communication tips
How to read a presentation without sending the audience to sleep!
Aug 30, 2017 |
Presenting tips
|communication tips, PRESENTATION TIPS, Presenting tips, PUBLIC SPEAKING TIPS |
We all know that we shouldn’t read a presentation or speech. It’s not ideal and you could end up disconnecting from your audience; it is better to deliver a presentation as a conversation.
However, sometimes for legal, policy or other reasons it is necessary to read verbatim.
The presentation tips below have been selected from a longer list and mainly focus on the ones that enable you to maintain eye contact, which is arguably the principal challenge when reading a speech.
1. Type the speech on the upper 2/3 of the page. This will make eye contact easier as you have a shorter distance to raise your head.
2. Begin with first 2 pages side by side. As you reach the end of the first page slide the 2nd page on top of the first. This prevents the paper from shuffling and becoming a distraction.
3. Pace your looking down and looking up. Always ensure that your eyes are up at the end of a sentence.
4. Avoid breaking sentences over pages. This will al...
However, sometimes for legal, policy or other reasons it is necessary to read verbatim.
The presentation tips below have been selected from a longer list and mainly focus on the ones that enable you to maintain eye contact, which is arguably the principal challenge when reading a speech.
1. Type the speech on the upper 2/3 of the page. This will make eye contact easier as you have a shorter distance to raise your head.
2. Begin with first 2 pages side by side. As you reach the end of the first page slide the 2nd page on top of the first. This prevents the paper from shuffling and becoming a distraction.
3. Pace your looking down and looking up. Always ensure that your eyes are up at the end of a sentence.
4. Avoid breaking sentences over pages. This will al...
Truth hurts… but not in the long run
We are delighted to have our founder’s brother, Sean McMahon, doing a guest post about how honesty is always the best policy, especially when it comes to presenting and public speaking…
We are now living in the era of “fake news” and “new truth” where just by saying something makes it so. I much preferred the good old days (i.e. pre-2016) when honesty and truth meant that a fact was real and could be relied upon as being true and correct. Having worked in Financial Services for over 26 years the truth is something that I rely upon every day especially in my interaction with customers and colleagues.
It didn’t take me long to figure out that trying to bluff your way around a subject with a customer when dealing with their money would only end in tears, be this in a presentation or even in a conversation.
Customers found it perfectly acceptable for me to say that I didn’t have the answer to a question and appreciated the fact that I wasn’t trying to pull the woo...
We are now living in the era of “fake news” and “new truth” where just by saying something makes it so. I much preferred the good old days (i.e. pre-2016) when honesty and truth meant that a fact was real and could be relied upon as being true and correct. Having worked in Financial Services for over 26 years the truth is something that I rely upon every day especially in my interaction with customers and colleagues.
It didn’t take me long to figure out that trying to bluff your way around a subject with a customer when dealing with their money would only end in tears, be this in a presentation or even in a conversation.
Customers found it perfectly acceptable for me to say that I didn’t have the answer to a question and appreciated the fact that I wasn’t trying to pull the woo...