In my role as Managing Director of De Leon, I get to deliver, and receive, a number of business presentations. 

Since I started out as a rookie 30 years ago, and on various occasions subsequently, I have attended courses where brushing up on public speaking skills has been part of the agenda.   I can recall courses where we have spent half an hour discussing how to stand!  Other courses have talked about the “voice” that you use when speaking, whilst others have concentrated on content and format.

The world has moved on and a quick search on the Internet will take you to lots of advice from all sorts of professionals on, for instance, the “5 killer things to remember when giving a presentation” or ” 3 ways to “wow” your audience”.  Many of these are USA based sites and are, quite frankly, a bit scary.

There are videos produced by super-confident individuals showing themselves in action – often talking about the art of public speaking.  But here’s the thing.  So many of them are totally contradictory!

For instance, one site says that PowerPoint is dead.  It argues that “Death by PowerPoint” has now entered the vocabulary and the instant anyone switches on a projector - everyone sees it as cue to fall asleep.  Other sites say that the combination of the spoken word together with images and the written word are unbeatable and that recipients retain X% more when PowerPoint is used in conjunction with the spoken word.

Other sites talk about the format of a presentation.  “Tell ’em what you are gonna tell ‘em, Tell ‘em, Tell ‘em what you told ’em” is the universally (almost) excepted format of choice.  However there is also video online by a very accomplished speaker saying that if you show an agenda that indicates this format then you might as well change the phrase to “Tell ‘em how you are going to bore ’em, bore ‘em, tell ‘em how you bored ‘em”!

“Stand still and don’t make hand gestures – you will distract your audience”, or,  ”move around your stage, make eye contact with different individuals at different times, use your body to emphasise points and to illustrate your enthusiasm and passion for the subject”.

As for the “voice” thing – don’t go there!  Unless you are using your “presentation voice” most of the time this is doomed to failure.  If you start a presentation when you are little nervous and keyed up then you can usually “act” a coached “voice”.  However, as you get into the presentation, you relax, you start to enjoy yourself and you end up doing a reverse “Pygmalion”.  You start sounding like you were brought up at  Eton and end up sounding like you were eaten and brought up (this joke doesn’t work quite so well when it’s written down). 

One of the great things about being middle aged is that you become less self conscious as you get older and I guess I’ll just have to keep doing what comes natual – and hope for the best! 

Philp Westerman De Leon Personal Reputation Mangement