Delivery

Dress Code

• Clothes which fit well and are not too tight. Check in a mirror that they hang well.
• As crease-resistant as possible.
• Subtle rather than flashy accessories.
• Ensure that accessories will not distract the attention from your presentation.

Making an Impression

The actual delivery of the presentation is not something that one can teach in a book. For most presenters the main problem is to overcome speaker's rigidity: you must often have seen how someone who talks in an animated, interesting and persuasive manner suddenly becomes wooden and monotonous when he/she steps onto the platform. It could be helpful if you think of addressing the audience as a single person. The aim would be to use the same movements of the face, head and body, the same range of vocal pitch and volume, the same gestures, the same pace and pauses as if you are talking to a couple of friends over a drink. You have the character to do this – just remove the barriers that is keeping you form doing it naturally.

Dealing with Nervousness

Everybody gets the “jitters” and some people verge on terminal panic at the prospect of speaking in public. The following suggestions will help you.

• Breathe in – consciously imagine some relaxing scene – breathe out.
• Be yourself and speak from your own convictions.
• Take the perspective that you are going to have a conversation with a few friends. It is the idea of a formal presentation that frightens one most.
• Be prepared – have your materials ready.
• Know your materials well so that you don't have to cling desperately to your notes.
• Take a few steps towards the audience, backwards and side to side.
• Mentally rehearse the layout of the room, walking to the stand, looking at the audience and being relaxed.
• Know your first 4 or 5 sentences by heart.

Opening

• People remember the beginning and the end of a presentation. If you do not open and close with impact, your presentation will slide into the big black hole somewhere in the universe where low-grade presentations go to die. Once your audience has decided it is not worth listening to, it is hard to get them back. Prevention is very much easier than cure.
• Stand a few steps away from the person introducing you, so that you are ready to step up to the podium.
• Hold a silence of a few seconds before starting – it focuses people’s attention on you and gives you time to remember your opening lines.
• Make eye contact straight away and include everyone in the room.
• Control your opening words so that they project at a lower pitch than normal, as compensation for the likelihood that anxiety will raise the pitch of your voice.

Speaking Clearly

Ways of speaking clearly and interestingly include the following aspects:

• Show enthusiasm and energy, varying your voice and looking into the audience’s eyes.
• Try to use a conversational style as if you were talking to people individually.
• Listen to yourself and be aware of how and what you are saying, so that you can self-correct as soon as you notice you have become too slow, or too fast, or too quiet, or too loud, and so on. Check for the natural rise and fall in the tone of your voice – people tend to adopt a strange monotone when anxious.
• If you can hear stress in your voice, pause and relax and slow down your breathing.
• You need to know if the people at the back can hear you – ask them – and then keep up that level of volume.
• Don’t read the audience a paper. Speak to them!
• Avoid physical mannerisms such as touching your ears or scratching your nose.
• Avoid verbal mannerisms such as “the thing is”, “with regard to this”, “ok” …
• Don’t turn away or look down when you speak and as such let your words disappear.
• Do not drop the end of your sentences

Body Language

• Keep in eye contact with the people in the room. This may necessitate looking far to your left or to your right. Eye contact connects you with everyone. You will have noticed in the past how awkward it is to talk to someone wearing very dark or reflective sunglasses. It breaks the communication flow. Allow 1 to 3 seconds of eye contact per person, that is, enough to connect with him or her but not enough to make them feel “picked on”.
• Don’t stand stiffly but allow your hands and body to move in a natural way. Natural hand gestures as you would use in ordinary conversation are equally normal in this situation.
• Also move a few steps forward and backwards, and sideways. Be aware of any cables or other obstacles before doing so! The audience will follow your movements, which will help them to stay focused on what you are saying.
• Gestures need to be natural, appropriate and varied. It is normal behaviour to walk and easily swing your arms at your sides, so do it, since this will relax you. For some reason we become self-conscious of our hands when speaking to an audience, but hand gestures are helpful to involve the audience and to appear relaxed. Variety is however the key, since repetitive motions become noticeable.
• Facial expressions should be genuine and appropriate. Variety and smiles help you and your audience to connect. Smiling also puts more life into your face and eyes. Be aware of distracting mannerisms.
• Speak with emphasis and energy.
• Your voice should have four main qualities:
  • Being loud enough to be heard by the entire audience,
  • Clear and easy to hear.
  • Expressive – support the message that you are transferring.
  • Enjoyable – good to listen to. Speak a little louder than normal. Demand attention by varying volume, tone (pitch) of voice and speaking rate.
• Use pauses to deliberately draw attention to key concepts. Pause to give yourself and the audience time to think about what was said.

Avoid:

• Putting your hands in your pockets
• The handcuffs behind your back
• Crossing your arms
• The fig leaf position
• Language that can offend your audience
• Wringing your hands and cracking your fingers and twisting your rings and clicking your ball pen and jingling your keys.

Answering Questions

• Announce at the beginning when you would like the audience to ask questions – at the end or during the presentation.
• The more the audience has understood, the more questions they will ask. A sure sign that people are still grappling with your ideas is that they are not yet ready to ask questions. This is because they have not yet seen enough of the picture to recognise where the gaps in their understanding lie. Questions, therefore, are a good thing.
• When you listen to questions, look at the person asking it, to grasp more of the issues than just the words (words constitute only 7% of a message). Give the person enough time to finish his question.
• You might find yourself tempted to change your body language when answering questions. Observe whether you have changed from exuding confidence to presenting uncertainty and anxiety and choose which you would prefer to project. Don’t rub your hands together nervously but keep relaxed.
• Remember that, in your preparation, you tried to anticipate what questions might be asked. If you have prepared for the worst, everything else will seem easy.
• If you receive a question which is complicated and confusing, re-state it more simply to check that your intended answer will be on the right track. This process also defuses any hostility which might have been present and gives you more time to get your answer ready.
• If you think people in the back row did not hear the question, repeat it for their benefit. This also gives you more thinking time.
• Be honest. It is perfectly obvious to the audience when you are lying or ducking and diving around an issue. If you don’t know, say so, and state when and how you will supply the information.
• Remember to keep eye contact with everybody and not just with the person who asked the question.