People tell me that I am a natural presenter, I suppose that after many years of presenting and training I have learnt to be very comfortable doing something that many people are fearful of.
What is your secret? Is a question that I have been asked on many occasions. My answer is straight-forward; most of the time, the people in the audience are there because they know less about the subject than I do, so there is nothing to be afraid of.
Looking back, I realise that it could have been very different. You see, I was working for a big company which had a policy that every manager at my level had to attend a presentation skills course to learn how to make an effective presentation. So along I went and learnt all of the techniques that the instructor said that I must use.
I had notes on little cards, and PowerPoint slides which could have worked as my script. I stood glued to the spot with my cards held firmly in both hands so that I could not move my hands at all. My presentation at the end of two days was as unpleasant to watch as it was to deliver.
In the way that large companies do I was being put through a cookie-cutter training programme so that a box could be ticked. The result was that I dreaded any form of presentation, even to colleagues that I worked with every day. Standing up meant putting on a procedural strait-jacket and trying and usually failing to be something that I, definately, was not.
I knew that I knew what I was talking about, so I did not need reminders, so I threw away the cards. I know that a picture tells a thousand words and so I didn’t need bullet points on my slides, I started to use pictures. In the same way I realised that
I could use my body language and the tone of my voice to change how what I was saying and the message I wanted to communicate was heard by my audience, so I started to use my arms like pointers.
Unsurprisingly my presentations came alive, people started to take notice to what I was saying and discovered that I was not only good at it, I really enjoy doing presentations as well.
What I had discovered through my frustration more than anything else was what Presentation experts Scott Schwertly and Sunday Mancini call as a primary presentation style, which is an expression of my psychological makeup and the key to being comfortable when delivering a presentation.
This week’s free guide, which is based on the book What’s Your Presentation Persona? Discover Your Unique Communication Style and Succeed in Any Arena, by Scott Schwertly and Sunday Mancini, will explain how you can improve your presentation style by building on the strengths of your personality.
Schwertly and Mancini have identified 16 basic presentation personas, and describe not just their defining personality traits, but also provide tips on how you can identify your innate style and harness it to become a better presenter
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