What if you could fall in love with presenting?
If this sounds like an impossible dream – 4D are here to help. We love presenting and more than that – we love to help other people fall in love with presenting.
If you hate public speaking, if you avoid presenting and if you spend hours stressed or anxious when prepping presentations – don’t panic. This is perfectly normal and you are not alone.
Even a great like Winston Churchill suffered with it. He apparently froze stiff for 3 entire minutes when he stood up to speak as a new member of parliament.
Yet recent research shows that 70% of people believe that great presentation and public speaking skills are critical to career success.
At 4D, we think the other 30% may need to catch up and get on board! Because for us, outstanding communication skills are 100% critical to career success.
Having great presentation skills and being a public speaker who is confident, clear and captivating is vital in leadership and in life.
All of us at 4D love helping leaders and teams go from fearing public speaking to genuinely enjoying it. Even to loving it. We know all the worries, stressors and challenges of presenting and over the next few weeks we will be giving you some insights into the fabulous treasure trove of 4D presentation skills tools – to help you make your presentations easy, engaging and enjoyable.
As Churchill himself learned – becoming masterful at public speaking is easy when you prepare well and follow a few simple and powerful techniques. So, whether you don’t like presenting, whether you avoid it like the plague or whether you are simply one of the 75% of people who know they could improve their presentation skills….don’t worry…4D is here to help. We are going to look at some simple 4D secrets to take you and your presentation skills from anxious to awesome, from boring to brilliant and from fear-filled to fabulous.
Over the next few weeks, we’re going to explore how you can:
- Make it easy
- Make it engaging
- Make it enjoyable
This week, lets explore how you can…
Make it Easy
Here are 2 ways to make crafting and learning your presentation much easier and less stressful.
Step 1: Simple structure
The first step to success is to make your presentations easy to remember and easy for your audience to digest. This is all about simple structure. This means creating a clear pathway that captivates your audience, navigates them through your message and makes your key points memorable. Remember, your job as a presenter is to keep your audience Awake, Engaged and only then Informed. There’s no point flooding your audience with endless details and information. They will only be disengaged, confused or overwhelmed. While you will be flooded with anxiety trying to remember all those endless facts.
Here is a quick and easy version of our full 4D presentation structure. Rather than ABC…think AB3.
A – Attention: Before you do anything, grab your audience’s attention. They will not even HEAR your key message if they are not paying attention. Surprise them, ask a question, wow them with a headline, intrigue them with a shocking statistic….
B – Benefit: Now you have your audience’s attention, tell them the benefit of listening to you. What’s in it for them? Don’t leave this till the end of your talk. Tell them right up front what you are going to give them. Why they should keep listening. Is it money? Opportunity? Insights? New research? An exciting future plan? Health benefits? How will their lives be better by listening to you?
3 – By grabbing your audience’s attention and telling them the benefit of listening to you – they are awake and engaged. Now you can ‘inform’ them by giving them your key 3 messages, requests or pieces of information. Give your audience those three and ONLY those three, clearly numbered 1, 2 ,3. The human brain loves a three-stage structure. Like past-present-future or beginning-middle-end, or good-better-best, or individual-team-company. Three is the magic number and your audience has a chance of remembering three messages. They will never remember ten!
Tip:
Start every presentation with an Attention Grabber and then the Benefit for your audience. Only then go onto your core messages. And no more than 3 core messages – your audience will never remember more than 3!
Step 2: Practice and Prep
Stop fiddling with your script!!!!
So many people spend all their presentation prep time writing and perfecting a script. Then the script becomes the master, and you are merely its servant.
Instead, sketch your key points and then… get up on your feet! Move your body, talk it through, riff it, play with it, get it wrong, improvise around key bullet points, move about the space, imagine you are trying to engage a class of 10 yr olds. Get your presentation in your body! This is going to serve you and your audience when it comes to the day. Too many leaders prepare their presentations on the page and on slides and then their whole task is to try to remember a script. This is what leads to SO much anxiety. Your body memory is incredibly powerful when it comes to remembering things. In fact, you have more pathways going from your body to your brain than from your brain to your body. So, all the time you are sitting still trying to get your brain to remember words you are choosing the harder path. Try getting your body to remind your brain what to do and say – your body will do a lot of the remembering for you!
According to research
“…the body influences the mind just as the mind influences the body… One particularly interesting facet of the idea that our body can affect cognition is the influence of actions, gestures, and exercise on memory performance: the hypothesis is that our physical movements…can affect our ability to remember.”
Get off the sofa, off the computer, off the page and get that speech into your body. Again and again. So that preparing and rehearsing your presentation is more like doing reps at the gym than sitting writing a book.
Tip:
Think muscle memory not script memory. Get up and spend at least 50% of your prep time up on your feet rehearsing and delivering the presentation not just writing it.
Great presentations start with simplicity. By structuring your content and practising intentionally, you’ll ease the burden on your memory and reduce stress. The key? Focus on the essentials and bring your ideas to life through your delivery.
Ready to take the next step? Stay tuned for our next article, where we’ll reveal how to make your presentations engaging and truly unforgettable.
Have fun with these 4D tools and tips and try something new in your next presentation.
Don’t make it right – make it easy, engaging and enjoyable! For yourself and for your audience. You can do it!
And if we can help you even more – do get in touch. We’d love to help you, your team and your leaders fall head over heels in love with presenting!
Explore our training programmes on Confidence and Impact, Leadership Development, and Executive Coaching to help you make a lasting impression today.
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And don’t forget to tune in to the 4D Human Being Podcast for in-depth discussions on this and other essential topics to enhance your personal and professional life.
With love,
Philippa and the 4D Human Being Team xx