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Use Video To Become A Confident Presenter
Nerves are a funny thing. Many communication and presentation skills professionals will attest to the fact that they are nervous before giving a presentation. Good presenters still have nerves but they use presentation skills to channel those nerves into productive energy.
Presentation skills and communication skills are very similar and the same fundamental principles apply. Your job as a presenter is to structure your presentation to effectively communicate your objectives and unique selling points. This simplification makes it sound easy, however you must bear in mind that there is an audience involved.
Like many challenges in life, success is in the preparation. Not only do you have to know your material well, but you must communicate this information in a compelling and interesting way. For the audience to feel you have authority and to buy into what you say, you must project confidence even if you do not feel it.
The formal setting of a presentation makes presentation skills essential to overcoming your personal attack of the jitters. Many top presenters design a pre-presentation ritual that they perform before going up.
This ritual involves a combination of positive mental projection and physical exercises to control the nerves. Deep breathing exercises are a good way to ground yourself and shaking the nerves out of your body can rid you of physical tension which can lead to nervous gestures and stiffness.
In terms of your presentation itself, a great way of evaluating how you project yourself and of developing your presentation skills is by recording your presentation on video. Watching yourself back can be like listening to your recorded voice played back to you; you cannot believe it is you. When you have the warts-and-all evidence, you will see how you come across to your audience. You'll discover what you do well and also the things that might distract your audience, or make you appear less confident. Then you can apply presentation skills to overcome them.
There are many telltale signs of nerves that come over to your audience. Tone of voice, gestures, posture, eye contact and any other elements of your physical presentation create an effect on the audience; presentation skills can ensure that this effect is a positive one. Presentation skills training is a helpful resource where you can explore your presentation technique.
Presentation skills training that makes use of video can be particularly effective as it shines a light on how we project ourselves and enables us to make positive changes to project with more confidence. Video clips can also be used to demonstrate how other people present, so that you can see what works and what doesn't and then model the effective behaviours and powerful styles.
No matter how thorough your nerve-busting ritual might be, nothing can benefit your presentation skills like presentation skills training. By recording your presentation and receiving feedback from experts and peers on how you are doing, you can develop your presentation to a point where you are confident, clear and impactful.
About the Author Dominic Donaldson is leading consultant in presentation skills and communication skills training, delivering courses worldwide.
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