Probably too hard a question to answer because it will be different for everyone. But here goes.
After 15 years of being an engineer I moved into a management role at the beginning of the year. My company just sent me for “presentation training” for 3 days in Minnesota. It was the worst 3 days of my life. I sucked!!! I swear I sucked. I’m not being extreme. The trainer I could tell just felt pity for me by the end. I’m a quiet and shy person by nature but I’m also able to take charge and be a leader. And have been taking on leadership type task for a while now. I just always had the safety net if there was a problem I just hand it back to the manager. But, put me in a conference room and the anxiety sets in. I don’t get it, it’s often the same people I was just work along side and talking freely with and making decisions and getting things done. Then I step into the room with the same people and bam I’m a different person. I can’t find the words and can’t think on my feet I’m nervous and you can hear it in my voice. Total train wreck.
Anyone have a similar issue and were you able to get over it and if so how did you do it.
I can relate. Long story short. I have more or less overcome it by focusing on my story, argument, presentation, rather than connecting with the crowd. And sometimes connecting with one sypathetic face in the crowd and playing to them.
I can now get through a public speaking moment without too much anxiety.
A good friend of mine recently turned 60, and I was asked to give a speech with about 10 minutes notice. I initially freaked out. But then I decided to break down what a good speech usually is.
1. A general intro. Who am I to the subject. How close are we?
2. An amusing anecdote
3. How the anecdote illustrates the subject's character
4. A warm and fuzzy toast
And I got up and looked at one or two people I knew and focused on getting through the template. And I got the biggest applause.
Not easy but I got through it.
And if I can do it, so can you.
If you totally understand your material and objectives than you know more than the people in the room. Knowledge is power.
Be able to understand you may get stumped by a question and be able to say that you will look into that and get back with an answer quickly.
The first time you will be nervous as all get out. Slow yourself down. Speak unbelievable slow(in truth you will not be speaking slowly at all) and slightly louder. The first reading I ever did at church, the priest gave me that advice - feel like you are talking slow. This works when you are nervous.
When I first started doing presentations, the biggest hurdle for me was the first few minutes of the talk. Even though I prepared well and knew the subject matter, I was still nervous at the beginning until I started using a "turn the tables on the audience" trick.
Since most of the attendees of my presentations were managers from other company accounts located in different cities and states, I would always structure the beginnings of my presentations the same way.
1. Introduce myself (Name, Title, etc.)
2. Describe the purpose of the presentation in a sentence or two.
(These first two steps took about a minute, so even if I was very nervous, I could still get to step 3 without crashing.)
3. This is where I turned the tables on the audience, that I knew included a number of people who were also nervous about public speaking. I would simply state that this was not going to be a one-sided presentation where I do all the talking. I wanted everyone to participate. To that end, I'd like to go around the room and have everyone introduce themselves (Name, Title, Account Location) and tell us what they hope to get out of today's presentation.
As soon as it was apparent to everyone that they were going to be forced to introduce themselves and come up with a reasonable answer to my "What do you hope to get out of this?" question. It switched the focus from me to them. Now they were going to be forced to talk.
That gave me 10-15 minutes (depending upon the size of the group) to get comfortable with being in front of the group. It also gave me opportunities to spontaneously interact with any or all group members, to further calm myself. So when the introductions were done I was calmer and better able to do my presentation.
Good luck!
Also want to add the nature of the presentation dictates a lot. Obviously you can't prepare for an elevator pitch the same as a daily update, but if you're in management I presume this will be a regular thing, which is why I suggested the relaxed approach.
At my job, they have a coach and she was great. Helped me keep focus, fine tune a lot of items which led to increased confidence.
Don't be afraid to say something wrong or not exactly right. Most times, people wont notice. Kind of like playing guitar in a band and missing a note. If you do, apologize and move on.
Don't be afraid to say I am not 100% sure I will have to get back to you.
Know your stuff but don't memorize it. Memorizing things makes me mess up more. I keep high level bullets close for reference but that then triggers what I need to talk about.
Good luck...took me almost a year after changing roles to get more comfortable talking to senior management and clients.
Agree. As someone who has battled anxiety, beta blockers have been a godsend. They basically prevent the anxiety from getting severe so you can focus on the task at hand.
You clearly are bright and capable to get to the point of being a leader. You are there because you knew how to do the job and because you didn't have to perform publicly for others to do it.
Now you are afraid about how these people will judge you when you are standing front of them telling them what you know and what they need to know. You clearly know the material.
Once you recognize that the only variable in life that you can never control -- no matter how great you are -- is how people will perceive you, you will be freed from your anxiety and able to perform. The only thing you can control is your own performance.
The poster before alluded to this. Once you start talking and focusing on the information you are conveying, you are putting your focus on the information and not how others perceive you.
This is not an easy process. You, like me, are the product of decades of insecurity, judging, and, in some cases bullying. You have been conditioned to think you are "less than" in whatever ways make you feel insecure and incapable. I remember when I was in my middle school band, and how I would shake uncontrollably when the conductor made me play solo in front of the band because I was so worried about being humiliated in front of my peers even though I could play just fine when the whole band played.
Decades later, I'm a successful lawyer. I've seen how fearful other lawyers were (even successful ones). I represent some very high profile people, and I see how insecure they are and how they manifest it, and how they too are concerned about what other people think. You are not alone in how you feel, but other people know how to cope or to hide it.
Notwithstanding the above, you need to know what you are communicating and how to do it in an organized way. One method to help with this, and to take some of the focus off of you is to have a powerpoint. That way, people will look at that and not stare at you, and you'll have a tool to guide you through.
Sorry for the long post, and best of luck to you!
I have always enjoyed it. While I have also been nervous and anxious many, many times, the remedy for me has always been preparation. The more prepared, the better I do.
Everyone is different, so I'm not going to begin to say what I offer will work.
I would recommend working out early in the morning before you got work. That will help you clear your mind and feel better mentally and physically before you begin your day. Additionally, I would really clean up your diet. You are what you eat. Both - obviously - go hand in hand.
Get a mentor at work you can lean on. Maybe who you report to or another colleague at your level or someone in HR. Share with them your concerns and let them know you appreciate their feedback and listening. It's not quite therapy, but close enough.
And maybe see a therapist. Maybe talking with someone will help you unlock something getting in the way and you can start the process of getting comfortable in your role.
Best of luck. At the end of the day, we are all human and it's normal to feel what you are feeling. Accept the challenge.
"Damn it Jim, I an engineer not a manager!"
But I needed to. Had no choice I guess.
Someone suggested I volunteer with Junior Achievement. Basically went into a local school once a week for an hour. And taught.
These kids loved it. Looked forward to it. But I was still terrified. Well after a couple of weeks,I realized I had no reason to fear. These were kids, who looked forward to it, and looked up to me.
Once that hit me, I started to feel comfortable. Eventually enjoyed it. Then looked forward to it. And missed it when the school year ended.
It was career changing, and life changing. Within a year, I spoke in front of thousands at a time. No problem. It was all just a lack of self confidence apparently. And experience.
Repeatition and self correction are key by the time you are ready to make a public presentation.
Here are some tips. The way to impress your audience is NOT to try to show them how smart you are with intricate, complex, or confusing material that is hard to follow. If after a few minutes, they don't really understand what you are trying to say, they will stop listening.
What will impress them the most, is if the information in your brain gets into their brains without them having to struggle at all. Keep it as simple as you can. Step one: tell them what you intend to say, Step two: say it, and Step three: tell them what you just said.
Then you ask for questions. Answering questions is always easier than putting the presentation together. If you can work out having most of the time spent with Q & A, the better. Trust me.
If there is a scheduled amount of time for your presentation, it is better to be too short than too long (unless you want the audience to hate you).
Try giving your presentation to you wife. It's better than doing it in front of a mirror. If she can understand it, the audience will.
I had my wife read my legal briefs. If she understood what I had written, I figured the judge would, too.
BTW, the more public speaking you do, the easier it becomes.
And remember you are the expert in the room your subject.
The time will fly by,
Good luck.
Here are some tips. The way to impress your audience is NOT to try to show them how smart you are with intricate, complex, or confusing material that is hard to follow. If after a few minutes, they don't really understand what you are trying to say, they will stop listening.
What will impress them the most, is if the information in your brain gets into their brains without them having to struggle at all. Keep it as simple as you can. Step one: tell them what you intend to say, Step two: say it, and Step three: tell them what you just said.
Then you ask for questions. Answering questions is always easier than putting the presentation together. If you can work out having most of the time spent with Q & A, the better. Trust me.
If there is a scheduled amount of time for your presentation, it is better to be too short than too long (unless you want the audience to hate you).
Try giving your presentation to you wife. It's better than doing it in front of a mirror. If she can understand it, the audience will.
I had my wife read my legal briefs. If she understood what I had written, I figured the judge would, too.
BTW, the more public speaking you do, the easier it becomes.
Toastmasters is a great suggestion. I did it with my first boss, who it transformed from a comically pitiful oaf in front of 4 or more people to a pretty fine speaker, in under a year.
I recently did my first speaking session at an event, did ok I think but it was a smaller session. If it was one of the larger sessions I think it would've been rough for me.
But what really gets my anxiety going is when I'm asked to do smaller videos for various platforms. I just truly struggle at being happy with them and you can definitely hear it in my tone, never sounds natural and seems like I just want it done (which is true).
Overall, knowing what you're presenting definitely helps...practice helps. You will get better over time, but everyone is different and there will be one phase of presenting that will consistently give you trouble.
Practice. Take your time and breathe. You’ll get through it and be better each time.
Good luck!
Couple of pointers from my side:
1.) Your colleagues know you and your abilities. Even if you make a mistake here or there during your presentation no one is going to think less of you. You are there because you know your stuff and have earned that opportunity.
2.) You are giving up your time to present to them. Who gives a shit what they think.
3.) One of my best strategies, especially if you are presenting in a darker room with lights on you is to work the room, walking slowly across the stage from side to side and looking at people, but not really looking at them, if that makes sense.
4.) Speak slowly and clearly. I personally have a tendency to speak very fast, this is my biggest challenge presenting.
5.) Sound very polished with your opening and closing remarks (prior to any Q&A). Meaning make sure to say “thank you for your time, appreciated the opportunity to speak to you all today”, etc.
1. You always need to go through your speech/presentation fully. At LEAST once, but really over and over again if you have the time.*
2. It is very important to know your audience. The way I speak to judges varies by the judge. And it also differs from the way I speak to juries, or to groups of lawyers, or to general audiences, etc.
3. In certain contexts, it helps me to remember that audiences are probably bored out of their minds. Which also helps me to remember to keep things short. No one likes a long speech unless you're Clarence Darrow, Abraham Lincoln, etc.
4. This is tangential, but be a good listener. Don't check your phone (unless necessary) and keep eye contact with the presenter unless it gets into a long awkward stare lol. By doing this, you're not only doing the speaker a solid, but you're engaging and subtly observing what does and doesn't work in public speaking.
5. Also remember that audiences want you to succeed. If you make a small error or blunder, don't worry about it and keep going. Every single person (again, unless you're some great orator) has been there. Just keep going, and people probably feel for you and are on your side. (UNLESS you're being long-winded, which as I said before, you should never do.)
6. Don't take too many risks unless you really know your audience or are confident in what you're doing.
7. Relatedly, remember that most people will never remember your speech. Nobody is going to be on their death bed thinking about the time you went through a 30 minute Power Point deck. Just get the job done as efficiently as possible
* In law school my computer failed literally halfway through a 20-minute presentation. I did the rest of it from memory. It definitely wasn't great, but the professor was impressed that I was able to do it. If I hadn't gone through it so many times, I would have fucking wilted and melted like an ice cube. And believe me, it wasn't GOOD, but I got the job done.
Double also, audience engagement is good. If you can ask a few simple questions and goad people into participating, they'll be more engaged.
For a prepared presentation:
Write out a script!
Write it naturally, the way you would speak and the way you speak it in your head.
Then practice it. A lot. Do it over and over. Change the script if it's not flowing the way you want. At first you'll be reading it. Soon, you'll be saying a lot of it without looking and adlibbing some of it.
Many, many leaders and executives do this and you just never know.
After doing this for a few years, you may no longer need to write it out.
Q&A? Well think of the questions they could ask and prepare some answers.
Also never, ever be afraid to say you don't know something and need to come back later with an answer. It's better than trying to BS your way through an answer that you really don't know!
Since then I never really minded. In fact some times I enjoy it. Kind of get a little adrenaline rush. All the preparation things mentioned in here are the key. if you are confident with the material and know the content you are presenting you do much better.
In that presentation in college where I got hammered at happy hour first, I take the stage go up to the podium and announce my topic. This was a law class and the topic was the risks to our privacy with the oncoming "Information Super Highway and Electronic Mail" lol - it was the mid 90's - based on an article we had to read in some periodical. So after announcing the topic and jumping into my presentation my professor interrupted me and said "what can you tell us about the author?" the author. I panicked. No one told me we need to know anything about the author. So I said the author is (and I only knew the last name, so I made up a first name which was wrong) and he is an expert in privacy, privacy laws, the constitution, and got a graduate degree from Florida State (he did not get a degree of any kind from Florida State - I just made that up - I do believe it was some other school in Florida though so maybe close enough). She never said anything to me about that either and it did not impact my grade, but it taught me a lesson.
* Do NOT overwrite the material. Unless you're Morgan Freeman, people don't want to hear you read what they can read for themselves. They want you to tell them what you know.
* Remember that you are an experienced engineer who knows a lot of shit. You know what you're talking about. Leave the anxiety to the folks who are faking it till they make it. When you feel anxious, remind yourself that you're a kick ass engineer who knows their shit.
* Most audiences want you to do well. They are taking their time and sitting to listen to what you have to say and they'll forgive a few stumbles. Just say excuse me, correct it and continue on. Internal presentations are colleagues and they definitely want you to do well.
Toastmasters is a good idea. Practice really helps and that is also a friendly audience of folks all trying to get better too.
For me, the #1 priority is to know the material and the audience. I'm good with presentations, but stumbled a bit recently because it was my first time presenting with my partners and I was not really clear on some aspects of the problem. I also attempted to script out my talking points and it actually threw me off.
Beyond those general points:
1) Don't read what's on the slide/page/etc. . I can't emphasize this enough. People will read for themselves.
2) If you don't want a script, but also don't want to be totally off the cuff, prepare bullet points to make sure you hit your main themes on each slide. (Plus, I find that engineers like bullet lists!)
3) Running through the presentation at least once, even if it's not a complete "practice" session may help you find errors in slides and/or your points. As you grow your skills you might want to have someone unfamiliar with the material just look at the slides and tell you what's confusing/not clear - then you can craft your bullet points to address that in advance.
4) If it's not a big audience, think of it as a conversation and tell people to ask questions or raise ideas throughout. (This is another reason not to have a script.)
5) In general, presentations are stories. They should have a beginning (background, context, etc), a middle (facts and details), and an end (wrap up, summary, recommendations)
For that last - one maxim is "tell them what you're going to say, say & support it, then summarize it." One advantage of that is giving vital information to people who may have to leave early. Then, the middle is your proof. And the end summarizes - but, more importantly, gives it all 'meaning.'
It might also be worth looking for samples of similar topic presentations online. You can find little things that you like/don't like to help you craft your narrative and style.
Hope this helps. I love coaching/mentoring/advising people on how to improve!
Use images/outcomes if you can vs word dumps -talk through the image/outcome - no one wants to look at 1000 words
The most important is practice - I do dry runs for new presentations.
Once you've done enough you still get nervous but you have enough confidence to power through and you'll start to have some fun too.
People I've never met before.
I have not presented in a while. It'll take 2 days and essentially I am the trainer.
Weirdest thing for me, I think will be the first few words...
Whaddya say? Hi? My name is so and so and I do this for this person....who are you? Like it's gonna be so weird for me....ugh!
When I first started doing presentations, the biggest hurdle for me was the first few minutes of the talk. Even though I prepared well and knew the subject matter, I was still nervous at the beginning until I started using a "turn the tables on the audience" trick.
Since most of the attendees of my presentations were managers from other company accounts located in different cities and states, I would always structure the beginnings of my presentations the same way.
1. Introduce myself (Name, Title, etc.)
2. Describe the purpose of the presentation in a sentence or two.
(These first two steps took about a minute, so even if I was very nervous, I could still get to step 3 without crashing.)
3. This is where I turned the tables on the audience, that I knew included a number of people who were also nervous about public speaking. I would simply state that this was not going to be a one-sided presentation where I do all the talking. I wanted everyone to participate. To that end, I'd like to go around the room and have everyone introduce themselves (Name, Title, Account Location) and tell us what they hope to get out of today's presentation.
As soon as it was apparent to everyone that they were going to be forced to introduce themselves and come up with a reasonable answer to my "What do you hope to get out of this?" question. It switched the focus from me to them. Now they were going to be forced to talk.
That gave me 10-15 minutes (depending upon the size of the group) to get comfortable with being in front of the group. It also gave me opportunities to spontaneously interact with any or all group members, to further calm myself. So when the introductions were done I was calmer and better able to do my presentation.
Good luck!
I agree that you need to be prepared, so you can talk confidently and not be reliant on the slides. The more you know it the more you can speak comfortably.
However, anxiety gets in the way sometimes.
I find that opening is the key. Take a moment to intro yourself and if possible allow the other you are speaking to as well. This buys you some time.
The key is BREATHING, if you can regulate your breathing, you can overcome the anxiety. once that happens you will succeed.
Take a deep breath before starting, find time to get some fresh air before.
Think about it, no one really listens to speakers in detail...most of the time. So its not even the content, its just be confident.
I find that Standing up works better for breathing. Sitting in a chair even on TEAMS restricts breathing. I use a stand up set up for teams when online, allows me to take deep breaths.
I like the idea of finding 1 or 2 people in the crowd that look friendly. Speak to them directly. At some point you can start to look around as confidence builds up.
Congrats on your success to get to this point, just remember the company thinks highly of you to put you in this position.
I used to be terrified of presenting and public speaking. Until one day it hit me, people are people, I know I know what I’m talking about; and I’m gonna say what needs to be said.
Might not translate to what you’re asking. But it’s right.