Jacqueline Farrington - The Non-Obvious Guide to Better Presentations

How to Present Like a Pro (Virtually or in Person)

BY JACQUELINE FARRINGTON

Copyright 2022 by Jacqueline Farrington

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except in the context of reviews.

Ideapress Publishing | www.ideapresspublishing.com

Published in the United States by Ideapress Publishing.

All trademarks are the property of their respective companies.

Cover Design by Victoria Kim

Illustrations by Dan T. Walsh

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-1-64687-046-2

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Non-Obvious is a registered trademark of the Influential Marketing Group.

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DEDICATION

To all the brave souls who dare open their mouths on stage or in front of a web camera

Read this book to learn how to imagine, create, and deliver captivating presentations in person or virtually by using the same proven techniques practiced by renowned actors, persuasive leaders, and popular TED speakers.

If you picked up this book, you are not a dummy.

Many business guides treat you like an idiot. Some even say so on the cover. This is not one of those books.

All Non-Obvious Guides focus on sharing advice that you havent heard before. Lots of advice on speaking is either obvious (just breathe!) or clich (imagine your audience naked!). In this valuable guide, Jacqueline uses her years of experience as a trained actor to break down exactly how to be more persuasive from the stage or over a webcam.

Using the same encouraging style that makes her such a popular speaking coach, Jacqueline breaks down the sometimes intimidating task of crafting and delivering a great talk into actionable steps with immediately useful advice along the way. You will be a more compelling speaker after reading this book.

ROHIT BHARGAVA

Founder, Non-Obvious Guides

2x TEDx Speaker + Keynote Speaker at 300+ Events

Throughout this book, you will find links to helpful guides and resources online.

FOR ONLINE RESOURCES, VISIT:
www.nonobvious.com/guides/betterpresentations

Referenced in the book, you will also see these symbols that refer to content that will further your learning.

FOLLOW THE ICONS

TEMPLATES
One-page templates to help explain concepts

DOWNLOADS
Excerpts or useful further reading

TUTORIALS
Detailed lessons on how to do a task

VIDEOS
Videos to watch online

CHAPTER SUMMARY
Key takeaways and important points

In this book, you will learn how to

• Start with strategic presence.
• Align your content, body language, and voice.
• Build inclusion with your audience.
• Rehearse with and without the equipment.
• Effortlessly present with other speakers.
• Make grooming, wardrobe, and background choices.
• Break away from expected presentation formulas.
• Handle the situation when everything goes wrong.
• Manage challenging, surprising, or annoying questions with finesse.
• Use expression in your voice to make your content come alive.
• Use improvisation to think on your feet.

Public speaking can feel like a one-way form of communication, a simple transfer of information from the presenter to the audience. But speaking is actually a two-way interactionand because the stakes are higher than just sitting around your dining room table after dinner with a glass of wine, its an elevated form of conversation. Its a performance.

It requires engagement: inspiring a team to buy into a major organizational change, convincing potential funders to back your new business idea, shifting a companys diversity and inclusion efforts.

Whether a talk is delivered in person or in a virtual setting, the audience wants to be captivated, moved, inspired, persuaded, educated, and sometimes even challenged. And the best talkssuch as Martin Luther King Jr.s I Have a Dream speech or Franklin Roosevelts fireside chatsspark emotion within us. That emotion imprints memories and ideas in our brainsand it changes our behavior, inspires us to action, and can even change the world. I learned this at a young age from a family story I heard many times growing up.

My great-uncle Johnny was one of the 15 million Americans who were unemployed during the Great Depression. For years, he couldnt find a job, so he wrote a letter to then President Franklin Roosevelt asking for one.

FDRs fireside chats made Americans feel like they knew the president and he knew them. After each address, hed receive millions of letters from people who felt personally connected to him. (Coincidentally, soon after sending the letter, my uncle had a job offer.)