of content
- Locale Setup
- The structure of the visual presentation
- The physical sphere, and much more..
FOCUS of today:
The Physical Sphere
Many “new” presenters will often have difficulties with the physical elements of doing a presentation. Where to put your hands, where to look, and how much to move around are merely three of several difficult tasks to master, to deliver a credible, flowing and persuading presentation, that keeps the attention of the audience.
The short answer to these three questions is: where it seems natural, and where you feel at ease. But if it were all so simple, we would all ROCK presentations, and wouldn’t need any tips go help us improve. So if you need a bit of elaboration, please keep reading.
– Where to put your hands:
If you are a natural born Public Speaker and speaking in front of a crowd comes easily to you, you can always use your hands to emphasize your points, in an extension of your natural body language.
To all others, I recommend that you keep your hands together, one on top of the other, in front of you. In this way your hands aren’t flapping around, craving unnecessary attention, and you will naturally gain a more calm bodylanguage, by this simple utilizing this simple trick.
– Where to look:
Look at your audience! Always, as in always, always. If you need to look to your notes, which is sometimes needed when having data heavy information to deliver, a quick glance is ok. Only look to the presentation (board or screen) if there is something that needs underlining or that craves extra attention. Otherwise, look to your audience, gazing into the crowd going from left to right, to underline a sense of interest in every single audience member. Trust me, they will enjoy your presentation more, if they feel connected to you and seen!
– How much to move around:
Here is where grounding and having a Basepoint come into play. Find your basepoint on the floor, maybe even mark it off slightly, so you can see where your “base” is, when moving around on the floor. From here, have a maximum of 2 different “travel points” you can go to, to mix it up a bit, during the presentation. The Base point and the “travel points” prevent you from wandering around the “stage” in a purposeless manner, and give you the opportunity to ground yourself stopping at one of the points.
Practice at home yourself
Find a topic that interest you and prepare a short 2 minute presentation.
Find someone to present it to, be it a friend, family, your neighbours, your dog or even the posters on he wall. Remember to make use of the points above:
1: Placement of your hands
2: Where to look
3: How much to move around
Pro Tip: do the presentation while recording yourself
Watch the recording of yourself, doing the presentation. Practice the simple tips given in this article and record yourself again, after practicing a few times. See if these simple techniques make a difference and please give me feedback about how it worked, or maybe didn’t work.
Thanks for tuning in!
If this article made you curious about me and my work, please feel free to contact me and I’ll be happy to have a virtual coffee with you! Cheers – Sarah
Sarah Andersen Business Optimization 