Public speaking made simple… and fun.

1. Course introduction: Some years back, I was preparing for presentation and I was dreading it. It was ten minutes. My company was sponsored and events. Die was invited to talk about our business and product for ten whole minutes, I had my slideshow, I had my outline in my message and I was doing everything I could to slow down time. So the day of the presentation would never come. I was angry, I was frustrated. I was terrified. A friend of mine even asked me why I was so afraid. I mean, what was the worst that could happen? But I am not one to shy away from oratorical questions. So I told her what could happen. I could fall over repeatedly. I could lose my place. I could get so nervous that my vision got blurry and I wouldn't be able to read my notes. I could pass out. I could lose control of myself and draw all over my papers. I could forget where I was and maybe start singing a stadium song. And then everybody would be horrified. They would stop doing business with us. The company would go bankrupt. We would have to fire all of our employees. Do it a whole be a failure. I would be a failure. And all because of this one stupid ten minute presentation, this presentation was going to ruin my life. I'm Rebecca rootsy, Welcome to today's course. And as you can see, my life did not end and it was not ruined by that ten minute presentation, my company did not go bankrupt. We didn't have to fire anybody and I didn't even draw all over myself. Believe me, when I say I get it, public speaking is hard. It's intimidating. But when I started my own consultancy, I knew that public speaking would be important, unimportant component of my business success. I had to start doing more of it. I studied and I watched and I learned, and I built my own approach to creating a great presentation. In now. I love it. I have a method that I use. And the fact is my audience is like a two. I do quite a bit of public speaking and my greatest mark of success is that people refer to my presentations, workshops. In other words, the audience is always walking away with the practical new tool or knowledge. I could ask for nothing more. You are here today to learn a new method for giving presentations. It's a method I created, and it's one that focuses on several specific elements. For one thing, a practical improvement or lesson for the audience. High levels of interaction and simplicity. We're going to make presenting something you can do easily, something you'll do with confidence and something that you are going to start to enjoy a great deal. In this course, you're going to learn how to construct a topic, how to build a presentation narrative, how to interact live with your audience, and how to love the Q and a section. At the end of the course, you'll have a methodology that you can use repeatedly to create and deliver your presentations in any environment. Gets started. Now, move on to the next videos and learn to love giving presentations. 2. Who is it for: This course right for you? Well, let's see. If you are an independent professional who's building your business through networking, then yes, this course is for you. If you are an employee who presents to upper management, or you're about to start presenting to upper management. This course is for you if you work for an agency and irregularly creation pitch decks. This course is for you and virtually any business development professional. This course is for you. What about the scenarios in which you work? Well, if you're giving presentations now and you hate it, take this class to learn to love it if you aren't given presentations, but we'd like to start well, take this class to make presenting easy. If you're given presentations, but you aren't sure about the effectiveness of your presentations. Then take this class to gain that assurance. And if you're given presentations now, but you only talk about yourself, then definitely take this class. Here's what you're going to find. We will start with a pre-game section. To give you the introductory information that you need. Then the course will go through different sections in a step-by-step guide to teach you everything you need to know about building the perfect presentation and about delivering the perfect presentation. You will also have a final project, which will be to create an outline of your next presentation taken to account the important lessons that you've learned through this course, all the key elements will need to be included in that outline. You can use a real presentation that you have coming up. And if not, I also include some tips on how to create an opportunity for a presentation. Do that, make your own trust rehearsal. It's time to get started. Get comfy, grab a notepad and pen to take notes and jump into the course. 3. Preparing for Public Speaking Success: All my courses have a pre-game section. This is where we set the stage for what is to come next throughout the whole course. Fear of public speaking is extremely common in terms of fears of ideas. It is right up there with fear of dying and fear of heights. The fear of public speaking has a name, it's called glosso phobia. This comes from the Greek. The first part of the word comes from the Greek word Gloucester, which means tongue. And the second part you'll recognize as coming from phobos, fear or dread. A majority of the human population suffers from glosso phobia. Let's take a look at why this happens and also why we need to overcome it. 4. Why people don't like giving presentations: Why do people not like giving presentations? Why do people not like public speaking? Well, first of all, let's break down this glosso phobia. This happens for a number of reasons. One of them is a lack of preparation. Do we actually feel confidence in the moments that we are competent to deliver the material? Do we have everything we need? Do we know what we're going to say? Do we remember what we're gonna say? Are we properly prepared for this event? Another reason is the fear of sayings a wrong thing. But if I say something incorrect, what if I go off topic? What if I say something that people interpret in the wrong way? What if I say something that people disagree with? There's also the fear of forgetting. What if I get up there and don't remember any of the things I wanted to say. I just completely blank out. And of course, they're all going to laugh at me syndrome. I'm not talking about this to have you bask in these fears, but rather to recognize that they exist. And mainly they exist due to a thing called illusion of transparency. The illusion of transparency is this thing that we get in our heads where we convince ourselves that people can see through us that we are completely transparent. It makes us believe that people can see what we are thinking, what we're feeling, that they can actually see through us and detect our anxieties and insecurities. They can't, people cannot see through us. We are not transparent and all the things that are going on in our brains and the butterflies in our stomach and the elevated heartbeat. People cannot see that, but we feel that they can. That's a big underlying part of grosso phobia. There's another side though, to the challenge of giving presentations and that is the preparation or lack thereof. Even once we do feel prepared to give a presentation, it's not easy to do. There's a right way and a wrong way. And some of the common weaknesses in preparation for presentations include the quality of your presentation, the overall delivery visuals that the whole presentation is being presented poorly. Another problem is people not engaging with what you have to say, not really getting into the material, not really getting into the discussion. Common challenge is overly complicated contents. Either we're trying to get too much across or too much detail and making it difficult for people to keep up and really grasped everything that we want them to grasp. And of course, the challenge of keeping people's attention. Are they actually listed in or are they sitting there checking their e-mails, are checking social media or possibly even taking a quick snooze while we speak. These are all things that we want to avoid, both on the fear side and on the bad presentation side. By taking this course, you will overcome it all. And we're going to do that through preparation, through a structure, and through simplicity of approach. So that when you follow these steps for your next presentation, you will feel prepared and in control. And it is all going to feel quite simple. 5. Why you should look for speaking opportunities: Despite all the fears and insecurities that we discussed in the previous lesson, you should still want to work on giving presentations. There are many different work roles and positions that benefit from public speaking opportunities. And there are also many personal benefits to public speaking and presentations. Let's get a succession for what's to come by looking at why these different roles would want to consider public speaking and the benefits to every individual with public speaking. Here are some of the people who should be looking for speaking opportunities. If you are a freelancer, speaking is a great way to become known within a certain community. It allows you to demonstrate your expertise as well as your experience. Gets people to know who you are and they get to see you in action. It can do great things for your brand and your reputation. If you run a service business, professional services can sometimes be complicated to explain, and there's often a lot of competition out there. Speaking opportunities are great way to demonstrate the benefits that you bring. And similar to freelancers to show your personality, your expertise, and allow people to get to know you and your business, not just for the business itself, but for professional service practitioners, you want to get both your company name and your own name out there. Very often people hire the individual before the brand speaking is a great way to cement yourself within a certain community to become the go-to person. What if you work in house in a managerial position? In that case, you are probably presenting several times a year, at least. You have to present results to your senior directors. You have to demonstrate progress. You have to build a business cases for budgets and other resources for which you need approval. Naturally, if you're a salesperson, you're presenting all the time. You are pitching your clients nonstop. And that's not all. Think about your role and all the times in which you either are already speaking in front of a crowd or ways in which you could benefit from any of the things that I've mentioned so far. These are some of the business benefits of speaking, but there are plenty of personal benefits for all of these people as well. The first one we touched on already, which is brand recognition. The universal benefit of being out there in the public eye with a stage all to yourself and all the attention on you is that people get to know you and associate you with that expertise if you are involved in any way in the business development of your business, speaking is a benefit, but there's more. It also improves the way you communicate. You're naturally training yourself in presenting your ideas, even if next time that's in a one-to-one meeting or completely different circumstance. If you can present the idea to a room full of people, you can certainly present an idea to an individual. It's going to build your confidence precisely because of everything that most of us have to overcome to get on stage. Once we do at once, See that we're capable and that we can do this again and again. It builds our confidence in those areas of expertise that we are presenting to the world and in the way that we speak and present ourselves. Gathering information for a public presentation is not the same as throwing together an email or an ad hoc conversation. Because of the way you do it when you present, you're going to improve the way you analyze information, the way you research the content that you need. It'll help you order your own thoughts. Public speaking naturally develops leadership skills when you are up there, your purpose is to influence people. And leadership is all about positive influence. And no matter what your role is in life, leadership skills are always beneficial. Finally, speaking is a wonderful way to make connections. Every time you speak, you automatically have access to multiple groups of people. Obviously the entire audience, everybody who was there to see you and hear you. There may be other speakers and those are other connections that you can make. If you're all interested in being in front of the same audience, what other opportunities for partnership or collaboration, but you find door or the event organizers. Event organizers are good people to know because guess what they organize events. It also means that they're active in the communities. Develop the relationships with the event organizers. If you're doing internal presentations, all the stakeholders that are in the room, you're reporting line colleagues from other departments. Once you're speaking in public, you have access to that public and well as the people behind the scenes of that public. For all of these reasons, it is time to move on to the next section of this course. 6. Creating High-Impact Content: Techniques: The most important part of public speaking is wait for it. Having something to say. You have to know what you're going to talk about. You might be somebody who has a 100 things to say and your challenge is to narrow that down to a single topic. For you might be the type of person who as soon as you put on the spot, can't think of a single thing to say. In which case, I promise you, you have plenty to share. And we're going to find exactly what that is. It might be a particular skill that you have and the other people in the room don't share something. You can train them on, something you can teach them to do. It could be a particular points of view that people in the room have never considered a new way of looking at something old can be very refreshing and a great learning experience. Perhaps it's a particular piece of knowledge that people in the room don't know and should. This would be the case for an internal presentation, for example, if you're presenting on results to a different team or to a senior management team, you need to share the facts of those results. Or perhaps it's a particular story that people in the room can learn something by hearing. It's a way of sharing experience. In this section of the course, you will learn to decide what to say, why to say it, and how to say it. 7. Connecting with your audience: There is no public speaking without the public. You're here to serve them. You have to put them front and center. And that's why the first step in preparing your presentation is to know your audience. Now I want us to establish one important fact right away. Your audience wants you to succeed. The people in the room are vested in your success. I point this out because very often with our glosso phobia are all the reasons we don't like public speaking. We convince ourselves or hint to ourselves that the people in the room are going to laugh at us or disagree with what we say or not like the way we speak. Instead, the reality is that the people that are listening to you, I want you to be good. They want you to say something interesting. They want to know that they're spending their time in a good way. Before you've even started. They are already rushing for you to succeed. You are all on the same team here. When you think about the people in the room, remind yourself that they're on your side. But you can't teach them just anything. You can only teach them the things that you know. How do you connect what you know to your audience? Well, the first thing to do is to make sure that you know who they are. Who are the people in the room? What is their profile, what connects them, what brings them together? Who are you speaking to? Also know why they are here. What are they hoping to achieve? Why have they all assembled in this room, be it real or virtual? What are their expectations by being present here today? When you think about these two facts, then ask yourself, what can you teach them of that story, of that fact, of that point of view? What is relevant to them? Why is it relevant to them? Why do you want them to know this thing? In thinking about that, I also want you to think about how you can create a transformation for them with this knowledge or this piece of information, they must be able to do something that they couldn't do before. That's why they're there. That's what makes this presentation worth their time. In describing your audience to yourself, you also want to ask yourself, if they only do one thing after hearing me speak, what do I want that thing to be? What is the transformation that I can offer the people in the room just for showing up. 8. Start With a Single Core Idea: a Central Theme: It ended the previous lecture talking about the transformation that you offer your clients. Let's spend a moment on that to decide what you want to share your presentation. I want you to focus on a single core idea. Choose just one thing that you want people to learn. If you could only say one sentence to them, what would that be? That's it. That is what your presentation is about, that single core idea. Everything else you say will be supporting this one core idea through examples and data and how to choose and more. But the entire presentation is about one, a single idea. This is where I want you to start. Take whatever topic or story you have in mind to present and boil it right down to its core essence, its core with them, what's in it for me, the single reason that this information matters. Here are some examples from when I'm giving presentations and how I boil the topic down to a single core idea. When I'm giving a presentation on the importance of mission statements, the core idea is that mission statements bind a team together on the mission. When I'm giving a presentation on KPIs, the core idea is that outcomes match or more than activities. Everything else in my presentation supports the importance of outcomes over actions and how to measure those. When I give a presentation on value propositions, the core idea is that value exists in the eye of the beholder. Everything else in the presentation is about explaining how to understand value from the point of view of their clients and how to build that into a value proposition. Think about how to extract the core idea for your presentation. What do you want people to take away? What does that single piece of information that you really want to stick? If you're offering a training session, then the core idea might be the expected result. Why training on this thing is important? Because it's going to give a certain result. If you're doing a presentation for brand recognition. Than the core idea might be the way in which your expertise or service simplifies life for your audience. If you're doing an internal presentation, Let's say that this is for a budget request internally. Then the core idea will be that whatever it is that you're requesting will be beneficial to the company as a whole, not just your team. The first thing to do in preparing your content is to create this one sentence describes the core idea and write that down for yourself. Everything else will revolve around that. 9. Call to Action: Inspiring Your Audience to Take the Next Step: Learning is also about a new ability, as we said, a transformation, and therefore the ability to do something that could not have been done before. In addition to what people learn, you have to know what they can do with it. What is the action that they can take immediately that will make a difference in their lives, a single action to get them started. In your presentation, you want to be able to say what you get back to your desk. I want you to dot, dot dot, or if relevant, when you get back to your home, I want you to dot dot dot. You want to be able to give them a specific instruction on an action that they can take. This action is what proves the value of your presentation. That they can do something with what they've learned to justify the time that they spent learning it. But it does something more. It also keeps your influence going. After you all have left the room. You're doing a presentation as a means to an end. You want something to happen afterwards by giving them instruction on the action that you want them to take, you're staying present in their minds even after the presentation is over. What is the action that you can recommend people take to keep the presentation going after it ends. One thing I like to do is to share worksheets for people to use. It's an added perk that of course they're on my leisure heads, so my branding is all there. It also means that when they do get back to their desk, they've got that worksheet right in front of them and they can get started right away. No. What is that one action and be prepared to tell people during your presentation. 10. The art of storytelling: build your narrative: With your core idea and your core action, you are now ready to build your narrative. As we said when discussing the core idea, everything else revolves around and supports that idea. You already have most of what you need. Now one thing I want you to bear in mind is that the purpose of a presentation is to be engaging rather than to be precise. Don't confuse precision with honesty. You still have to say real and correct things. But it is not about giving away all the details. It's not about giving every single piece of information on this one topic. Remember, it's about getting one idea across. And you want to do that in a way that gets people interested and involved in your presentation. That is much more important than just sharing a long list of factoids. You want to spark curiosity. And you want to spark the desire for the listener to ask you for more as you build your narrative and as you prepare your presentation itself, remember that this is about being engaged in. What do you need to build that narrative? Now that you have your core idea and core action, you can make the list of those additional elements that you will need and that you will use to support that core idea. These are, of course, the core idea itself. Start with that. Do not start preparing your presentation. If that is not written at the top of the page, then we have the supporting data and facts. What are the statistics? What does the research show? What is the factual data that you can share about this topic. Also want to use examples and stories. Storytelling is always very compelling. It allows listeners to picture something in their head and also relate it to their own experience. And the examples are part of proving the model through anecdotes, which again will resonate with people more than the facts themselves. Both of course are important. Finally, don't forget your own call to action. You want people to take an action with regards to you as well. Whether that's to simply connect with you on LinkedIn. Whether that's to follow up with a specific piece of information. Whether that's to go to Amazon and buy your book, whether that's to go to your website, subscribe to your newsletter, whether it's to schedule an appointment with you. Know, what your call to action will be. You really only want one. Because remember, less is more in this context. So decide what that call to action will be. We will come back to some of these elements, both later in this section with Worksheet examples, as well as when we're talking about the delivery of your presentation. Keep this list handy as you go through the rest of the course. Once you have your core idea, you're supporting data and facts or storytelling in your call to action, you can start to build the narrative arc of your presentation. You're always going to start with an introduction. Your introduction is not. Hi, I'm Rebecca breed. See, it's so great to be here. Your introduction is going to be a story or a joke or something unexpected. This is your warm up act. We'll get into more detail on this in the next section when we talk about delivering your presentation, next will come the body of your presentation. This is what Nancy Duarte calls the call to adventure. It's a really great way to think about it. You want to present something new, impart some new type of information. And so you are asking your audience to trust you on this at the beginning, to believe you when you say that there is something new for them to learn, or a new way to look at things for a new way to do things. This is your call to adventure. You then are going to go through your presentation. Going from your call to adventure. The idea of this is what could be. All the way back to, this is where we are now. Then move them step-by-step through that journey using those stories, using the data, using the examples to go from where we are now, back to where we could be. The adventure is the journey you go on throughout that presentation. Again, we'll get into more detail about this in the delivery section of this course. For now, we're simply building the structure of how the presentation will be planned. An important thing to remember in your narrative arc is that you want to bake in your own expertise. Especially if you're doing this presentation as a way to promote yourself, your services as branding, to make yourself known. Use those stories and examples as ways to demonstrate what you do and how you do it. Things like, I was working with a client once and this thing happened. Do the same with your call to action, bake it in. You can say, I talk about this more in my book, which you can find on Amazon. That's why you've defined your call to action beforehand to make it easier to then insert it into your narrative in a natural and conversational way. So keep in mind the baked in information that you want to share about you without making it all only about you. Finally, the conclusion here is where you will recap the core points. And of course, the action you want people to take. Your intro and conclusion should be written last, or if you write them first, then make sure those are rough drafts. Once you've got your whole narrative, you won't go back and update those so that they perfectly match the body of your presentation. 11. Engaging Your Audience: Interactive Techniques: You are interesting, you are engaging your fun. But all the same. Most people don't want to be spoken to for a long period of time. This is where we start talking about audience interaction and participation. After all, we are stressing here the single core idea, the single action people take that transformation, the learning element of your presentation. In other words, the best way to learn something is to do it. For all these reasons and more, you want to create opportunities for audience participation during your presentation. There are many advantages to audience participation. For one thing, people will feel more involved. They'll feel like they had a conversation with you that will make them more satisfied with the experience as a whole. Research after research shows that the more people feel that they interacted during a presentation than the happier they are with the presentation overall. You will also get people thinking critically. They'll be asking themselves questions and having to think through the material. And because of this, they'll absorb the information better. There's a much higher chance of them not just learning the material, but also retaining the information that you share. There were also much more likely to remember you because they felt more involved. They felt more like they were speaking with you. And because they're more likely to remember the material, there are also overall more likely to remember you specifically. And one of my favorite parts of audience participation is the fact that as the presenter, you get to learn something new as well. It is such a high-value way to get a lot of feedback in a short amount of time. With this whole audience in front of you. You can learn what they're asking. You can learn what they're talking about. You can hear how they relate to the information that you're sharing. You get insight into what is on their minds. This is valuable information for you. This will help you improve your next presentation because you can start to anticipate some of these needs and some of these concerns. You can also use this information in your customer experience planning in your service delivery. If the people in the room are asking these questions, then your clients are probably asking these questions too. If it is an internal presentation, hearing what people are discussing and what they're asking about means that your next presentation will be even better because you'll be able to include that information for them directly. The learning aspect of audience participation is actually the most valuable for you. And a really big part of why you never want to forego the opportunity for interaction with your audience. But what are the ways in which you can create audience participation? There are numerous ways. And deciding those ways upfront means that you can do a lot more than just telling your audience. Please feel free to ask questions. I want this to be interactive. For every ten times that I've heard of presenters say that I have sat through nine presentations without a single bit of audience interaction. Here are some ways that you can build that interaction into your presentation. Asking yes or no questions. Yes, sir. No, of course is a single word or single movement in of itself. It doesn't create an ongoing conversation, but it's a great way to warm people up. Audience participation can often take a little bit of time. If somebody has to open the door, somebody has to break the ice. And even after that, it might take many people more time to warm up to be comfortable just speaking in the middle of a crowded room. Yes or no is an easy way to get people interacting without all that pressure. If you're in a room in front of everybody, you can say something like raise your hand. If, if you're in a virtual room, you can tell them to use whatever interaction is available on the platform. I use Zoom a lot and there is a function called reactions. When I'm in a Zoom presentation, what I tell people is use your mouse to find your Zoom panel. And the box that says reactions. Now hover over that and click. I'm going to ask you to use that to answer the question. Please click on a reaction if and then I asked my question. I'm also giving them very specific instructions on how to respond, but they're much more likely to do it if they've been following me through step-by-step. Yes or no question is a way to get people to do something, even if they're not speaking, that starts to get them involved. After that first action, the next one becomes easier and easier. Now if you are using an online platform, you can also use a poll for this. And that allows you to ask more than just a yes or no question. You can ask a multi answer question if you don't want to use a pole, another effective way to do this is say, open up your chat box and tell me how many times you have. Or on a scale of one to five, where do you think you are with regards to asking something numerical makes it easy for people to just click a single key in that checkbox. If you're asking for longer answers in the chat box, that's not as easy because it takes awhile for people to type it up. And then you're sitting there in silence and then they start sending through their responses while you're talking about something else. Use the chat box to great effect to get people to start interacting. But remember that if you use the chat box, ask them for a single key answer. Of course, the value starts when you're asking the broader questions, the more open-ended questions. But a great way to do that is to follow up the yes or no or the online poll question. You could say something like those of you who have your hands raised, who would like to share your experience with that. Use that warm-up to then lead on to a greater discussion. But by giving them that opportunity for warm-up, you're not putting them on the spot quite as much. Don't underestimate the power of a great trivia question. If there is something relevant to what you're discussing that can be compared to a piece of trivia or where a piece of trivia is relevant. Ask that question. People like trivia questions, it can be an effective and simple way to again, foster that audience participation and help people warm up to greater, larger questions. It doesn't all have to be questions though. You can create a brainstorming environment. You'd say something like, well, we've covered this material or this concept. Let's work on some examples together. This is one I like to do quite a bit in presentations because I'm always so focused on what that next action is. What is the thing that there'll be able to do after this presentation that they couldn't do before hand. The opportunity of starting that work together in the room is powerful because it makes it so much easier for them to continue it after they left the room. It also allows me to show myself at work. A lot of the work that I do is sitting with my clients working on their business synchronously. If that is your situation or something similar to that, then doing a group brainstorming has multiple benefits. And the larger the group, the more beneficial it might be tools. So do in smaller groups. If you're physically in the same place, have people gather into small groups. If you're in a virtual environments, of course use breakout rooms or their equivalent. If that's what you're doing, the short to give very specific instructions because you won't be there the whole time for every single group. And also think about how much time they need. Five-minutes, it might be short if they really are doing some brainstorming. Half an hour is probably too long because you don't want to lose the momentum of the presentation depending on how many people are in each group and what you're asking of them. Ten to 20 minutes is probably the right amount of time. If it's a discussion, ten minutes is good. If you're doing things like having them role-play than 15 or 20 can also work. Tell them specifically what you want them to do with that time. If you want them to share afterwards, also tell them what you expect them to share. So they can be thinking about that and preparing it while they're in their smaller groups. One thing I also like to do is give them away to decide who will go first social speak, or appoint somebody to manage the room to MC the group. You might say whoever name starts with the highest letter in the alphabet for the person with the longest surname. Or you might say, go in the calendar order of the month in which you were born. It's a small thing, but it makes it easier for them to decide. And frankly, it's an engaging thing to say. These are many ways in which you can create audience participation is think about which ones make sense in your presentation. Pick more than one and use them to great effect. There are a few more points that I want to make about audience participation, thanks to bear in mind, the first one, acknowledge what somebody has said with a full sentence. If you asked a question and somebody has answered or somebody's shared an experience or a story, don't just nod or say thank you. Add your own comments. Not a long comment, but at least one full sentence. It's a way of showing that you've listened to them. And remember, you're trying to create the feeling of a conversation. If somebody tells you something and you just move on, then they don't feel that you've engaged with what they have had to say. Take what they've told you and summarize it in one sentence or with your own words to a, share it again with the group and be demonstrate to the person that you were listening. Now what if they ask something that you cannot answer? The first thing to do is to ask for more information. Say Can you tell me more or what do you mean? Can you give an example? It is also okay to say, I'm not familiar with that. Can you explain what you mean or can you give me more information? Then as they're giving you that information, you're both listening and trying to think of an adequate answer. If they are asking you something very specific, very factual, and you don't know the answer. It is okay to say I don't know. What you're going to say is let me look that up for you or let me ask a colleague or a contact who specializes in that and then write it down, let them see you making a note so they know that you really are going to ask somebody or find the information and follow up with them. That action of writing a quick note to yourself demonstrates to them once again that you are listening to. It's something that is a common fear with public speaking is, what if they challenge what you're saying? What if they disagree with you out loud in front of everybody? Well, your trick here is to answer every question or comments, starting with the word yes. Agree with them, even if they disagree with you, say the word yes, comma, and then continue the sentence. Yes, that's a good point. If or when XYZ yes, that can be the case except in situations of or yes, that is one way to approach this. Then don't be afraid to add a button after that. The last part. Then continue that sentence to say, in this other circumstance or what I want to focus on here, or some other way to bring it back to your idea. Don't be afraid when somebody disagrees with you or challenges your idea. Engage in that conversation with them. Engage in that conversation with them. Don't turn it into a debate, but just acknowledge what they've said. Acknowledge that they have a point. Allow them to have participated and not be shut out. And then go back to your presentation. If you're unsure about this practice it get a friend or a family member to be the audience member and do part of your presentation for them and tell them, disagree with me, even if they don't believe the things that they're saying, they're just practicing putting you on the spot when somebody says out loud, No, you're wrong. Parenthesis. Nobody in a presentation is going to stand up and say, No, you're wrong. They just might challenge the idea with their own words or their own approach to the situation. Plan for participation in advance to make sure that you're not just paying lip service to the interaction with your audience, but you are actually making it happen. 12. Developing a Clear Presentation Outline: Now that you have all the elements of what you want to say, you can build your presentation outline. Your outline right now is your first draft. As you practice out loud, You're going to continue to improve what you've written down. Add details, were moved details, or reorder certain things. But it all starts with an outline and talking points. Think of this as a draft script. I'm going to share some different examples of presentation outlines in the following lectures. So take a look, pick the one that works best for you or the combination thereof. In the next two lessons, we will look at the what, why, how outline, and then the diamond outline. Let's get started. 13. What Why How: The first outline I want to show you is the what, why, how. This is an outline. I use some of the time. It's what I use if I'm in a hurry for any reason. And sometimes it helps me to simplify what I'm trying to say when I feel that I've gotten ahead of myself, it looks like this. You start in that top circle with the introduction. The introduction presents your core idea. Next, you will move onto an explanation of what the core idea is. Here's where you'll give some details and the backup, the information to fully explain and flesh out that core idea. Once you've done that, you'll explain why it matters. One way to think of this as to explain what happens if you ignore the core idea. Probably a bad outcome. What happens when you embrace or adopt the core idea, which should of course be a good outcome. Y, the core idea is important to them, while the action that you will give them is also important to them. And indeed you follow with the how to use it. You explain the action, the transformation that will occur for the audience when they adopt the core idea. Then you come right back to the conclusion that restates the core idea. Just that now of course we're all seeing it differently thanks to the explanation. So in summary, core idea, what it is, why it matters, how to use it. And a restatement of the core idea. 14. The diamond outline: The diamond outline is the one I use most often, I find that this outline ensures that I include all the core information, but also holds me accountable against adding too much information or tangential information. It looks like this. Now I learned this outline from 1D Kimmy, She's a public speaker in a marketer in Atlanta. And she got it from a book by Bob boiling titled What's your point? In this outline, you start with your point of view at the top or the core idea. Those first three lines, that box at the top is where you state your core idea. Next is the agenda. Three things you want to say about the core idea. The way I sometimes write out those three sentences is actually as questions. When I think of them as questions, I can put myself into the mind of the audience. It's a little trick I do to help me think of it from their point of view and think about what they might want to hear about it or what they need to hear about the core idea. Then we go into, let me cover that for you. The benefits are what are, what is commonly known as wisdom, What's in it for me, benefits or why this matters to your audience, how it makes their life better. The facts here we're using the data and the statistics that factual information that we've talked about. The personal experience is where you introduce the story or the anecdote that gives context to the whole thing that allows people in the audience to relate to what you're talking about. Those last two boxes take us into the conclusion, the key things to remember. So summarizing everything for the audience, what I like about that boxes, it's also a reminder to myself to make sure that I have kept adjust to this core idea. There shouldn't be a lot of things that people have to remember. This is my way of staying accountable to myself that in this presentation I haven't gone on some crazy tangents. Finally, the last box says, Therefore, my recommendation is that is the single action that you will encourage people to take. This outline will get you thinking about your material in all these ways. And with all those core elements that we talked about in the previous section, those statistics, the what's in it for me, the anecdotes and stories and why this information all matters to your audience. 15. How Visual Aids Enhance Your Public Speaking: You've probably heard all the expressions about death by PowerPoint and how awful presentation slide decks are. Well, here's the solution to that. It's not to forgo the slide deck completely. The solution is to make a good slide deck. Take the time to build your visuals and pay attention to them. They are important for various reasons. A good slideshow will reinforce your message throughout your presentation, even with a well-defined and single core idea, you're still saying many, many words. Being able to put the most important words right in front of your audience on a large screen, in front of their eyes will focus their attention. This will help you get that core idea across. It also will make the whole thing more memorable. We remember visuals, we remember pictures. Use your presentation to that effect, either using pictures, images, art, or even well-designed words. If you have a word on your slide, have it stand out, make it visual and quite important. It can be used as a follow-up. Sending a slide deck after the event allows you to stay present in people's minds as well as in their inboxes. 16. Visual Aid Dos and Don'ts: How can you make sure that your slide deck is not one of the awful ones? With a list of simple rules that throughout this whole section, all the rules that you hear really come down to two main points. You want your slideshow presentation to be consistent. And you want it to be simple. You want it to look cohesive, that each slide connects with the others, that they're part of the same presentation, the same design. And you want to make sure it's not overwhelming viewers with everything that you're putting on that screen, consistent and simple. Now let's look at some of the detailed rules for building your slide deck. The first one is your layout. This is the essence of that consistency factor. Choose a layout template and stick with it. Make sure that each slide in your presentation looks like it belongs with the whole. So do not be changing, colors, do not be changing drastically. The layout do not be changing fonts from one slide to the next. Make sure they all look like they go together. You'll have to use fonts in your presentation. Choose one maximum two, you might have a header font and then a main text font. This is one of those consistency factors. Make sure that those are the same throughout whatever you choose to use as a header, use as a header all the time. Whatever you choose to use for main text, used for main texts all the time. This is how your slideshow could look. If you add a whole bunch of different fonts. It's not pretty same mentality when it comes to colors. Don't use them all. You can use more than one color. But when you do make sure you have a set color scheme, this means colors that compliment each other and that go well together. They don't have to be exactly the same, they just have to create visual consistency. Here's an example of a color scheme that I created randomly on peloton.com, PAL E T, T ON.com. These are all colors that will go well together that are comforting for the eye to look at. On the other hand, here's a good example of bad color schemes. This comes from the website approval Dot studio. They have a whole blog post on how not to create color schemes, all the bad mistakes you can make. So check out their website for more details on that. When in doubt, use a single color, keep your colors consistent and simple. Less is always more. Including when it comes to words, do not make people read your slides. If they're reading, they're not listening. You want them to listen to your voice. Use as few words as possible. The point of the words on a slide is to reinforce what you are saying, to Make It Stick, to make it memorable. It is not to replace the attention people are giving you. You'll note that throughout this course I rarely use full sentences on my slides. That's because all I'm trying to do is reinforce the message and get you to focus on that while you listen to what I'm saying. The same is true with elements of design. If you're using an infographic of some sort, make sure that it is easy to understand at first glance. You don't want to lose people's attention as they're trying to figure out what is this image that I'm looking at? The words and any images are graphs that you use. You want to be asking yourself, can the people at the back of the room read this? Can they see this and understand what it is? Less is more and easy to grasp. This can sometimes overruled the color scheme rule. You want to make sure that whatever you're displaying is direct, that it is very easy to understand. If you have a graph, for example, then you want to plot your different lines are bits of information in contrasting colors. This is where it's okay to use two colors that look nothing alike. Still follow the basic rules. Don't use two neon colors, for example, that will give people headaches. But make sure that even seen from a distance, it's very easy to understand what you're showing. This graph is an example that I took from slides go.com. The gray against the yellow means that whether I'm up-close are way at the back of the room. I can see that difference. Also use builds in your slides. If you are going to have more than one word on a slide, then let those words appear as you are saying them. Remember that pupil will read what's on the screen. So if you open up a slide and there are a bunch of words there, they will be reading all those words instead of listening to you. If instead you're only loading one word at a time or a few words at a time. You're not losing their attention. And they're not jumping ahead, they're staying with you. Less is more when it comes to the number of slides as well. Constant changing of slides and moving from one thing to another is distracting to people. So keep it simple. Cut the slides and the most important rule of all, absolutely, under no circumstances should you ever be reading from your slides. Your slides are there for the audience, not for you. Prepare your visuals, do your first run-through, and then go through them and simplify. Always ask yourself, is my presentation consistent from slide to slide? Is my presentation simple enough to grasp at a single glance? 17. Giving your presentation: We've talked about how to prepare for your talk. And as part of that, we also covered the basics of preparing the delivery of your presentation. In this section, we'll address the part when you are actually speaking. This section is where we go through that part step-by-step. The Doering of the presentation, not the before the presentation, will cover your presentation delivery in order beginning with how to start your talk. Then moving onto how to present, how to interact with your audience, how to add your ask or your call to action, how to end your talk, and how to handle the Q&A. 18. Powerful Openings : How to start: It's go time. You have been introduced. You've walked up to the podium or the front of the room. You open your mouth. What is the very first thing you say to that audience? There are several options of a good way to start. There is one definitive bad way to start. So let's start there. Unimportant rule on what not to do. Do not start your talk by saying, Hi, I'm Rebecca breed. See, I'm so happy to be here today. This is a way to lose people, to lose their interests within the first few seconds of you speaking. And you don't want to lose interest within your first in seconds because then it's even harder to get them back. You've heard about an opening being a hook. The first scene in a movie or the first page of a book. You want those things to hook you in to make you turn to the next page or to make you stay there and watch the rest of the film to be curious about what's coming next, you need to do the same thing. Hello, stating your name and saying that you're happy to be. There is not a good hook for various reasons. First of all, you've probably already said hello to several people just by walking in and being part of the event. You don't need to introduce yourself. They know who you are. They have come here to see you speak. And besides, you've probably had an introduction by the MC or somebody's speaking before you. Of course you're happy to be there, but you don't have to tell them that. Or rather you can tell them that it's a nice thing to do, but do it later. It's not essential to your presentation and it certainly isn't about a hook. But most importantly, this entire sentence is all about you. It's like you're there to just talk about who you are and how happy you are. Leave that for a glacier. Start your presentation being about them. Let me tell you my favorite way to start a presentation. It's one of several options, but it's the one I use every time I tell a story. It's a story that will tie back to the subject matter at hand. But I also like to make the story sounds like it has nothing to do with presentation at first. Very often I'll use a story about food because I'm a management consultant. I'm always presenting on business. So food is different. Food is something we all universally consumed. So we all have stories about food. And it's the type of thing that attracts attention. And in most cases, people can relate to maybe not the exact same story I'm telling, but a similar contexts. For example, when I do my presentation on key performance indicators measuring success in business, I start with a story about my husband and I learning how to make Boccaccio. Trust me, it works. When I say start with a story, I literally mean the first words out of your mouth are telling the story. Not let me tell you a story or let me begin with a story. Just jump right in. I'll usually start with a sentence like, my husband makes wonderful Boccaccio using his mother's recipe. It's not what people expect. It attracts attention. A story is one way to start your presentation. It's my favorite way. It's the one that I use the most. But there are of course, other ways that you can start your presentation. A powerful image is also a fairly popular option. Of course, with the image up there, you still have to say something. You still need to give attention to those first words. Ask a question or give an unexpected phrase. Definitely not. Look at this image for what an image. The question of phrase you say obviously should relate to the image, but it shouldn't be necessarily referencing the fact that there is an image in front of them. They know it, they can see it and they're already looking at it. A rhetorical question. Once again, don't say, I'm going to ask you a rhetorical question. Just ask the question, what did the Romans ever do for us? And then pause as people absorb this rhetorical question before you move into the rest of your presentation. In a shocking statistic, I say shocking because you don't want it to be a boring statistic. But I'm also saying shocking and not controversial, not provocative. Just shocking as an unexpected. Something like Americans eat 4.2 billion avocados annually, according to the Washington Post in 2015. That is chucking, that's a huge number of avocados, but it's not controversial and it's not a risky statement. If you are thinking of something provocative, if there is any risk at all to what you're saying there. But it's an important fact that you want to get across. Then think about using the rhetorical question method instead. Introduce the subject or rhetorical question. Those tend to be lower risk for offense or control, VOC or provocation than a statement. The other thing you can do is use silence. Now, as I'm using an image, you still have to say something eventually and you still want to give importance to those first words. But silence can be powerful because we're so unused to it. We always want to fill up that silence. Make sure however that something is happening during that silence. Don't let people just sit there and stare around awkwardly. Maybe you're doing something during that silence, or maybe they are looking at an image or even a short video. Now a popular one is to say open with a joke. Truth is, I have rarely seen this used to good effect. Jokes are hard to do. Different people have different senses of humor. Different people have different sensitivities to humor. All of that is not why you are there. It's easier to just avoid the joke unless it is something that is directly related to what you're presenting. That is an inside joke that is shared by everybody in the room. And you know, for a fact that it will be taken the same way by everybody. In conclusion, do not open by making it all about you and saying things that people in the room already know. Instead, think about how you can hook their attention with something that is significant. And whatever you use. Think about weaving it in and out of your presentation as you go along. My story about Boccaccio gets referenced three or four times throughout the presentation so people can understand the context of what I'm saying. How can you use your hook as a storytelling device as well? Most importantly, capture attention. Make sure people want to hear whatever is coming next. 19. Engaging and Effective Communication: Presenting your material is the bulk of what you are doing there. We already talked about the structure of your presentation or narrative that is about preparation, and it's not what we're covering here. In this lesson, we're talking about how you actually seek that during factor while you are presenting. Here are a few basic rules. Rule number one, the most important. Under no circumstances should you be reading your presentation, not from your slides, not from your notes, not from anything else. You can, of course, have notes. It's generally recommended that your notes are bullet points so that you are not attracted to reading them. Instead, they are reminders to help you stay on topic and in the correct order. When you read, not only do you end up sounding like a robot, most likely, but also it means you're not making eye contact with the people in the room, which brings us to our second make eye contact. You're speaking to them, you want to engage with them. Make this feel as much like a conversation as possible. Make eye contact with the people in the room. Also, you've got to sound like you're having a good time. Smile, it changes the inflection of your voice. Be enthusiastic about what you're talking about. Don't sound like you've memorized this presentation and given it a 100 times in the last week, even if you have, make it sound fresh on that point, use the inflection of your voice. Think about which words you want to emphasize. Make those words maybe a little bit longer. We're little bit louder. Let your voice go up and let your voice go down. It's giving people something to listen to that isn't monotone and always the same. But do not eat the last word of a sentence. Voice generally in flux downwards at the end of a sentence, you want to make sure that people can still hear the last words you say. Here's an example. Note the difference between rule number one is don't read your presentation versus rule number one. Don't read your presentation. I paused after Rule number one to set up a little bit of anticipation, makes sure people are following what I'm saying, giving them an extra second to catch up if they need to. Also to give importance to what comes afterwards. I also slowed down just a smidgen when I said the words don't read. I could emphasize that part of it. Think of this as part of your verbal formatting. If it were written down, what would you be putting in bold or italics? What would you be making a headline versus normal text? Use your voice but also whatever you have available, such as your hands. If you're making a list, count those out with your fingers. 123, give people that visual in your body language as well. If you're doing two examples or on the one hand and on the other hand, lay out your hands. On the one hand. Left hand goes out flat. On the other hand, right hand goes out flat. A common question to use the microphone or not to use a microphone. Personally, I don't like using a microphone, especially if it's free standing because I use my hands so much what I speak that if one hand is stuck on the microphone, I've got two options. Either it's difficult for me to express myself because I can't move that hand with freedom. Nobody actually hears me because I'm moving the hand and the microphone is all over the place. It's a lot of practice and discipline for me to use a freestanding microphone. The problem is entirely not up to me. Everybody in the room has to hear me. If it's a big room, if it's allowed room, if it's a room that absorbs the sound and the people at the back can't hear me. I have to use a microphone. The microphone is not about your preference, It's about what's necessary for the quality of the presentation overall. 20. Offer an Interactive Experience: We've already talked about the importance of interaction and the different ways that you can achieve it throughout your presentation. We did that as part of preparation. So now let's review some of those points in the context of the presentation itself. How you do it while you are actually speaking. In your preparation, you noted the moments of interaction and increasing intensity. And you've already put those into your structure or into the agenda of your talk. Here are a few other things to remember about that interaction. First of all, make sure that you are balancing speech with interaction. Balancing the amount of time that you are speaking and the frequency with which the audiences participating, you want to allow it to go back and forth somewhat. Audience participation is not used speaking for 40 minutes and then then they having a five-minute Q&A. Audience participation is interaction throughout the presentation. Obviously, you will be speaking more than they are. But look at that structure, think about that delivery live and make sure that you're offering different points for them to use their brain to even move physically. Because we do that when we speak and to participate. We talked about starting small. Make sure you do that. Asked for those one-word answers, asked for that show of hands. Something that has low commitment allow people to warm up to participating, give them time to open up, to be in part of the discussion. Now at some point you'll get a feel for those who are more talkative than others. That's okay, but still include everybody. There is a balance to strike here. You don't want to be putting people on the spot. If somebody is fiercely uncomfortable speaking, don't make this a negative experience for them, but include everybody in your part of the presentation. Make eye contact with the quiet people to make sure that your focus doesn't get completely absorbed by the more talkative people there. You want, the less talkative people to feel included for one thing and eye contact alone will do that. But they may also want to participate, but be a bit more shy about just speaking up. If you are making eye contact with them. If you are giving them the same attention, then you'll be able to notice if they look like they're about to say something or want to say something, just a little bit shy, or maybe not fast enough and somebody else always speaks before them. If that's the case, then you can call on them. If you're not sure. Then say did you want to add something or did you want to comment on that? Ask them and that way if they really didn't do, they can easily say, nope, Thank you. I was just agreeing. As you go through your presentation, try to avoid asking the question. Is that clear? Does everybody understand or questions of that sort? It implies that what you're saying is hard to understand and that's not a good look for you or it's not a good look for them if they take it to mean that you don't think they're capable of understanding? While it is a yes or no question, it's not a substantive one. It's not going to allow you to then follow that up with a more interesting or broader question. If you must, if you are sharing something that is a bit complicated or long-winded and you want to confirm that people are still with you are really following your reasoning. Than a better way to do it is to ask somebody to repeat back what you said. It does anybody want to repeat that in their own words or what did you hear me say? How would you re-explain that? You can also ask them to share an example or a similar experience. Who can tell me an example or a time when this happened to you. Who can think of an example off the top of their head. These are all ways for you to check in with your audience and make sure that they are understanding what you're saying. And to find out whether they're not. If they're not, you can more seamlessly add to that knowledge or correct them without openly correcting them, without saying you don't understand. But instead just continuing their story or their example, adding the additional information that they need. So don't ask people, do you understand what I'm saying, but instead give them the opportunity to demonstrate that they are understanding what you're saying. Finally, when you are going to ask the audience the question, let them know that it's coming. Whether you're speaking to a specific individual or to the room as a whole, tells them that they're participating before you ask the question. Instead of asking the question and then saying, can anybody answer that? Start with the can anybody answer that part? Say, Could anybody in the room tell me or who in the room would like to share. For now. I'd really like to hear from all of you who can tell me. The point of this is to make sure that they hear the question too. People will wake up once you call on them or ask them to speak. But they may have missed the few words before that. And you don't want to embarrass anybody, not least of all yourself, if you're standing there in complete silence and nobody's participating, wake them up first so to speak. Not that anybody in your presentation is asleep. By telling them, hey, I'm about to call on you. I'm about to ask you something, pay attention to the next few words. This is even more important if you are calling on a specific individual because that could be very embarrassing if they are distracted, whether it's by taking notes or by something that has nothing to do with your presentation. Don't put people on the spot like that. If you're calling on somebody specifically, say their name first, hey Rebecca Kaaba, and then ask the question that way. Rebecca, here's her name and is paying attention. As I've said before, interaction is one of the most important parts of your presentation. People are there to learn and the more they participate, the more they are part of the subject matter, the more they will learn. 21. Your Call to Action:: When should you add your call to action in the presentation? When do you put in your ask? Well, it probably shouldn't be first thing. No point in the preparation did we say open your presentation by asking for a favor, asking them to purchase something or asking for something for you. Your call to action or you're asked should probably not come first. The challenge is, it's not quite to put it at the very end either. Once you're done with your presentation, people are checking out mentally or physically. They feel that they've gotten all the information that they need. It's come to an end for you to throw in your ask after all that, once you've clearly concluded your presentation, plus effective, the best time to add your ask is during the presentation. I want you to think about baking this into the things that you were saying at some point in your presentation, you can use phrases like, I go into more depth about this in my book. I've worked on this material with many clients. Or an example of when I came across this was with a client I worked with two years ago. Or these tools that I'm showing you are for sale on my online store. Bake in the offering. This thing that you've come to sell into the presentation. Not only does it make it less jarring than it being right at the beginning or right at the end, but it also makes it much more natural. It's more part of the conversation. But the biggest advantage to you is that you get to show the thing in context. It's almost like they can see it at work because you're baking it into everything else that's going on. It is a natural part of what they are learning. It's okay to remind them at the end. Once again, by the way, that book I mentioned is available on Amazon or on my website. But bake the ask itself into your talk, into your presentation. 22. End Your Presentation on a High Note: With all this great work, at some point, you still have to end your presentation. What's the best way to end it? Well, the best way to end your presentation is on a high ramp up the excitement at the end. Use your voice for this to let your voice rise a little bit. So excitements in what's happening and how the people feel. There are a few different options for how to end your presentation seamlessly to give it a nice conclusion, instead of just a fade out. One is to give them the action to perform. We've touched on this before, the fact that you want to be able to tell people when we're done here, you can go straight back to your desk or straight back to your home and do this functional productive thing. You've mentioned that at some point in your presentation, this is a good point to mention that again, you can also close with a story. If you opened with a story and you also want to close with a story, then you might have withheld the punchline of the story. You might have withheld a cliffhanger piece of information and you bring it in now. Or there may have been an additional conclusion to the story. And so you remind them of the story and bring it to an end. If you didn't open with a story, well then tell the story at the end. You can give a summary, say the words. The most important thing I want you to remember is and give them that core idea if you wish, even the three supporting points, but they are literally bullet points. Do not say, I want you to remember this one simple thing and then speak for another ten minutes. If you're ending with a summary, your summary is 90 seconds. Another thing you can do is have your audience repeat back the core idea to you either by saying, what's the core idea that you're taking away today? Or if your core idea is a catchy phrase, then literally have everybody in the room chanted, so to speak. I don't mean over and over, but say the phrase, I gave a presentation once were, the core idea was marketing is everything, you know, branding is everything you do. And at the end of the presentation, that came up again on the slide and I said to the room, so what have we learned today? And everybody in the room along with me said this phrase. Again, it gets people talking right at the end and it's kind of fun to say something in a group so it can be an effective way to end on a high, your ending is just as important as your opening. In the opening you want to hook them, you want to catch their interests right away. In the ending, you want them to finish the experience with the smile on their face. 23. Master the Q&A: The Q and a, this is the part of presentations that people seem to dread the most, even when people get over their hesitation of giving presentations, they often still hate the Q&A. They're terrified of it because they don't know what people will ask. It's impossible to prepare. Or what if nobody asks anything at all? Is that even worse? What if I'm just standing there and complete silence? Well, that actually points to the importance of the Q&A. The Q&A is your friend. You want that interaction in the Q&A is where your audience gets to flip those tables, where they are now leading the discussion and you're the one interacting with them. This is your conversation. And the more you're getting the questions, the more people were engaged, and the more they participate, the more that they will remember. Q and a. Is your friend. But a few tips for handling the Q&A because it can be difficult. One thing you can do is ask the first question. Once it gets to Q and a, you can say, well, actually I have a first queue and turn it around to the audience. What would you do next? Or what do you think is the biggest obstacle to you doing this now? Or what is your main takeaway from today, or something more specific that pertains to your presentation. But by initiating the Q&A, you get people talking. Once you do start getting those questions, a little bonus tip. Don't answer with great question. It's not that it's a bad thing to tell people that they've asked a good question. It's just that that immediate response is really overused and it can feel a bit lazy. I don't think it's an absolute disaster if you do that by any means, but I encourage you to try to avoid it. Notice if that's what you're saying and replace it. You still have ever want to acknowledge the question. You can do that with a different type of phrase like, Well, I'm glad you raised that. Or yes, let's look into that. Or even That's an important point because all three of the sentences that I just said and with a comma and you go on and address the question and the answer. Whereas That's a great question, sort of ends in a full stop. Do acknowledge a good question. Do acknowledge every question. Just make sure you don't sound like you're just saying this line without really thinking about it. What if somebody disagrees with you? What if somebody raises their hand or stands up and says, Well, I think that's all wrong, and here's why. That's okay. People can disagree with you if you're a little flustered by that or if you're not entirely sure how to answer right away by yourself some time, you could repeat back to them what they said to you by saying, if I understand you correctly and then repeat it back in your own words, there may be nothing for you to answer. Maybe this is a disagreement you don't want to engage in. So by repeating it back to them, you've acknowledged their question, you've addressed it, and then you can just end with yes, that's an interesting perspective. That's something to think about. It's okay, Maybe you're learning something new in the room to, maybe not, if you're giving the impression that you are, people are allowed to disagree with you. It's not a problem, it's not a bad thing. What if you're the one doing the disagreeing? What if somebody says something or ask something and you think, well, that's all wrong, well, the best thing to do in that case is to start your answer with yes. Start by agreeing. Repeat back a bit of what they said. There will be something in there with which you agree because you're all on the same presentation after all, pick up the parts that you do agree with or that are just neutral ground. Repeat them back and then you can say something like where we differ on this. Or you could say, however my experience, or you might say, the reason I look at it this other way is when you disagree with somebody, first of all, openly agree with them, and then gently introduce your point-of-view. Why you have that point of view. You are not actively and openly disagreeing with the person in the room. It's more that you are continuing that conversation. Finally, what if you do not know the answer? A great fear a lot of people have with Q&A, use some of the tips I've mentioned so far and rehash the question. You could say. Tell me more about that, or what's driving that question, or why does that stand out to you? Respond to the question with a question, ask them to elaborate. Ask them why this particular thing is of interest. If it gets to the point where you really can't answer, then you tell them why you can't answer. Say, I don't know. I'd have to look at that research to give you a correct response. Or I have never come across that particular scenario, then offer to catch up with that afterwards. It's perfectly okay for you to not be able to answer a question. Don't be afraid of that, as I've already said, be confident in what you know, be confident in the application of your knowledge. If you learn something new, great. If you disagree with something, that's okay. If you don't know something, then it's something that you don't need to know. But you can always go find out. 24. Why you need to practice: It is true what they say practice really can make perfect. Of course, you're not interested in being perfect. You're just interested in being good. Practicing your presentation is the most important thing that you can do. All of the preparation and great design interaction opportunities and clear speaking, what matter at all if your final delivery is not practiced and fixed, if you're not able to handle being there in the moment, you can't know how you sound, you can't know how the presentation will flow. You can't know how long it will take you if you don't practice out loud as if it were the real thing. In the next few lessons, we'll cover how and why to practice your presentation for the delivery, for the timing, for the technology you need to use. 25. Practice delivery: Practice for the delivery. You have to hear it out loud. You won't know if your presentation really flows well, if it makes sense and if it sounds compelling until you hear yourself say it, It's not enough to think about what you will say or read it. You want to actually hear the words coming out of your mouth. Grab your notes, stand up in the middle of the room, and recite your presentation as if it were the real thing. What are you listening for when you're practicing out loud? The narrative for one thing, it does it flow well? Is your presentation easy to follow? Is it clear? And is your message specific? Listen to your voice. Do you sound the same throughout? And I don't mean monotone, but do you have the same level of energy? Do you maintain the excitement and enthusiasm from beginning to end your presentation in the correct order. What would happen if you move that middle part further up where if you swapped these two particular talking points, practicing out loud allows you to test a different orders or different flow for your narrative. Are you using the correct words? Listen to yourself. Are these easily accessible? When in doubt, simplify, simplify, simplify. You emphasizing the correct words. What is most important? What do you want people to hear? What do you want to make stand out in your presentation? Most importantly, the more you practice, the more confidence that gives you, the more you hear yourself say your presentation out loud than the more you're going to become comfortable with the material and familiar with the material. So that on the day you will feel that you have a good grasp. You could practically do it from memory. 26. Practice timing: A pet peeve of mine is hearing a presenter say, we're running short on time. So let me hurry through these last points. Or even worse, we're running short on time, so I will skip over these points. I don't want you to either hurry or skip. I'm here to here everything that you have to offer. Make sure I get it. As the presenter, it is your responsibility to stretch out your presentation or shrink it down to the time allotted and never let your audience know that it was anything less than exactly how you planned it. Don't let people feel short changed. Practice with a timer. A few things to note about the timing. For one thing, it will always be slower on the day of the presentation than it is in your practice. Even though you're doing it out loud with any tools and gadgets and trying as much as possible to make it the same as the real thing on the day, it will take you longer to get through the material than it did in your practice. You want to be prepared for that even without the client's interaction. This is the case. I'm in a group where I have to give a 60-second presentation every week, one minute, 60 seconds with no interaction. I practice it at home out loud. I assure you it always takes longer when I'm in the room on the day. It's because we are more alert to our surroundings or there are more interesting surroundings there because we have an audience. We are reacting to how people are reacting to what we're saying. And it does slow us down. We're more likely to add filler words in that we hadn't been doing during our practice. If we get the impression that somebody isn't following us than we tend to add an extra clause or a sentence to make sure that they understand what we're saying. For whatever reason, it will always take a little bit longer in the real thing than it does in your practice. We know how important audience interaction is in your presentation. How do you account for that when you practice for timing, you can't know when practicing exactly how long people will speak, whether they'll speak, how long, when did they may be, how concise and short they may be. You need to be able to adapt. You need to have some filler space in which you can still give valuable material, but material that could still be cut if you don't have time for it. Keep an eye on your time or throughout your presentation and be prepared to maybe interact a little bit longer if you have to, if it looks like you have extra time, then stretch out those interactions when somebody asks a question or give us a comment, repeated back to them in a couple of different ways, or ask more follow-up questions of one individual. If you need to squeeze, you have to know what you could sacrifice if you had to. This underscores the importance of having a single core idea. So you make sure that anything you do remove does not actually cannibalize the essence of your presentation. Keep an extra story or exercise handy. If you need to fill in some time. What I like to do is add a brainstorming exercise if I see that there is a bit of extra time. Finally, use the ending of your presentation in that recap phase. This is where you can ultimately stretch or shrink time if you have too. Once you're getting towards the end of the presentation, you know how much time you have left. You can either make the ending of very quick summary of your core idea or if you have more time than you can elaborate on it a bit more. Repeat some of the detail. Given additional example, the recap is a good place to adapt to time as you have to, because you're not removing anything from the essence of the presentation, from the meat of the material. And you're still giving value because if you have the extra time, you're merely emphasizing the point, giving an extra reminder throughout it all. Make sure you do not let people feel that you are rushed and that they're not getting the full show. Don't make them feel that they can't ask a question or make a comment because you're running out of time. You want your audience to feel completely comfortable from beginning to end. 27. Practice technology: The more technology you use, the higher the risk of technology going wrong, the more you rely on a computer or a remote control or lights camera action, there's always an opportunity for something to go wrong. Practice for two reasons, both to know how to use what you have available and also to have a backup in mind if you need it. What does this look like for an in-person presentation? Well, the first thing to do is find out exactly what the setup is. If you are doing a slideshow, if you're bringing that with you, What are they offering you and what cables do they have? Do you just bring a USB that you can plug into a computer? Do you have to bring your own laptop? Is this all done via Cloud in some way? What cables do you need to bring? What devices do they have? What do you have in? Are they compatible? An, even once you have all these answers, bring everything you have any way because you just never know. Practice your presentation with the slides. This is the ideal and full opportunity of your presentation. So practice out loud with the slides going so that you're matching the correct words and parts of your presentation to the correct slide. But also practice without your slides. What if you get there and it just doesn't work? Be prepared to give your presentation without that assistance. Perhaps have a handout that you want to give people anyway, something that they could use to follow the most of the presentation. Practice with a microphone. If that is a possibility that you might be using one, especially if it's handheld, than just grab a remote or hair brush and practice speaking into it. One of the harder things about doing this is remembering to keep it in front of your mouth and not wave it around or drop your arm. What about for virtual presentations? What do you practicing there? Your audio is one thing, so make sure you have an extra headset. If you use pods, have something with a wire just in case, have a backup in case for any reason, your audio setup doesn't work. Also be prepared to phone into the presentation. If there's a problem with your Wi-Fi or internet connection, if there's any sort of complication, they're, the most important thing is that people are still able to hear your voice. If they can't hear your voice, you can't do the presentation. You have the phone number handy and have your phone handy. Practice with your slideshow. Do you know how to screenshare? Can you do it smoothly without having to stop and say, Okay, I'm going to screen share now where's that button again? If you have to say that it's not the end of the world, but clearly if you'd rather avoid it. Can you still see your notes when you're screen-sharing and full-screen. Do you know how to screen share the correct screen so that they're not seeing your entire presentation before and after, but actually just the live slide in that moment, I have two screens. So when I'm doing a virtual presentation, I take the slideshow itself and put it on my larger screen, the extra one, if you will. Because the video camera is in my laptop, which is the smaller screen, I go into presenter mode. I put the presentation itself on the large screen. The notes that pop up from that go onto my laptop screen because I'm going to be looking into the camera and that way I'm looking straight at my notes as well. You don't need to see your presentation, you just need to see your talking points. Finally, as always, practice without your slideshow. What if for some reason your screenshot doesn't work? What if the Wi-Fi connection somewhere is so weak that it can't handle all the videos and the screen-share. Make sure you're able to go through your presentation without the slideshow, just as if you were in person without a slideshow. Most importantly, be prepared for everything to go wrong. 28. Final project intro: Welcome to your final project. You have made it through the entire course and all the material and you are now ready to put it all to work. Your final project will be a presentation outline. You will create an outline for a presentation including all the key elements mentioned in this course. If you have a presentation coming up, use that material. Use this for that presentation. If you don't have a presentation coming up, then create one, create a real opportunity for speaking. Go to a group of colleagues or a group from a networking association, someplace where you can bring just a few people together and offer to give them a brief presentation on a topic of interest, of interest to you and of interest to them. Think of it as a dress rehearsal. Now let's move to the next video where I will take you through your final project in detail. 29. Final project details: How to fill in your final project. You've got a worksheet attached to this, download that, and you can use that to fill it in or recreated in your own preferred software. Here's what you're going to be doing. The first thing is to write out in freehand what your presentation is about. This is you thinking out loud, I want to talk about or I want to teach about, or I want to share and write out a few lines to describe that. That's to get you thinking about the topic itself and what really matters. From that initial brainstorm, you will extract your core idea, that single sentence that if you could only say one thing, this is what it would be. Remember how important the core idea is to the presentation as a whole. You will keep coming back to the core idea to test the other material and say, does it support the core idea? Does it detract from the core idea? It doesn't distract from the core idea, does it veer away from the core idea? The core idea is the foundation of your presentation. Once you have your core idea, I want you to describe the action that you will want participants to take that will make their life better. This is the what are they learning part. How will they use this for transformation? Once you have this part filled in, scroll onto page to, to build your outline, your narrative arc. What can you use as an introduction? Is it a story or an example and anecdotes? This isn't your final drafts, so it doesn't have to be polished. What you're thinking about here is what will be that hook that you will use? Then briefly describe the call to adventure. I'm using the Nancy Duarte expression here of call to adventure. What we mean here is the body of the presentation, the journey that you will take people on throughout this presentation. What do you want them to learn and believe, and how are you going to share that with them? Again, this is a summary you are preparing your outline, then list those baked in examples of your work. We talked about how the most effective way to use this for promotion is to blend that promotion into the relevant parts of the presentation. List out some examples that you can use in this context with this topic. Finally, list out the different types of interaction that you can use. Find at least three moments of interaction, and try to use a blend of types. Whether it's direct questions, whether it's yes or no's, whether it's brainstorming or any of the other examples we reviewed in the course. At the end of this, you will have the most important elements for your presentation, your core idea, your transformation, the body of the presentation. So the narrative you'll be using, the what's in it for you, yourself, your baked in examples. And of course, the interaction, how you will keep people involved and begin that transformation right there in the room. Once you have completed this presentation, do feel free to share it. Share your experience with other students. Share your experience with me. What did you learn? But most importantly, give that presentation and make it spectacular. 30. Course Conclusion: Congratulations you did it. You completed the course on how to love public speaking. You learned everything from how to construct an idea, how to share it, how to design a presentation, how to involve your audience and all the way to how to deliver the presentation and most importantly, transform the lives of your audience members. If there is only one thing that you take away with you from this class, let it be that each presentation should be a conversation about a single core idea. Your next step, of course, is to complete the project. You will create an outline that you can use in a real life scenario and keep the worksheets, use them over and over again for all your future presentations and get in touch. I want to hear from you, share your project and share your comments, share your questions, and share any additional information you would like to see for a new lesson or lecture, all you have to do is ask. You can contact me directly through this platform. You can come to my website www dot RG breach c.com, and you can use the contact form there. You can subscribe to my YouTube channel called consultant quarter or even better, my weekly email Tuesday on your business, the subscription form is on my website. And on my website you'll also see a link to my book phrases for business success. So feel free to check that out. There were a lot of individual phrases that you can use to find a new paradigm, a new way to approach your own business. Every phrase has homework as well. Thank you for staying with me. Thank you for following through this whole course. I hope you go out there and start giving great presentations and that you have fun while you're doing it, you will discover a whole new side of yourself. Enjoy, and don't forget to come back regularly and check for new lectures. What I add a lecture, I will always make sure to add a note here so you'll know when there's something new by and have fun.