presentations

How to engage audiences

We all get nervous..

The best way to avoid speaker anxiety is to know your material. And the best way to know your material is to practise. This means you can't cut and paste a few slides the day before the presentation. You need to plan; prepare and rehearse.

The way we speak is quite different to the way we write. We speak with shorter sentences and a more conversational flow. So there's really nothing to be gained by silently reading your presentation on a computer. Go to a quiet room or office and practise aloud. You'll soon discover which parts need to be changed or refinded.

Most corporate speakers rely on PowerPoint. This can be a useful and effective tool. But far too many people abuse it. They treat PowerPoint like autocue. There's nothing worse than reading slides back to an audience. This is their number one pet hate of your colleagues. (Tiny fonts and excessive text are numbers two and three.)

The best way to avoid too many words on screen is to use a little-known tool called Presenter View.