Kaizen Tip: All the World's a Stage

This week’s tip comes to you from Steve Marriott of Kaizen Training and is dedicated to everyone who gets that feeling of dread when having to prepare or deliver a presentation.

Is it always the same...that creeping chill of dread, that washing-machine feeling in your stomach, your mind going blank? And all at the thought of ‘doing a presentation’?

Well read on - help is at hand with my top five tips for fantastic presentations!

First let’s put presenting into context. We’re all aware of the New York Times study of greatest fears in which death came third to walking into a room of strangers and speaking in public. Let’s reframe this in a more helpful way.

Meeting strangers – every bar and restaurant, every waiting room, every street is a ‘room’ full of strangers and most of us cope pretty well with that on a daily basis.

Speaking in public – Unless you’ve pioneered telepathy, then all the speaking you do can be said to be ‘public’, the difference is just in how many people you want to listen.

“Oh, but presentations are different!” I hear you say. Well I guess to a point they are, in so much as they are planned and orchestrated to a greater or lesser degree. To quote Stephen Bayley from his fabulous guide to presenting – Life’s A Pitch:

“Never underestimate the significance of the normal everyday encounters. If they shape how people see you – and they do – they carry all of the power of a presentation even though they don’t carry the name.”

Now, when you consider that your every meeting, phone call and conversation is a potential presentation, the world very quickly becomes your stage!

So here are my Top 5 tips for presenting yourself at your best

Make time to prepare – Only on rare occasions will spontaneity win the day – always better to give time to gathering data, planning your presentation and practicing. Even the most natural looking presentations often disguise hours or days of rehearsal.

Think Outcomes – All presenting is about making decisions. Whether you’re presenting yourself, an idea or a product, you’re primarily asking your audience to buy in to you, your idea or your product. In order for them to say ‘yes’ to you - what must they think and feel about you?

Get Confident – As any reader of our tips or participant on our workshops will know, Confidence is just a state. As such it’s no longer something you either have or don't have, it’s something you do or don't do. What is true is if you’re not confident, your audience won’t feel confident in you and if they have no confidence in you, then there’s no way they can have confidence in whatever you’re presenting.

Get happy – How different would you look and act if you were delighted to be there and delighted everyone else was there too? How might this affect your whole delivery and how you react to and answer questions from your audience?

Keep it simple – Time and time again, a great idea can undermine itself by being overcomplicated. Often this is the result of us wanting to pack ALL of our expertise into one tiny segment of time. Remain fixed on your outcomes and put yourself in the shoes of your audience. Decide the 3 - 5 key things they must know to enable them to make a decision to ‘buy’ and stick to them. This is the same for your script – the best way to not forget your script is to not have one in the first place!

Want to learn more?

Check out our Presenting with Punch, Presence and Power workshops.  Next open workshop is scheduled for 14 - 15 October 2008.  See our website www.kaizen-training.com for more details.

For further reading, contact me at Steve@kaizen-training.com  for tips 6-10 and 11-15.

Also read Life’s A Pitch by Stephen Bayley and Roger Mavity