Body Language
Uses engaging and approachable gestures, facial expressions, and postures.
Presenting
Presenting is identified as one of Matter’s top soft skills that is linked to performance, development, and career success.
Delivers effective, understandable, and engaging presentations to a variety of audiences.
What is Presenting?
An amazing idea can only go so far if you can’t present it in a manner that motivates and inspires others. This applies to all aspects of business, be it pitching, public speaking, demonstrations, sales, and presentations.
The best presentations don’t just deliver information, but inspires others to believe in the ideas and take action. Comparing presenters to teachers, William Arthur Ward shares, “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”
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Amazing Presenters You May Know
Amy Cuddy
You wouldn’t have known that Cuddy was nervous to step onto the TED stage to deliver her talk. Having survived a traumatic brain injury in a car accident, Cuddy was inspired to study the science of body language. In addition to telling her inspiring the audience, she also demonstrated how good presenting skills and great body posture can turn a personal story into the second-most-viewed TED Talk in history.
Shivani Siroya
The CEO of Tala, a smartphone lending startup, Siroya demonstrates her ability to present to different audiences. Using her presenting skills, she has raised venture capital and inspire Tala’s customers who often lack financial access to fair loans. In her TED Talk, she tied the feelings of comfort and financial security into our desire to be altruistic. Her talk shows the power of personal family stories in the emotionally-motivating cause behind her business.
Susan Cain
The American writer considers herself to be an extreme introvert. However, she doesn’t let that get in the way of being a good presenter. In her public talks and writing, Cain stresses the importance of introverts in creating and sharing new ideas. Rather than overlooking introverts for being quiet, she attests and proves that introverts can be “people who are very good at exchanging ideas, and advancing ideas.” In the right environment where they’re encouraged to participate, introverts often share and present the best ideas.
Why Presenting Is Important
Conveying Ideas
No leader can properly run a company, team, or project without being able to effectively communicate their ideas in a concise, clear, replicable manner.
Gaining a Consensus
No project can survive if people refuse to buy in to the project’s vision or goals. No initiative can succeed without commitment. To succeed in any endeavor, you need everyone on your team moving in the same direction.
Inspiring Others
Being able to evoke emotion in your presentation is essential, whether that is to energize, lead, get buy-in, or inspire.
What Presenting is NOT About
Authoritarianism
Good presenting skills come from a place of collective good, not from top-down demands and adamant directives.
Indoctrination
Your goal in presenting should never be about insisting that your audience believe a certain way and filling their heads with ideas that they object to.
Slideshows
Good presentations are more than just the recitation of information on a screen. If something can just as easily be read as presented, just send an email.
Abilities That Lead To The Mastery of Presenting
1. Engaging your audience
The best presentations engage the audience. Come up with ways to make people feel like participants in your presentation. Pose questions. Ask for their points of view, or use them to help with your demonstration. People have short attention spans so be interactive throughout your presentation.
2. Keeping it simple
Try to keep your presentation straightforward and to the point. Fancy talks, loads of facts and figures and complicated sentences can overwhelm both you and your audience. They will fidget, zone out or go to sleep. If you keep it simple, your audience is more apt to grasp the message you are trying to transmit.
3. Making the presentation entertaining
Presentations should be entertaining and informative. Unlike an email or report, people expect some appeal to their emotions. Simply reciting dry facts without any passion or humor will make people less likely to hear your message.
4. Moving around and gesturing
Moving around can add energy and variety to your presentation. It makes you look more confident because people who are nervous are generally frozen in one position. However, intentionally moving and gesturing to engage your audience is not the same as pacing back and forth.
5. Speaking slowly
Nervous and inexperienced speakers tend to speak way too fast. Consciously slow your speech down and add pauses for emphasis.
6. Starting with a bang
Start your presentation with a compelling quote, a great story, a stunning statistic or even a provocative question. Your goal should be to get people’s attention. Avoid starting your presentation by introducing yourself or telling people you’re getting started.
7. Sticking to three points
To avoid overwhelming your audience with too much information, narrow your presentation down to three points. State the three points at the beginning of your presentation and then reiterate the points at the end. Even if your audience forgets most of what you said, they are likely to remember your three points.
8. Using visuals
A presentation without visuals will not be as effective as one where you do to engage your audience. Use pictures, animations, charts, graphs or even real-life objects to emphasize and illustrate your point. Try to stay away from having too much text in your presentation.
Who can benefit from practicing Presenting?
- Matter forTop Skills For A DesignerThe professional skills designers need to develop a growth-mindset and become better leaders.Learn more
- Matter forTop Skills For A FreelancerThe professional skills freelancers need to develop a growth-mindset and become better leaders.Learn more
- Matter forTop Skills For A Project ManagerThe professional skills project managers need to develop a growth-mindset and become better leaders.Learn more
- Matter forTop Skills For A Software EngineerThe professional skills software engineers need to develop a growth-mindset and become better leaders.Learn more
Explore Complementary Skills to Presenting
Presenting shouldn’t be practiced in a vacuum. Improve your Presenting by exploring and developing these complementary skills.
