Actually, these aren’t American tips at all – they’re not even tips for American in particular, but they’re tips I wrote (in a hurry) for an American newspaper which needed some tips in a hurry to fill some space and meet a print deadline – I reporoduce them here simply “as is”. :)<\/p>\n
1<\/strong> 2<\/strong> 3<\/strong> Having something worthwhile to say is surely the most basic (but most often overlooked) of presentation skills…….!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Actually, these aren’t American tips at all – they’re not even tips for American in particular, but they’re tips I wrote (in a hurry) for an American newspaper which needed some tips in a hurry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-blog-related","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nRemember the presentation is not about you – you’re not that important…. get over it. Unless you’re Nelson Mandela or one of half a dozen other people in the world no one’s there to hear you<\/em>. They’re there to hear what you’ve got to say<\/em>. To think they’re there to hear you is a kind of hubris. Think about it: which is more important to the audience – you or the work of whatever charity you’re supporting? If you think it’s you, you shouldn’t be speaking.<\/p>\n
\nSecondly, always check with yourself what your audience knows before you start. Your job isn’t<\/em> to tell people what you know – it’s to tell them what they<\/em> need to know in the way they<\/em> need to know it. That means your presentation should tell them everything they<\/em> need to know but only<\/em> what they need to know: everything else just gets in the way and makes it harder for them to get to the guts of what you’re saying.<\/p>\n
\nLastly, don’t become a professional public speaker because you want to do public speaking! If you must<\/em> become a professional speaker, let it be for the right reasons… because you’ve got something burning inside you that you’re so passionate about that you just have to tell people about it by making presentations. If you don’t have that, you’ll end up boring and your audiences (if you have them!) will end up disappointed. What’s more, you’ll deserve it. Your ego isn’t important – what you have to say might be! :-)<\/p>\n