Laskowski - Painless presentations: the proven, stress-free way to successful public speaking

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Copyright 2012 by Lenny Laskowski. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Delivering a presentation is one of the greatest fears of many people. It does not matter if you are a business professional, a student, a member of the cloth, a teacher, or a politicianpreparing and delivering a presentation can be a painful process. Being asked to deliver a presentation brings back bad memories from our early school years when we had to deliver our first oral book report. Many of us were told to pick a book, read it, and prepare an oral book report without being given any guidance. We had no structure or idea how to prepare for this life-changing event.

That event was one of the most frightening events in many peoples lives, and many of you probably still remember the sweaty palms, the nervousness, and the butterflies in your stomach. That fear, more commonly known as speaking anxiety, can stay with you an entire lifetime, unless you are taught how to overcome these fears. Painless Presentations: The Proven Stress-Free Way to Successful Public Speaking provides the tools and techniques to help you learn how to reduce your speaking anxiety and deliver a more stress-free presentation.

To be a successful speaker, one needs to learn and understand many aspects of a presentation. This chapter will discuss these seven aspects. An effective speaker learns to deal with all these aspects at the same time. The seven aspects are as follows:

The following pages discuss these important aspects and how they relate to making an effective presentation.

One of the key components of the act of public speaking is the speaker, the source of the message. Several factors should be addressed about any speaker. As a speaker, you need to understand what your motivation is in giving your presentation. Is your motivation to inform people? Is your motivation to convince people? Is your motivation unclear to you?

Before you develop and deliver your presentation, you need to understand what motivates you. At least two factors affect your motivation:

• Are you motivated by direct personal rewards (e.g., money) or indirect rewards (e.g., feeling good about helping others)?
• Are you motivated by immediate rewards (e.g., money today) or delayed rewards (e.g., establishing a broader client base by professional exposure)?

The most important motivation of all is to teach, help, and inspire your audience. You will not become a great speaker unless you are motivated.

Your ideas are accepted only to the degree that you are perceived as being credible. Your credibility rests on your trustworthiness, your competence, and your goodwill. You need to be well organized to be considered credible.

It is a known fact that a speaker who is attractive and dynamic will be perceived as more credible than a speaker who is undistinguished and dull.

The most fundamental attitude you can project is a true caring for your audience. Your audience needs to believe you really care about them.

Your delivery, the way your message is presented, should complement your presentation or speechs objective. It is often said, Its not what you said, but how you said it. A poorly delivered presentation can be the result of many factors. Unfortunately, many presenters do not practice their delivery prior to the actual presentation. If you practice delivering your presentation at least once, you will be doing more than 80 percent of most presenters today.

When you practice your delivery, you should always record yourself so that you can later watch it. There is no excuse for anyone not having the ability to record his or her presentation. Video cameras today are very small, easy to use, and inexpensive. In addition to digital movie cameras, there are also video recording options available on Flip cameras, smartphones, and digital cameras. It is in your best interest to use these tools to help you improve your presentations.

The message is found in everything you say or do in other words, in all that is communicated, both verbally and nonverbally. The verbal component of your presentation can be analyzed in terms of three basic elements:

Lets take a look at each of these elements.

The content is what you say about your topic. The content is the meat of your speech or presentation. When developing the content for your presentation, you need to research the topic very thoroughly. Collect as much information as you can during your preparation. Gather more material than you think you may need.