Approach

Probably the central idea of these courses is that presentations and conversations are essentially the same thing. You use the same palette of skills that you have developed through years of conversing with people (and this set of skills is considerable) as you do when you are making a presentation.

Making eye contact, varying your tone, pitch and speed of your voice, injecting energy into your words, telling stories, drawing analogies, using body language to enhance your expression – we have learnt to use all of these techniques, and many more, to express ourselves in conversation and we can just as effectively use them to express ourselves compellingly when making a presentation. The picture, showing a woman talking to two friends, could as easily be labelled ‘presentation’ as ‘conversation’.

Why then, if it is all so simple, are so many presentations torturous hard work? Why, for the audience, is it often so hard to follow what the presenter is talking about or to even stay awake? Why do speakers suffer from severe nerves, lose their way, mumble incoherently or go careering over the allotted time without realising it?

The answer to all these questions is that speaking before a group is a very fearful experience, for everyone, and it causes presenters to do things that they wouldn’t normally do. The blind acceptance of PowerPoint for use in all presentations is the best example of this, but there are many more, relating, in particular, to body language and speaking style.

A major part of the training focuses on getting your conversational skills to the podium in one piece, and then using them to present with confidence and energy. A large element in this is planning the content of the material so that it is easy to deliver in a way that is natural to you.

By understanding this issue, a presentation can be turned from something that is dull for the audience and terrifying for the presenter, into something that is exhilarating for both.