Preparation the day before (brings peace and calm)
- Know your audience
- Prepare an outline of what you want to say
- Prepare an incredible opening and ending
- Have a backup plan if there are technical difficulties
- Use stories, and don’t forget your call to action
- Dress for the occasion
- Use a prop
- Practise on your own
- Record yourself, then watch it
- Remember all skills take practice
60 minutes before
- Focus on past successes
- Listen to one of your favourite pieces of music
- Talk a quick walk outside
- Get a bottle or glass of water
- Get to your location early
- Do a vocal warm-up
- Check the whiteboard has pens
- Practice gratitude
- Set up your equipment and test it
- Focus on giving a gift
10 minutes before
- Check your appearance
- Go to the toilet
- Introduce yourself to some of the audience and ask them questions
- Drink some water
- Test the microphone if using one
- If you must use notes, use them confidently
- Remember the fact that they don’t know what you will say
- Shake out any tension
- Ground yourself
- Remember you won’t die
Body language
- Look at your audience
- Smile
- Stand tall and check your posture
- Stand away from any furniture that blocks you
- Flash your eyebrows for more engagement
- Maintain open body language
- Talk to the people, not your notes
- Lean in
- Pause and connect with your eyes
- Unclench your jaw
- Keep knees unlocked
- Synchronise your words with your body
- Prompt your audience with gestures
- Use descriptive gestures
- Move toward the audience
- Don’t fidget with objects
- Release your abdominal muscles
- Look like you are enjoying the experience
- Make your arms do some work
- Be careful of specific hand gestures
Voice power
- Pause before delivering a punch line
- Reduce urms and ars and filler words
- Stop long enough for your audience to ingest
- Vary your voice
- Remain authentic
- Slow it down
- Project your voice
- Talk from your belly
- Focus on breath
- Be aware of your delivery
In the webinar/ training/ presentation
- Welcome everyone and introduce yourself
- Be enthusiastic and check your energy levels.
- State and describe what your presentation/ talk is about
- Explain why this talk is relevant
- Use signposting phrases or sentences
- Highlight importance information
- Paraphrase if necessary
- If you wander from your talk, state it so and direct the exchange back to what it was you wanted to say
- Go with the flow
- Get engagement and use humour appropriately
- Be direct
- Adjust to the audience
- Use the tools for the visual learners
- Get to the point
- Use open questions and invite your audience to answer
- Use rhetoric questions and answer them yourself
- Let your audience read for themselves, then talk
- Keep things simple
- Summarise and thank your audience
- Ask your audience, if they have any questions
Online audience
- Sit up straight
- Look at the camera as much as possible
- Invest in a desk you can stand up at
- Check your mic and camera ( invest in good quality)
- Position your desk to have a wall behind you
- Make the wall behind you pleasant to look at
- Check your lighting
- Make sure your audience is familiar with the tools and what you expect of them.
- Create a working environment where you won’t be disturbed
- Have fun
Nice to have
- Reflect on the session
- Write some love notes to yourself on what went well
- Write some notes to yourself on what you could improve
- Find that good buddy to give you some feedback
- Celebrate the moment by sharing the experience with someone who cares
- Permit yourself to forget any moments you didn’t feel went well
- Make a note to yourself to try the same prepared presentation/ talk again
- Treat yourself to a sauna/ warm bath/ or glass of bubbly
- Voice out loud and in front of the mirror, “Yes, I did it !”
- Tell yourself that this is going to happen again
Need any help with an important presentation? Do you have a big opportunity to really shine in front of an audience and need some feedback? I’d love for you to book a discovery call, where we could find out if I can help and how we could take this forward.