Delivering Your Presentation by Reading It Word-for-word Is Usually a Bad Idea Except When

Chapter 11 Presentation Skills

11.4 Delivering the Presentation

This section focuses on what to practise when presentation day finally arrives. You lot should be well-prepared and well-poised to communicate interpersonally with a live audience.

You will get-go learn well-nigh how to ready to present past taking a deeper look at what you should be doing during rehearsals, and considering how you'll wearing apparel comfortably and professionally and how your setup will proceed you prepared for what is ahead.

Yous volition larn effective approaches to managing anxiety, such as how to cope with your trunk's reaction besides as how to cope with mistakes or surprises that may pop up in the voice communication, with the technology or through some other external distraction.

Having an understanding of how to read your audition for positive or negative cues is of import during and after the presentation. Yous will learn virtually interpreting these cues by scanning the audience's torso language during the presentation and during the Q&A.

Finally, y'all volition take a chance to critically reflect on the delivery of a presentation past learning about how to exercise a self-analysis, also every bit requite and receive constructive verbal and non-verbal feedback.

Preparing to Present

Rehearsing

To deliver your presentation to the all-time of your ability, and to reduce your nerves one time you take the phase, you need to practise by rehearsing. Every bit you lot do, try to place the weaknesses in your delivery to improve on them. For case, exercise you often mis-speak the same words (e.thousand. pacific for specific; ax for ask) or practice your hands or feet fidget? Utilize your practice time to focus on correcting these issues. These sessions should help you lot go comfortable and help you lot remember what you want to say without having to constantly refer to notes.

Attempt practising in front end of a mirror, or even recording yourself speaking to a photographic camera and playing it dorsum. Information technology'south likewise helpful to get feedback from a supportive audience at this stage. Perhaps a few family members or friends could watch you give your presentation and provide some feedback.

If at all possible, access the room where yous volition be presenting. This way you tin become a feel for its setup and decide how you volition stand or move during your presentation.

Dress for Success

While there are no definitive guidelines for how you should apparel for your presentation, your appearance is an important office of your audience'due south first impression. If you lot want them to have you lot seriously, you'll need to look the part. While you don't have to wear a suit each time y'all present, there are some scenarios where this would be expected; for example, if you are presenting to a corporate audience who wear suits to piece of work, you should do the same. Yous should wearing apparel one step above your audience. If your audience is going to exist dressed casually in shorts and jeans, then wear nice coincidental vesture such equally a pair of pressed slacks and a collared shirt or blouse. If your audience is going to exist wearing business concern casual attire, then y'all should wear a dress or a suit. If you are presenting to your instructor and classmates, apparel ameliorate than you unremarkably would in class, to demonstrate you are taking this seriously and you are adding a level of formality.

Some other general rule is to avert distractions in your advent. Vesture with loud colours and bold patterns, overly tight or revealing garments, or big jangling jewellery tin can distract your audience'due south attention from your bulletin.

Setting Up Your Environment

Depending on the circumstances of your speech or presentation, you lot may have some choices to brand near the environment. Possibly you take a choice of meeting rooms that you can apply, or mayhap you accept only one selection.

If you have some flexibility, it is helpful to call up near what sort of environment would best help you get your bulletin beyond. For case, if you are running a workshop, you might desire to assemble participants in a circle to encourage collaboration and discussion. If you are holding a webinar, you'll need a quiet location with a strong net connection and a computer system. It is imperative that you recall almost what facilities you demand well before the twenty-four hour period of your presentation arrives. You may have to volume equipment or classrooms. Arriving to find that the equipment you expected isn't available is not a overnice surprise for even the almost experienced speaker!

If you take access to the location beforehand, y'all may need to move tables or chairs effectually to get things only the style you want them. You lot might choose to have a podium brought in, if you are aiming for a formal feel, for case, or you may demand to position your flip chart. Double check that yous take all the equipment you demand, from whiteboard markers to speakers. It is far ameliorate if you can become comfortable with the room before your audience arrives, equally this will make you experience more prepared and less nervous.

If you are using technology to back up your presentation (i.e. PowerPoint slides or a projector), test everything before you begin. Do a microphone cheque and exam its book, view your slides on the reckoner you volition be using, check whatsoever web links, play videos to test their sound, or make a call to test the telephone connection prior to your teleconference. Your audience volition get restless quickly if they go far and are expected to wait while you fix a technical problem. This will also make you seem disorganized and injure your credibility as an authoritative speaker.

Contingency Planning

Well before the day of your presentation, ask yourself, What could go wrong? This might audio similar a way for a novice presenter to stress oneself out, but it can actually be very helpful. If yous anticipate the worst-case scenario and are prepared for it, problems on the day of your presentation are less likely to bother yous.

Many of the possible bug can be avoided with preparation. Brand sure yous accept notes with you in instance you demand them. Dress professionally so that y'all experience good near how you are presenting yourself. Getting there early on to fix upward and test the equipment volition forbid many technical issues, simply having a handout with you volition brand you feel even more than comfortable in instance you accept problems with your slides. Bring a canteen of water in case your throat becomes dry or yous need a moment to pause.

Most other issues can be prevented with practice. Rehearse so that you are not reliant on your notes. This way, if a annotation menu goes missing, information technology's no big bargain. During your rehearsals you'll get used to pacing yourself, pausing for jiff, and monitoring the timing of your speech so that this comes more naturally once you lot go onstage.

During the Presentation

Managing Anxiety

Studies show that presenters' nervousness usually peaks at the anticipation phase that occurs one minute earlier the presentation. They farther found that as the spoken language progresses, nervousness tends to go down. Hither are some things you tin exercise to help you manage your anxiety earlier the presentation:

Do/rehearse in similar conditions/setting as your speech
Be organized
Think positively
Analyze your audience
Adapt your language to speaking style

During the presentation itself, there are four chief areas where you can focus attention in gild to manage your anxiety:

Your body's reaction
Attention to the audience
Keeping a sense of humour
Mutual stress management techniques

Your Torso'due south Reaction

Concrete motion helps to channel some of the excess free energy that your body produces in response to anxiety. If at all possible, move around the front of the room rather than remaining imprisoned behind the lectern or gripping it for love life (avoid pacing nervously from side to side, nonetheless). Move closer to the audience and then stop for a moment. If y'all are afraid that moving away from the lectern will reveal your shaking hands, apply note cards rather than a sheet of newspaper for your outline. Note cards practice not quiver like paper, and they provide you with something to do with your easily. Other options include vocal warm-ups right before your spoken language, having water (preferably in a not-spillable bottle with a spout) nearby for a dry out mouth, and doing a few stretches before going on stage.

Deep animate will help to counteract the effects of excess adrenaline. Y'all can place cues or symbols in your notes, such as "dull downwards" or ☺, that remind you to suspension and breathe during points in your speech. Information technology is also a good idea to interruption a moment before you go started, to set up an appropriate stride from the onset. Look at your audience and smile. It is a reflex for some of your audition members to grin back. Those smiles will reassure you lot that your audience members are friendly.

Attention to the Audience

During your speech, make a point of establishing straight center contact with your audience members. Past looking at individuals, y'all establish a series of i-to-one contacts like to interpersonal communication. An audience becomes much less threatening when you think of them not as an anonymous mass but as a drove of individuals.

A admirer once shared his worst speaking experience: Right earlier the outset of his spoken communication, he reached the front end of the room and forgot everything he was supposed to say. When asked what he saw when he was in the front of the room, he gave a quizzical wait and responded, "I didn't see anything. All I remember is a mental image of me upward there in the forepart of the room blowing it." Speaking feet becomes more intense if you focus on yourself rather than concentrate on your audience and your material.

Keeping a Sense of Humour

No matter how well we plan, unexpected things happen. That fact is what makes the public speaking situation so interesting. When the unexpected happens to you, do non let it rattle you. At the finish of a grade period late in the afternoon of a long 24-hour interval, a student raised her hand and asked the professor if he knew that he was wearing two dissimilar-coloured shoes, one black and 1 blueish. He looked downward and saw that she was right; his shoes did not match. He laughed at himself, complimented the student on her observational abilities, and moved on with the of import matter, the material he had to evangelize. People who tin can laugh at themselves often endear themselves to their audience.

Stress Direction Techniques

Even when we use positive thinking and are well prepared, some of us still feel a great bargain of anxiety about public speaking. When that is the case, it tin can be more helpful to use stress direction than to try to make the anxiety go away.

Here are 2 primary tools that can help:

Visualization: Imagine the details of what a successful speech would look and sound like from beginning to finish; a way of hypnotizing yourself into positive thinking past using your mind'south middle to make success real.
Systematic desensitization: Gradual exposure to the thing that causes fear—in this case, giving a speech—can ultimately lead to decreased anxiety. Basically, the more practise you get speaking in front of people, the less fear and feet y'all'll have nearly public speaking. Organizations like Toastmasters, that assist people face their fears past providing a supportive environment to learn and practise, are a good choice if you have a truthful phobia around presenting or public speaking.

Using a Microphone

Conditions such as the size of the room and how far away your audience volition be sitting should determine whether or not yous need a microphone. Many people make the fault of thinking they don't need a mic because they tin can talk loud enough for everyone to hear. They are unremarkably incorrect. Unless the crowd is very pocket-size, it benefits y'all to employ a microphone. If is very frustrating for people to be watching a presentation that they tin can't hear.

If y'all are using a microphone during your oral communication, there are a few cautions to exist aware of. First, make sure you practice a audio cheque and that you know how the microphone works—how to turn information technology on and off, how to mute it, and how to raise or lower it. If possible, take it positioned to the top you lot demand before you get onstage. Make certain the microphone does not block your face up.

Make certain to find the optimum distance from the microphone to your mouth. This volition vary with different sound equipment. For some, the mic needs to be right up against the mouth to become good sound quality. For others, this will cause screeching feedback or will selection upwards your breathing noises. If you will be using a prune-on microphone (called a lavaliere mic), you'll need to wear something with a lapel or collar that it can be clipped to. Brand certain your hair and jewelery are out of the way to avoid rustling noises, and place the lavaliere microphone viii to ten inches below your chin.

If the microphone is on a stand, brand sure it is set to the advisable acme. If it is set besides high, it is distracting to the audition and if it's as well short, it will crusade y'all to hunch over it, creating bad posture and an uncomfortable position. Often you tin can take the mic off the stand and employ it every bit a handheld model, which allows you to move effectually a niggling more. Doing a sound check and getting comfortable with the equipment before you lot go onstage volition forbid the majority of errors when using a microphone.

Coping with Mistakes and Surprises

Even the most prepared speaker will encounter unexpected challenges from time to time. Hither are a few strategies for combating the unexpected in your own presentations.

Speech Content Issues

What if a note card goes missing or you skip of import information from the beginning of your speech? While situations similar these might seem like the worst nightmare of a novice public speaker, they can be overcome easily. Pause for a moment to think about what to do. Is it of import to include the missing information, or tin can it be omitted without hindering the audience's ability to empathise your voice communication? If it needs to be included, does the information fit better now or in a subsequently segment? If you tin move on without the missing chemical element, that is often the best selection, but pausing for a few seconds to determine will be less distracting to the audience than sputtering through a few "ums" and "uhs." Situations like these demonstrate why information technology's a adept idea to have a glass of water with y'all when y'all speak. Pausing for a moment to take a sip of water is a perfectly natural movement, and then the audience may not fifty-fifty notice that anything is amiss.

Technical Difficulties

Technology has go a very useful assistance in public speaking, allowing us to employ sound or video clips, presentation software, or directly links to websites. But it does break downward occasionally! Web servers go offline, files will not download, or media contents are incompatible with the computer in the presentation room. Always have a backup plan in case of technical difficulties. As you develop your speech and visual aids, think through what yous will do if you lot cannot show a particular graph or if your presentation slides are garbled. Your beautifully prepared chart may be superior to the verbal description you can provide; however, your ability to provide a succinct exact description when technology fails will give your audience the information they need and proceed your speech moving forward.

External Distractions

Unfortunately, i matter that you can't control during your speech is audience etiquette, merely yous tin decide how to react to information technology. Inevitably, an audience member will walk in tardily, a cell phone will band, or a automobile alarm will get off outside. If you are interrupted by external events similar these, it is often useful and sometimes necessary to pause and wait so that you can regain the audience'due south attention.

Whatever the effect, maintain your composure. Exercise not get upset or angry about these glitches. If you go on your cool and quickly implement a "programme B" for moving frontward, your audience will be impressed.

Reading Your Audience

Recognizing your audition's mood by observing their torso language can help yous adjust your message and see who agrees with y'all, who doesn't, and who is still deciding. With this information, you can straight your attention—including eye contact and questions—to the areas of the room where they tin can take the near impact.

Every bit the speaker, you are conscious that you are being observed. Merely your audience members probably don't remember of themselves equally being observed, then their body language volition exist easy to read.

Questions and Discussion

Every bit a presenter, it's a good idea to allow a little time at the end of your presentation to invite questions from the audience and to facilitate a petty discussion about the topic. If possible and applicable y'all can include a chip of interactivity with the audience during the presentation. This goes a long fashion to getting the audition engaged and interested in the topic.

There are three important elements to recollect virtually when incorporating Q&A's as part of your presentation:

Audience Expectations

At the first of your voice communication, give the audition a piffling bit of information nearly who you are and what your expertise on the bailiwick is. Once they know what you do (and what you know), it will be easier for the audience to align their questions with your surface area of expertise—and for you to bow out of answering questions that are outside of your surface area.

Timing of Q&A'southward

Questions are easier to manage when yous are expecting them. Unless yous are part of a panel, coming together, or teleconference, it is probably easier to let the audition know that you will have questions at the cease of your presentation. This way you can avoid interruptions to your speech that tin distract you and cause yous to lose time. If audience members interrupt during your talk, you can then ask them politely to hold on to their question until the Q&A session at the finish.

Knowing How to Respond

Never pretend that yous know the answer to a question if you don't. The audience will option upward on it! Instead, calmly apologize and say that the question is outside of the scope of your knowledge but that you lot'd be happy to observe out subsequently the presentation (or, suggest some resources where the person could discover out for themselves).

If you lot are uncertain near how to answer a question, say something like "That'due south really interesting. Could yous elaborate on that?" This will make the audience member feel skilful because they have asked an interesting question, and it volition give you a moment to comprehend what they are asking.

Sometimes presenters rush to answer a question considering they are nervous or want to impress. Break for a moment, before you begin your answer, to think about what you want to say. This volition assist you to avoid misinterpreting the question, or taking offense to a question that is not intended that way.

A final tip is to be cautious virtually how you respond, so that you don't offend your audience. You lot are presenting on a topic considering you are knowledgeable almost it, only your audience is non. Information technology is important not to make the audience experience inferior considering there are things that they don't know. Avoid comments such as "Oh, aye, it's really easy to do that…" Instead, say something similar "Yes, that tin be catchy. I would recommend…" Also, avoid a bossy tone. For example, phrase your response with "What I find helpful is…" rather than "What you should do is…"

Critiquing a Presentation

Cocky-Analysis

It is ofttimes said that we are our own worst critic. Many people are hard on themselves and may exaggerate how poorly a speech or presentation went. Other times, there'south not much exaggeration. In both cases it helps to examine your performance equally presenter afterwards the presentation.

You may want to ask yourself:

Did yous brand the most of your unique vocalization? Did the audience seem to understand y'all?
Did you lot make the most of using body linguistic communication? Did your trunk confidently back up what y'all were saying?
Did you lot use a coherent structure? Did the audition seem to make sense of your presentation? Was it logical?
Did you show enthusiasm? Did y'all show the audience you cared about your presentation?
Did you demonstrate expertise? Did you show your credibility by citing reliable sources and making a distinction between facts and your opinion?
Did y'all show that you practised and prepared? Did your confidence evidence because you implemented a programme that included sufficient rehearsal, contingency plans, and other success strategies?

Honestly request yourself these questions with the intention of uncovering your strengths and weaknesses should help you to get a improve presenter. While it is important to review other kinds of feedback, whether from the audience, your peers, or an instructor, it is also useful to have a realistic understanding of your own operation. This understanding is function of gaining experience and improving equally a presenter.

Feedback from Others

Besides as doing some cocky-analysis, it is a proficient idea to get feedback from others. If your presentation was for your class, yous will likely get feedback from your instructor who is marking yous. Y'all may likewise become some feedback from classmates. It would also be wise to ask someone that you trust, who was in the audition, to requite you feedback. You tin can acquire a lot from what others tell you. They may have noticed a distracting habit such every bit twirling your hair, or putting your hands in your pockets, or a lot of ummms. They may likewise have noticed some real strengths of your presentation that you may not accept considered. Whether the comments are positive or constructive criticism, they can be helpful for focusing on, in your next presentation.

Receiving Feedback

Beingness open to receiving feedback is the only way to accept a improve moving-picture show of your performance equally a presenter or speaker. Combining self-analysis with the feedback of your audience or peers is your opportunity to better understand your strengths equally a presenter and what resonated well with your audience.

When receiving and making sense of feedback, it is very important to be cocky-aware and honest with yourself. This honesty will help you lot distinguish between an ecology situation, a state of affairs that lies with the audience member, or a state of affairs with the presenter.

Summary

In this section y'all learned most useful tools, such as rehearsing, dressing appropriately, and having a contingency plan, that helps you lot fix to present to a live audience. You examined approaches that would be useful during the presentation itself, such as keeping a good sense of humour and focusing your attention on your audition to manage anxiety, and what steps to take for a critical review afterwards to close the feedback loop.

Preparing to nowadays includes rehearsing, deciding what to wear, how to fix upwardly the environment, and making an appropriate contingency programme.
Keeping attention on your audience, a skilful sense of humour, and knowing stress management techniques are good ways of managing feet.
Mistakes or surprises can happen with the speech communication, the engineering, or through external distractions.
To effectively critique a presentation, it'due south good to balance self-analysis with effective feedback from others.

Why should you apparel appropriately for the occasion at which y'all are speaking?
1. To give the audience conviction in your abilities
2. To show that you are easy-going and outgoing
3. To play upward your physical attractiveness
4. All of the to a higher place
While managing a Q&A session following his presentation, Eric finds himself unable to answer a question posed by i of the audition members. Which of the following tactics should Eric take to maintain control of the session?
1. Improvise and make upward an answer
2. Commit to provide a more thorough answer at a later time
3. Spend pregnant time on the question before responding
4. Become hostile and defensive
Starting a presentation with a joke is a good technique for whatsoever presentation and presenter.
1. True
2. False
Making mistakes in a presentation mean that the presenter "blew it."
1. True
2. False
The natural state of the audience is empathy, non contempt. They generally desire the presenter to succeed.
1. True
2. Fake
If you lot write out your presentation word for word and memorize information technology, you lot're gold.
1. True
2. False
The audience will ever be able to tell when the presenter is nervous.
1. True
2. Faux