Guided Learning: Appreance and delivery of presentations
Non-verbal communication during a presentation is of great importance. If gestures and non-verbal clues don't match your words, not many people will believe your story. As explained in the video, standing enthuasiastic, making eye contact, having a connection with your audience and varying your voice can all make a big difference.
BODY LANGUAGE
1. Killer presentation skills
During this video, information about presenting is explained in a rather informal way, but the focus of the video is on non-verbal communication: what to do and what not to do. The video also gives some tips and entertaining examples and references.
Deciding on your Presentation method
2. Body language in presentations
In this STU hand-out everything you need to generate an interactive presentation is explained. Think of what to wear, for example, or how to stand in front of your audience. It is very useful to use this hand-out as a sort of checklist before you have to present, just to make sure you have thought of everything. Click here to go to the hand-out
3. Hand gestures
This STU Powerpoint presentation explains how to use your hands effectively during your presentation. Hands play a very important role during presenting, so it is important that you know what to do with them. This topic was partially illustrated in the video at the beginning of this topic guide, but is explained in much more detail in this presentation. Click here to go to the presentation
4. Common mistakes
10 worst body language mistakes
SPEAKING
1. Components of effective vocal delivery
In this genius video, a TEDx expert tells us how to sound interesting by just using your voice and gesture. This also shows how important delivery is in such a presentation to the video.
2. How to speak so that people want to listen
In this video a TEDx expert explains there is much more to it than just having a fancy presentation or just boringly providing information to make people want to listen to your presentation. The way you are talking and how you are behaving, plays a major role. Go to the video.
3. Better public speaking and presentation
This article explains in a bit more detail on how to manage certain aspects of presenting. Embedded in these explanations there are some tips and tricks on how to improve your next presentation. Go to the article.
4. A complete guide to speaking in public
A final and complete guide is given on the following website. It includes how you defeat anxiety, which visuals to use and most important: how to deliver a great speech!
HANDLING PRESENTATION NERVES
Preparation
The most common tip provided is to rehearse your presentation over and over and be well prepared. This might help some people, but our experience is as well that if you rehearse too much, you only keep thinking of the exact words that you prepared and get a black out when you cannot come up with these words. Rather think of some key words per slide, make sure you know the content in general and trust yourself that you can improvise during the presentation.
Second tip: don't take an example in well known public speakers or vloggers that you see in TED talks, on YouTube and Instagram. They are a different league and do this for money.
Health
Make sure your mind and body can function optimally when doing the presentation by having enough sleep the night before, not drinking any alcohol, coffee or energy drinks just before, and do some physical exercise the day before. Doing yoga or a meditation exercise on the morning itself also help to feel calm.
Just before the presentation
This might sound like a strange advice, but eat a banana just before your presentation. Bananas are natural beta blockers and reduce adrenaline.
Chewing gum also helps to make your brain more alert and reduce anxiety.
Taking deep breaths (to the stomach) instead of breathing very shallow helps you to feel more calm and relaxed. The same goes for relaxation and visualization exercises.
Massaging your forehead just before the presentation, energizes the front of your brain and the speech center.
During the presentation
Your nerves often want you to rush through your presentation, while pausing regularly to breathe actually makes you more relaxed as well as easier to listen to.
The same goes for making eye contact. This also helps to feel support from your audience and see that they are not about to eat you alive.
After the presentation
Reflect on what you did well and don't think about the things you could improve. Your first step is to reduce your nerves, improving other points of your presentation will come later.
If you are someone that can take compliments and not only listens to the criticism, you can also ask your audience for feedback.
Giving presentations is like riding bikes. You need to practice and challenge yourself to become better and know how to break. Giving a different kind of presentation to a new audience, just like riding a different bike in a city you are unfamiliar, will always be a bit more complicated and thereby lead to more nerves.
ENGAGING AUDIENCE
When a crowd is staring at you blankly how will you engage them? Here are a few ideas for better audience engagement: 5 tips for powerfull audience participation
5 tips for presenting boring technical presentations
HANDLING QUESTIONS
1. Handling difficult questions during a presentation
In this video some difficult questions are explained by means of drawings. You will probably recognize some that you have come across before. This video gives some solutions to these specific kinds of questions.
2. Managing Q&A
In general, at the end of your presentation, there will be a question and answer session in which you try to give answers to the questions the audience has. This Powerpoint presentation helps you to manage such a Q&A session. This is necessary because it can be quite difficult.
The Q&A session is very important, but how often do you see people ending with only asking whether there are questions, with a look in their eyes that they hope that no one has any. Alternatively you can be pro-active and prepare questions or do a little quiz. It can increase your credibility and provide evidence for your story.
In this exercise you work together with another student. One person presents, while the other one asks various questions at the end. Together you evaluate how the presenter handled the different questions. The main message is to be short and concise, do not give a whole new presentation.
Other sources:
9 tips for handling a Q&A session
Click here to go to the website
Click here to go the presentation
EXERCISE
You can start immediately with improving your non-verbal communication during your presentation! In this exercise you record several versions of yourself presenting. Experience how it makes a difference whether you stand still or move a lot.
Sources and more information
Article Skills you need - Coping with presentation nerves
Video YouTube - How to not get nervous speaking in front of people
Video YouTube - Beyond the common presentation tips