Practice Presentations Perpetually

The speaker is half right.  It is very important to practice all of the techniques and skills that you’ve learned in class and to use them frequently.  The more you do it, the better you get. Where she was wrong is thinking that she only gets to do a presentation once or twice a year.

We make presentations every day. We often make presentations lots of times during the day.  Every time you meet with colleagues to advocate an idea, that’s a presentation. Every time you have to get your children to do something, you are making a presentation.  Even trying to convince a friend which restaurant to go to for dinner, is a presentation.

Each one of those events requires that you use an opening which gets people’s attention and telegraphs quickly a single thought, a takeaway.  Everyone of those events will go better if you underscore the takeaway with stories and facts. If you point out the benefits to them.  In each one of those meetings you’ll probably use a close to suggest a certain course of action.  So you have now used an open, a middle and a close done to persuade someone of a point of view you have and an action that you would like them to take.  

That sounds like a presentation.

And, when you start thinking that each of these encounters is a presentation, you’ll start  flexing your presentation muscles and working them. You’ll become more conscious of eye contact, and voice and posture. You’ll know that appearing confident in front of these groups will make folks more likely to do as you ask.  And, you’ll fall into a rhythm of making presentations in a very natural, conversational way.

You are powerful. You just didn’t know it.