“It takes one hour of preparation for each minute of presentation time.”
- Wayne Burgraff
Note: This guest post was written by personal development blogger Scott Young. You can check out his website here.
Communication is a skill. That means if you want to blow the interviewer away, knock them out with your slide show or have them cheering after your speech you need to practice. Unfortunately since formal presentations, interviews and speeches are often an infrequent occurrence, you can’t become a master overnight.
But even in my own limited speaking I’ve discovered a couple hacks that can be used to improve your communication right away. They can work immediately to give you an edge in an upcoming event.
Hack #1: Rephrase Questions
When you get asked a question, spend a few seconds to rephrase the question. If you are giving a speech to an audience this has the first benefit of clearly stating the audience members question for everyone to hear. But the hidden benefit of doing this is that it gives you a few extra seconds to prepare a response.
Polished professional speakers and interview veterans can prepare for common questions in advance with a great reply. But if you don’t have the experience or a question throws you off balance, you can maintain composure by rephrasing the question. To everyone it looks as if you immediately knew an eloquent response, but in reality you were given a few seconds to process a response.
Hack #2: Pause, Don’t Trip
When you are nervous, everything gets magnified. During an interview, speech or presentation forgetting what you intended to say or losing your flow of speech can be terrifying. When this happens remember to stop and take a deep breath. This pause feels incredibly unnatural for the speaker, but it is usually barely noticed by the audience.
Pausing is far better than tripping over your words and making incoherent sentences. Most people end up speaking too fast when they feel nervous, so intentionally slowing down and taking time to pause can prevent tripping over your words which is a lot more noticeable.
Hack #3: Write Out the Tricky Parts
If you have to talk for over five or ten minutes, it can be difficult and incredibly time-consuming to prepare every single word of your speech and memorize it. Many professional speakers instead choose to just write major topic headings so they understand the structure but can deliver the speech naturally.
When you get a chance to practice your presentation, notice points where you trip up. These are usually the same points you will have trouble with when presenting. Write out those few sentences word for word before presenting. The easy parts of your speech will continue to flow and you can be thoroughly prepared to handle the harder parts.
Hack #4: Watch Your Apologies
Never apologize when the goal of that apology is to soften the criticism of the audience. Some speakers apologize for appearing nervous when giving a speech. The truth is most the people in the audience wouldn’t have realized the speaker was nervous until he apologized for it. Apologizing from where you lack confidence only draws more attention to your weaknesses and detracts from your performance.
Apologies for legitimate errors are acceptable, but apologies designed to elicit sympathy won’t help your performance.
Hack #5: Don’t Distract With Powerpoint
Powerpoint presentations are very popular among presenters. But remember that as a speaker you want the focus to be on you. Slides should enhance your presentation, not form a backup. If I can get all the information I need out of your slides, why should I pay attention to you?
If you watch any presentations done by hugely successful speaker and marketer Seth Godin, you quickly notice how many of his slides are nothing more than a single image or word. These slides enhance the message he is trying to convey but they don’t steal the spotlight since they don’t contain enough information to distract.
If you are going to be doing a lot of presentations, interviews or formal communications in your work or life, I’d suggest joining Toastmasters. A non-profit organization dedicated to improving communication skills they can give you practice. But if you are concerned about an approaching presentation you’ll just have to hack it.
About Scott Young:
Scott Young is a productivity and improvement blogger. You can check out his blog here, and you can subscribe to his feed (updated 5-7x per week with posts similar to this one). Some of his most popular articles include Habitual Mastery, Double Your Reading Rate and How to Ace Your Finals Without Studying.
If you liked this article, please bookmark it on del.icio.us or vote for it on Digg. Thank you!
Chris
May 5, 2007
[...] If you are going to be doing a lot of presentations, interviews or formal communications in your work or life, I’d suggest joining Toastmasters. A non-profit organization dedicated to improving communication skills they can give you practice. But if you are concerned about an approaching presentation you’ll just have to hack it.Source: http://www.ririanproject.com [...]
May 5, 2007
Good Post with valuable points to follow. Viji
May 6, 2007
Good post, having just done a fairly long presentation some of those points sound really good, particularly #2. Thanks!
May 6, 2007
[...] What are some ways that you’ve been able to instantly improve your public speaking gigs? Let’s hear ‘em in the comments. — Wendy Boswell 5 Powerful Hacks to Immediately Improve Your Presentations [Ririan Project ] [...]
May 6, 2007
To go with point #2 If you think you are saying “uh” or “um” a lot then use these as pauses. Go ahead and say it in your head, but not aloud. It will really clean yup your presentation, and the audience won’t even notice. Before long, you’ll find the pauses to be more natural and you won’t be using “fillers”
May 6, 2007
[...] 5 Powerful Hacks to Immediately Improve Your Presentations [Ririan Project ] [...]
May 6, 2007
#4 is a novel tip. “Watch Your Apologies,” I’ve seen many presenters lose their credibility for doing just the opposite nice.
May 6, 2007
[...] (Via: lifehacker, ririanproject) [...]
May 6, 2007
[...] 5 tips för en bra presentation. Enkla men handfasta tips för hur man ska göra en bra presentation. Kommunikation is the shit! [...]
May 6, 2007
あなたのプレゼンを今すぐ改善させるための5つのTips…
プレゼンは場数、が基本ではありますが、ちょっとしたコツでぐっとプレゼンが上手く……
May 6, 2007
[...] I recently noticed a post submitted on Digg about hacking a power point presentation (see http://ririanproject.com/2007/05/05/5-powerful-hacks-to-immediately-improve-your-presentations/) and I thought, what moron wrote this article? To hack, according to dictionary.com, means several things, but the only good definition I could find is to clear by cutting finds (could you find anything related to vines? I couldn’t). Now lets get one thing clear, hacking has NOTHING to do with improving communication skills. When I first saw this article I thought, is he trying to explain how to hack into powerpoint, destroy a powerpoint presentation, or perhaps maybe mod powerpoint to do something it wouldn’t normally do, but oh boy was I wrong. [...]
May 6, 2007
[...] Communication is a skill. That means if you want to blow the interviewer away, knock them out with your slide show or have them cheering after your speech you need to practice. Unfortunately since formal presentations, interviews and speeches are often an infrequent occurrence, you can’t become a master overnight.read more | digg story [...]
May 6, 2007
One of the best ways to improve your presentations is to improve your public speaking skills in general. I highly recommend Toastmasters for that.
May 6, 2007
[...] 5 Powerful Hacks to Immediately Improve Your Presentations Filed under: Uncategorized — recar @ 1:30 am 5 Powerful Hacks to Immediately Improve Your Presentations Communication is a skill. That means if you want to blow the interviewer away, knock them out with your slide show or have them cheering after your speech you need to practice. Unfortunately since formal presentations, interviews and speeches are often an infrequent occurrence, you can’t become a master overnight.[technology] [news] [industry news] [...]
May 6, 2007
[...] more | digg story No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI Leave a comment Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTMLallowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong> [...]
May 6, 2007
[...] Hate doing presentations or just feel that you lack the power to really kick ass when you present? Well here’s 5 powerful hacks to improve your presentations [...]
May 6, 2007
Disappointing for this usually new perspective on things website. This is presentations 101 stuff.
May 6, 2007
I would second the Toastmasters recommendation. I was a member for years, and it helped me immensely. Go to http://www.toastmasters.org/find/ , look for a club near you, and attend a meeting. They love guests, and you can get a feel for that particular club.
May 6, 2007
[...] 5 Powerful Hacks to Immediately Improve Your Presentations at Ririan Project I don’t give presentations a lot, but these handy tips, via LifeHacker, were extremely useful. Things like remembering to pause, slowing down and taking a breath if you get tripped up, and rephrasing questions to buy yourself some time are all handy gems, but I really like this one: When you get a chance to practice your presentation, notice points where you trip up. These are usually the same points you will have trouble with when presenting. Write out those few sentences word for word before presenting. The easy parts of your speech will continue to flow and you can be thoroughly prepared to handle the harder parts. [...]
May 6, 2007
Nice to see the post take off like this.
Checking out the social networking site comments it’s interesting to see the difference in attitude. Digg seems to be mostly negative (despite over 600 diggs) and delicious seems to be all positive. Although if you have time to flame the article I’m guessing you have a little too much time on your hands… Some people disliked my use of the word, “hack,” as it is apparently becoming too much of a buzz word and felt I should have called them tips instead. I went with hacks (to me hack implies something that can be immediately implemented as opposed to general advice which takes time to utilize).
The “hacks” are pretty basic — basic is what people need. As for my public speaking experience to give presentation tips, I don’t claim to be a professional speaker, but I have placed in speaking contests, I have completed my Competent Toastmasters award and I am the president of my local Toastmaster club. I let the content speak for itself though, if you didn’t like the content writing an extra paragraph explaining my credentials isn’t going to persuade you so I don’t waste the space.
May 6, 2007
Agree with #5, I hate nothing more than a meeting or presentation where the speaker reads powerpoint slides word for word. Not only is it dull, it also makes the speaker irrelevant, since I can read his slides faster than he can speak them, so I get annoyed that I have to slow down to wait for him. And that’s assuming the presentation is interesting enough to be worth it, which is rare to begin with.
May 6, 2007
[...] 5 Powerful Hacks to Immediately Improve Your Presentations at Ririan Project (tags: presentation talk) [...]
May 6, 2007
I’m confused as why the title includes “Hacks”…. All of these are very common knowledge and if you have any experience at all, they are lessons already learned.
Maybe a better title would be, “5 Areas Constantly Worth Improving With Presentations.”
May 6, 2007
[...] Whether you still get nervous in front of the class, or you’re helping your students prepare for a speech, this list will provide you with 5 powerful tips for delivering a killer presentation. [...]
May 6, 2007
5 Powerful Hacks to Immediately Improve Your Presentations…
I’ve discovered a couple hacks that can be used to improve your communication right away. They can work immediately to give you an edge in an upcoming event….
May 6, 2007
[...] 5 Powerful Hacks to Immediately Improve Your Presentations at Ririan Project – Some good reminders for improving your public communication skills. I particularly hate it when people make apologies during a presentation (Hack #4). I also agree that Power Point should accompany a great presentation rather than make one. tags:Bookmarks , lifehacks , public speaking Popularity: unranked [?]Share This [...]
May 6, 2007
[...] 5 Powerful Hacks to Immediately Improve Your Presentations at Ririan Project (tags: business presentation speaking) [...]
May 6, 2007
[...] Read the 5 Tips of Presentation Here [...]
May 7, 2007
This is amazing, Thanks for the great post.
May 7, 2007
Absolutely delighted to have found your blog, we share a common passion … personal development. I have left a reference to your blog but couldn’t find the trackback functionality on your blog.
Check it out whenever you have a chance !
Gre
May 7, 2007
Great valuable artical.
May 7, 2007
Some good stuff over here….
Thx!
May 7, 2007
These tips are top notch.
If you are presenting a lot, do yourself a favor and take a class where you are videotaped and reviewed by your classmates. This most humbling experience will show you how you appear to others.
May 7, 2007
Mind your apostrophes.
“When you are nervous, everything get’s magnified.”
When I see this sort of thing in a presentation, I immediately deduce that the speaker is either ignorant or can’t be bothered, or both. In either case it devalues everything else he says.
May 7, 2007
[...] http://ririanproject.com/2007/05/05/5-powerful-hacks-to-immediately-improve-your-presentations/ var tabPane1 = new WebFXTabPane( document.getElementById( “tab-pane-1″ ) ); [...]
May 7, 2007
[...] wonder woman drawings sketches Communication is a skill. That means if you want to blow the interviewer away, knock them out with your slide show or have them cheering after your speech you need to practice. Unfortunately since formal presentations, interviews and speeches are often an infrequent occurrence, you can’t become a master overnight. hot wonder womanread more | digg story [...]
May 7, 2007
I’ve seen really horrible powerpoint/keynote presentations that have made a great presentation (speech) bad solely because they decided to includes lots of bloated text on their powerpoint slide or came up with the idea that it would be cool to have a video or sounds within their powerpoint that were completely unnecessary (music, sound effect, etc)
May 7, 2007
I totally agree with the powerpoint tip. Some people could leave the room with the powerpoint running and we would still get all the information. Keeping the slides down to simple illustrations that back up your points will keep the audience focused on you.
May 7, 2007
[...] 5 Powerful Hacks to Immediately Improve Your Presentations – Ririan Project [...]
May 7, 2007
[...] 5 Powerful Hacks to Immediately Improve Your Presentations “It takes one hour of preparation for each minute of presentation time.” [...]
May 7, 2007
[...] 5 Powerful Hacks to Immediately Improve Your Presentations at Ririan Project (tags: presentation tips ririanproject powerpoint) [...]
May 7, 2007
[...] Hack #5: Don’t Distract With Powerpoint Source: 5 Powerful Hacks to Immediately Improve Your Presentations at Ririan Project [...]
May 7, 2007
links for 2007-05-08…
Top 5 javascript frameworks? [Jaslabs] (tags: javascript web-development ajax) 5 Powerful Hacks to Immediately Improve Your Presentations at Ririan Project (tags: business presentation tips work) mezzoblue § Simulacrum How to make your screenshot loo…
May 8, 2007
[...] [...]
May 8, 2007
[...] … “5 Powerful Hacks to immediately improve your presentations“, an article I just read yesterday before doing a presentation. I liked particularly this comment as it is so true and helps tremendously to keep focused and say the right things: “When you get a chance to practice your presentation, notice points where you trip up. These are usually the same points you will have trouble with when presenting. Write out those few sentences word for word before presenting. The easy parts of your speech will continue to flow and you can be thoroughly prepared to handle the harder parts.” [...]
May 9, 2007
[...] Bonus: Some great presentation rants from the blogosphere… Kathy Sierra, Ririan Project (via Lifehacker), Bert Decker , Presentation Zen on the “Lessig Method”, Guy Kawasaki, cazh1 ’s roundup of articles [...]
May 11, 2007
[...] Upgrade your presentation skills with a guest spot I did for the Ririan Project entitled, “5 Powerful Hacks to Immediately Improve Your Presentations.” The post made lifehacker plus digg and delicious frontpages. [...]
May 12, 2007
[...] 2) 5 Hacks to Improve your Presentations – Ririan Project [...]
May 13, 2007
[...] 5 Powerful Hacks to Immediately Improve Your Presentations at Ririan Project (tags: Presentation Hack Productivity) [...]
May 14, 2007
[...] Juice up your Presentation Presentation Tips [...]
May 17, 2007
[...] There are a ton of personal productivity sites. The following are not as good, in my opinion, as the ones I’ve just listed, but they have nuggets: lifedev zenhabits — Every Tuesday is GTD tip day at Zen Habits unclutterer Ririan Project [...]
May 27, 2007
These are useful tips! Thanks!
May 28, 2007
[...] Communication is a skill. That means if you want to blow the interviewer away, knock them out with your slide show or have them cheering after your speech you need to practice. Unfortunately since formal presentations, interviews and speeches are often an infrequent occurrence, you can’t become a master overnight.read more | digg story [...]
June 2, 2007
[...] Ririan Project has 5 Powerful Tips To Immediately Improve Your Presentations. Good advice for those of us who need to present our work regularly. [...]
June 3, 2007
Very good tips, not the first I have heard them but very good to be reminded of them and how important they are. The small things make such a difference….
With powerpoint slides, I prefer the ones that just use keywords, quotes etc instead of whole paras etc
June 5, 2007
[...] 5 Powerful Hacks to Immediately Improve Your Presentations If you consider an interview a presentation of yourself, these tips are useful. [...]
June 29, 2007
[...] Traducido y adaptado de ririanproject [...]
August 18, 2007
[...] 5 Powerful Hacks to Immediately Improve Your Presentations at Ririan Project (tags: presentation tips) [...]
October 21, 2007
[...] 5 Powerful Hacks to Immediately Improve Your Presentations at Ririan Project [...]
November 2, 2007
[...] read more | digg story [...]
February 1, 2008
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