I recently stumbled across an entry on Richard Branson’s blog where he briefly offers advice to some people who have asked him how does he always appear so confident when speaking in public.

He offers some very sound advice. Forget that you are speaking to many people! Instead remind yourself that this is a conversation between you and a series of individuals. Very few people get nervous speaking to another person one on one. Set aside the thoughts that are telling you that the audience is there as a whole group. They are in the room listening to you as a collection of individuals. If you can picture yourself having a conversation with them individually you will remove the pressure that is associated with speaking to the audience as one large group.

Take the pressure off and have a conversation with each member of your audience.

As presenter, one of the most challenging presentations to deliver is the technical presentation. They have a unique set of challenges that you don’t find in any other type of presentation. The first challenge is typically the presenter is the stereotypical geek, someone who is not a naturally gifted with charisma and confidence. Couple this with a subject which is inherently dry, and an audience that has varying interest or understanding on the subject and you can start to see why technical presentations are one of the most challenging presentations to deliver.

Understanding that technical presentations have a unique set of challenges, how can you give yourself the best chance of delivering an informative, interesting, and enjoyable technical presentation for everyone?

1. Don’t assume the audience knows what you know

One of the major challenges with technical presentations is to know what level of detail to cover. Whether it’s comfort or whether it’s complacency too often speakers deliver technical presentations at level that the audience doesn’t understand.

The audience is not interested or impressed by a presenter who stands in front of them and spews jargon and technical detail which they cannot understand. Often your audience will sit politely and patiently, with a glazed look on their face and endure your talk. You won’t know that you have bored your audience until you reach the end and they quietly file out of the room without asking you a single question. Both you and your audience have just wasted valuable time achieving nothing…

The key is to understand who will be in your audience. Your audience will have a variety of people, each with their own levels of experience and understanding on your topic. But if you can prepare and deliver a presentation that is understood by at least 70% of your audience you will be successful in delivering a presentation that is understood, and not considered a waste of time by anybody.

2. Compare your concept to something your audience knows/understands

A true expert is someone who can take a difficult subject and translate it so that those who are not experts can understand it. The metaphor is one of the best tools to utilize in a technical presentation to help position you as an expert in your subject – someone who can take their technical knowledge and translate it into something understood and appreciated by others.

There is some work involved in identifying an appropriate metaphor, but the reward will come at the conclusion of your presentation with an appreciative audience who will consider you the “guru” on your particular topic. For a great resource on how to develop good metaphors check out the book Metaphorically Selling by Anne Miller.

3. Keep your slides clear

One of my favourite examples of what not to do in a technical presentation is the application developer who includes lines of code in their PowerPoint slides! What benefit is there in displaying lines of code on the screen for your audience to read? Unless you are showing something VERY specific that needs that level of detail there is nothing to be gained by displaying such detail. Your audience will not have the ability (or interest) to decipher the detail they are being bombarded with.

With everything you display on the screen ask yourself this question “Is this slide for the benefit of audience understanding or is this slide for my benefit?” If the answer is “This slide is crucial to audience understanding” then keep the slide. However if it’s any hesitation as to who will benefit from seeing the slide then dump it! You’ll only confuse and bore your audience!

4. Make diagrams/schematics relevant

Along similar lines as point three, this relates specifically to diagrams. Often diagrams will be displayed to assist audience understanding, and as the saying goes a picture can replace a thousand words. However the issue with most diagrams is that the presenter wants to reference a small section of the diagram. The result is your audience will head off on a journey of discovery as the try and decipher and understand the rest of the diagram, leaving you; the presenter talking about one aspect while the audience is thinking about another.

The key is to display only the part of the diagram or schematic that is relevant for what you are discussing on the screen. I know that this may mean your presentation will take longer to prepare as you tweak your diagrams and slides but as we have covered above your audience will appreciate your efforts and they will elevate you to guru status.

5. You don’t have to be 100% accurate

This might sound like heresy at first glance, and I’m certainly not advocating you distort the truth or provide intentional misinformation. Techies and engineers work in a binary environment where things are right or wrong – it’s the nature of the job. Ask any developer and they will rightly tell you their program will compile or it won’t, there is no middle ground. That’s life in the technical arena; but when we move into the arena of presentation skills we move away from a binary black or white world into an environment where there are many “shades of grey”.

If you try and cover the detail required to be 100% accurate you could easily deliver presentations lasting hours. Too often technical presentations are like drinking from a fire hydrant; too much information flowing too quickly!

Audiences can’t handle receiving all the information you know about a subject – you need to accept that the detail we leave out will not be missed. You need to focus on only the detail that will benefit the audiences understanding. If anybody wants/needs more detail offer a follow up conversation or presentation at a later date.

Too often technical presentations fail to deliver what they set out to achieve. By following the steps outlined above you will deliver technical presentations that exceed the expectations of your audience and elevate you in the eyes of your colleagues. These simple steps will ensure that your technical presentations will be understood and appreciated by audiences (whether they are techies or not!).

Unfortunately what happens is the slides contain the entire speech. If there was no one presenting the slides the audience could still understand the presentation simply by reading each slide as they are projected on to the screen. We have all experienced presentations where the speaker simply read every word on the slide and added nothing more…

Your slides need to enhance what you are saying, if they don’t – dump them!

The easiest way to avoid slides that contain too much text is to prepare properly. I find the best way is to brainstorm using post it notes (that’s right – a simple pen and paper method). You can move ideas around, get creative, and allow you to resist the urge to write your entire presentation on the slides.

Try and let me know how yo go… I know you will find it a liberating experience.

Aside from what skills a job description claims you should have, why should you have great public speaking and presentation skills?

1) Gain respect from colleagues
When you can stand up in meetings and present confidently to your colleagues you doing something they are fearful of invariably you will gain their respect. Your ability to deliver a presentation will set you apart from your colleagues and project the aura of a leader. People respect those who take on the leadership mantle – and you can gain their respect by being prepared to deliver effective presentations in the workplace.

2) Build your repuation within the industry
Apart from gaining a reputation within your own organization, if you have great speaking and presentation skills you can put yourself forward to speak at industry conferences. By delivering presentations at conferences you will develop a name and reputation, gaining credibility and recognition. When other companies look to hire someone with your skill set you will find them calling you first (with a great pay offer to complement your skills).

3) Impress senior management
There are few things more daunting than presenting to the senior executives of your company. In a few minutes you can kill your reputation or you can transform yourself into a company superstar with your presentation. I know what I’d rather do. People naturally reemember someone who was bad or someone who was great. You’ll find it much easier to get a promotion if they remember you for the right reasons.

4) Selling to your customers
Now you don’t have to be in a official sales role to make sales presentations. Almost every company department today has customer, either other internal departments or actual cash paying customers. Similar to the reasons above, you need to build their confidence in you and enhance your repuation with your customers through your presentations. If you give effective presentations you are more likely to gain the agreement on projects or purchase from you because they have confidence and understanding that you can deliver.

5) Gain confidence to stretch yourself
Maybe the biggest reason why you need to have great presentation and speaking skills for your career is confidence. Those people who have mastered the art of public speaking are more confident. They are prepared to try new things and back their ability to master new skills and do n, more challenging roles.

Self confidence is priceless!

During my set I experienced something I have not felt for quite a few years… I started to think about my next words.

Now, that might sound a little strange. But for me a presentation is internalized, and I dont consciously think what my next sentence will be. Instead I let if flow naturally like a conversation. What happened last Wednesday night, about three quarters of the way through my routine, was I swapped from following the internal script inside my heart to thinking about what I wanted to say in my head. The result – I lost my way for several seconds.

The challenge with “thinking” your presentations is you have to be word perfect. The minute you stray away from the script inside your mind your brain doesn’t know where it should head to next. Whereas if you can internalize the key points or themes of what you want to cover you can simply talk to the theme without being tied to knowing exactly which word you need to say next to maintain course.

I challenge you to internalize your next presentation rather than memorize. It will free your mind and your delivery to enjoy the process of sharing a presentation.

These soft skills are:

1. Empathy and understanding

To change an audiences thinking you need to understand where to start. In other words what are the members of your audience thinking and feeling right now. This is crucial to knowing the level to “pitch” your presentation. If you only know your destination and you have no idea where your journey originates the chances of successfully navigating are almost zero. A presenter who can tap into the current thought processes and emotions of an audience stands a far better chance of navigating their audience to his or her intended destination.

2. Organization

Organization is important on two separate levels. Firstly your presentation must have clarity of thought in relation to the ideas your are presenting. If your ideas are jumbled then by the time your presentation reaches its conclusion the minds of your audience will also be jumbled. Secondly, a presenter who is organized in their preparation will also perform better than a presenter who isn’t. Plan your time so you get to the meeting room early, don’t be tweaking your presentation as your audience arrives, meet and greet your audience. In other words get yourself organized so that when show time arrives your only focus is on delivering a great presentation.

3. Time management

This is somewhat related to organization, especially with your pre presentation preparations. But it also applies to the delivery of your presentation. If you have twenty minutes to deliver your presentation then stick to twenty minutes. Nothing will alienate an audience more than a presenter who believes that their presentation and what they have to talk about is the number one priority for everybody. Respect your audience and they will respect what you have to say. There’s never a good reason to go over time.

These “soft skills” aren’t what you’ll find written about in most presentation skills text books, but they are as important as your ability to use gestures effectively or your ability to use your voice to express passion. Don’t forget to develop your soft skills when you speak.

What went went wrong?
Rarely does everything go wrong. Take the time to isolate exactly what didn’t work. Think about everything that happened during the presentation, your preparation, and how the audience reacted. Was your preparation the cause of the problem? Did the room setup cause issues because some of your audience couldn’t see the PowerPoint presentation? Was a joke you said misunderstood?

There are a myriad of question you can ask yourself. Ultimately you need to isolate the reasons the your presentation didn’t have the intended impact.

What will you do differently next time?
Now you have identified the causes you can identify the solutions for next time you deliver a presentation. It could be as simple as arriving at the meeting room earlier to ensure that all the seats can see the screen through to taking more time in your preparation to ensure you fully understand the audiences need.

Identify a strategy or technique that you will apply to your next Presentation.

What did go well?
Finally, after you have dissected what went wrong and what you will do differently next time around take some time to reflect on what did work. Invariably for every one thing that doesn’t work you will find three things that did. Don’t allow the bad experiences taint your view of your skills. Remind yourself that you can do this, you are able to deliver presentations successfully, and you do have the skills to speak in front of groups of people.

Use any dark cloud that hangs over your presentations to your advantage – find the silver lining and grow.

The conventional method is responsible for the text heavy slides seen in too many PowerPoint presentations. How can we change this?

I’ve been inspired by a book by Garr Reynolds called Presentation Zen. In the book he advocates putting the technology down and to start drafting your presentation in pencil. I’ve experimented with the process for the last couple of PowerPoint presentations I’ve given and I’ve had a more enjoyable time preparing the presentation, a better reaction from the audience, and better outcomes after I’ve finished.

Check out the book and let me know what you think of the process Garr recommends.