Delivering the Presentation
Printed Page 597-600
Delivering the Presentation
When giving your presentation, you will concentrate on what you have to say. However, you will have three additional concerns: staying calm, using your voice effectively, and using your body effectively.
Most professional actors admit to being nervous before a performance, so it is no wonder that most technical speakers are nervous. You might well fear that you will forget everything or that no one will be able to hear you. These fears are common. But keep in mind three facts about nervousness:
- You are much more aware of your nervousness than the audience is. They are farther away from your trembling hands.
- Nervousness gives you energy and enthusiasm. Without energy and enthusiasm, your presentation will be flat. If you seem bored and listless, your audience will become bored and listless.
- After a few minutes, your nervousness will pass. You will be able to relax and concentrate on the subject.
This advice is unlikely to make you feel much better if you are distracted by nerves as you wait to give your presentation. Experienced speakers offer three tips for coping with nervousness:
- Realize that you are prepared. If you have done your homework, prepared the presentation carefully, and rehearsed it several times, you’ll be fine.
- Realize that the audience is there to hear you, not to judge you. Your listeners want to hear what you have to say. They are much less interested in your nervousness than you are.
- Realize that your audience is made up of individual people who happen to be sitting in the same room. You’ll feel better if you realize that audience members are like the people you talk to every day and they also get nervous before making presentations.
When it is time to begin, don’t jump up to the lectern and start speaking quickly. Walk up slowly and arrange your text, outline, or note cards before you. If water is available, take a sip. Look out at the audience for a few seconds before you begin. Begin with “Good morning” (or “Good afternoon” or “Good evening”), and refer to any officers and dignitaries present. If you have not been introduced, introduce yourself. In less-formal contexts, just begin your presentation.
So that the audience will listen to you and have confidence in what you say, use your voice and your body to project an attitude of restrained self-confidence. Show interest in your topic and knowledge about your subject.
Releasing Nervous Energy
Experienced speakers suggest the following four strategies for dealing with nervousness before a presentation.
- Walk around. A brisk walk of a minute or two can calm you by dissipating some of your nervous energy.
- Go off by yourself for a few minutes. Having some time alone can help you compose your thoughts and realize that you can handle your nervousness.
- Talk with someone for a few minutes. For some speakers, distraction works best. Find someone to talk to.
- Take several deep breaths, exhaling slowly. Doing so will help you control your nerves.
Inexperienced speakers often have problems with five aspects of vocalizing.
- Volume. Because acoustics vary greatly from room to room, you won’t know how well your voice will carry in a particular setting until you have heard someone speaking there. In some rooms, speakers can use a conversational volume. Other rooms require greater voice projection. Because more people speak too softly than too loudly, you might ask if the people in the back of the room can hear you. However, even soft-spoken people tend to speak too loudly when they speak into microphones. If you are using a mic, glance at your audience to see if you need to adjust your volume. The body language of audience members will be clear.
- Speed. Nervousness makes people speak quickly. Even if you think you are speaking at the right rate, you might be going a little too fast for some listeners. Although you know your subject well, your listeners are trying to understand new information. For particularly difficult points, slow down for emphasis. After finishing one major point, pause before introducing the next one.
- Pitch. In an effort to control their voices, many speakers end up flattening their pitch. The resulting monotone is boring and, for some listeners, distracting. Try to let the pitch of your voice go up or down as it would in a normal conversation.
- Articulation. Nervousness can accentuate sloppy pronunciation. If you want to say environment, don’t say envirament. A related problem occurs with technical words and phrases, especially the important ones. When a speaker uses a phrase over and over, it tends to get clipped and become difficult to understand. Unless you articulate carefully, Scanlon Plan will end up as Scanluhplah.
- Nonfluencies. Avoid such meaningless fillers as you know, like, okay, right, uh, and um. These phrases do not hide the fact that you aren’t saying anything. A thoughtful pause is better than an annoying verbal tic.
Besides listening to you, the audience will be looking at you. Effective speakers use their body language to help listeners follow the presentation.
Facing an Audience
As you give a presentation, keep in mind these four guidelines about physical movement.
- Maintain eye contact. Eye contact helps you see how the audience is receiving the presentation. You will see, for instance, if listeners in the back are having trouble hearing you. With small groups, look at each listener randomly; with larger groups, look at each segment of the audience frequently during your speech. Do not stare at the screen, the floor, your notes, or out the window.
- Use natural gestures. When people talk, they often gesture with their hands. Most of the time, gestures make a presentation look natural and improve listeners’ comprehension. You can supplement your natural gestures by using your arms and hands to signal pauses and to emphasize important points. When referring to graphics, walk toward the screen and point to direct the audience’s attention. Avoid mannerisms—physical gestures that serve no useful purpose, such as jiggling the coins in your pocket or pacing back and forth. Like verbal mannerisms, physical mannerisms are often unconscious. Constructive criticism from friends can help you pinpoint them.
- Don’t block the audience’s view of the screen. Stand off to the side of the screen. Use a pointer to indicate key words or images on the screen.
- Control the audience’s attention. People will listen to and look at anything that is interesting. If you hand out photocopies at the start of the presentation, some people will start to read them and stop listening to you. If you leave an image on the screen after you finish talking about it, some people will keep looking at it instead of listening to you. When you want the audience to look at you and listen to you, remove the graphics or make the screen blank.
If your audience includes people of different cultures and native languages, keep in mind the following three suggestions:
- Hire translators and interpreters if necessary. If many people in the audience do not understand your language, hire interpreters (people who translate your words as you speak them) and translators (people who translate your written material in advance).
- Use graphics effectively to reinforce your points for nonnative speakers. Try to devise ways to present information using graphics—flowcharts, diagrams, and so forth—to help your listeners understand you. Putting more textual information on graphics will allow your listeners to see as well as hear your points.
- Be aware that gestures can have cultural meanings. As discussed in Chapter 12, American hand gestures (such as the thumbs-up sign or the “okay” gesture) have different—and sometimes insulting—meanings in other cultures. Therefore, it’s a good idea to avoid the use of these gestures. You can’t go wrong with an arms-out, palms-up gesture that projects openness and inclusiveness.