The 11 Keys to Presentation Mastery to improve presentation skills: Key #03 – Love
To improve presentation skills is fairly easy if you know what you’re doing. Here is a series of the 11 Keys to Presentation Mastery which forms the foundation of #FILWP presentation skills training.
PRESENTATION KEY #03: LOVE
Even though you might be wondering what love has to do with presenting, on reflection you’ll find that it has e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g to do with presenting!
If the word ‘love’ seems a bit uncomfortable, how about respect, kindness, compassion, and patience?
Think those are important aspects in the way you treat your audience?
Of course they are.
And, when you think about it, they are all just different expressions of the word ‘love’ and therefor are as valid in an ‘airy fairy’ or new-age presentation as they are in a business or corporate presentation.
The reason is very simple, and there are 3 types of love when it comes to presenting.
(1) LOVING YOUR AUDIENCE
As we saw before, being kind, respectful, patient and compassionate are actually different ways to express love.
Yet, notice how many speakers speak ‘at’ their audience – not very respectful, is it?
Truly loving your audiences for showing up to be with you makes all the difference because it changes the way you think about them, speak to them and treat them. That, in return, makes all the difference to them, and they’ll remember you for all the right reasons (the main one being how they FELT when they were with you).
(2) LOVING YOUR CONTENT
Many people are ‘forced’ to present on stuff that does not matter to them. If you’re one of them, GET OUT or find a way to love what you present as best you can – even if you have to love it for the money it pays you or how it enables you to have a good life.
When you love your content, it’ll come across not necessarily in WHAT you say, but absolutely in HOW you say it. Your love for your content will shine through, and it’ll make all the difference not just to you, but also to your audience.
(3) LOVING YOURSELF
Again, if you think that self-love has no place in presenting, think again.
We lead by example, and there is nothing attractive in being self-dismissive, critical or deprecating. Just NOTHING. In fact, these traits will put your audience on the alert because they’ll wonder when you’ll turn on them.
When you treat yourself with kindness, compassion, patience and respect, the audience will feel your sense of a-l-l-o-w-i-n-g yourself to be who you are, and therefore will have a sense of relief and comfort that you will allow them to be who they are.
Think about it. It is the LOVE that gives your presentations LIFE and without it, presentations are as dead as the screen that shows the Power Point slides.
Consciously bring (even more) love for your audience, your content and yourself into your next presentation and see how it changes everything!