Delivering a presentation as a monologue is rarely the best way to go.  In fact, there are a whole number of reasons to avoid that style of presenting alltogether, yet, that’s what most presenters do – deliver monologues.

Let’s talk about you first.  If the entire presentation is you (and only you) speaking, then you are the only one contributing energy to the event.  It also leaves you solely in the limelight, which means there is more pressure on you to ‘perform’ – to remember what you wanted to say and how you wanted to say it.   Everyone will be looking at you, expecting you to deliver.  For some of us, that sort of pressure isn’t helping!

Once They Get Bored, It’s Too Late

Perhaps even more importantly, audiences get bored when they are being ‘talked to’ for any length of time – thus sucking more energy out of the event.

Thirdly, if ‘listening’ is the only way your audience gets to process and understand the information that you are giving them, then you are limiting their ability to make sense of and recall the information.   (People remember a lot more about conversations that they were actively part of than those they simply endured passively.)

Why It Matters

That’s why it’s important to know how to engage your audience right from the start, until right at the end.  The more engaged and ‘part of’ your audience feels, the more interested, curious and energised they will be.  Before you know it, you have changed what could have been be a mind numblingly boring monologue forgotton in no time, into an interesting two-way conversation that is easy and fun to deliver and receive. 

Mastery

#FILWP Module #1 teaches you very simple ways to engage your audience all the way, with techniques that you can implement immediately in your very next presentation.

Pre-requisites

The ability to understand, read and speak English.

If you have any nervousness about speaking in front of people, do the free self-help courses here.

Some speakers are brilliant at ‘making it up as they go along’.  They just get up there and be informatiive and entertaining without having done any preparation at all – true genius at work!!!

For Some Of Us, It Takes Work

For the rest of us mere mortals, if we were to do that, we’ll just stand there waffling incoherently while everyone look on desparately confused as to what the hell we were doing up there.   Yes, for some of us it takes work to be great.

On the other side of the spectrum, some speakers write out and rehearse presentations ‘word for word’, and then ‘recite’ them to their audience.  Problem is, there are a number of pitfalls with that approach.

What’s In And What’s Out

It’s sometimes really hard to decide what information to put and, and leave out, when you prepare a presentation.  I mean, how do you condense a 2 month or 12 year project into 20 minutes?

The more you know about your topic, the harder this becomes.

Angst, Panic and Humiliation

The angst and panic when you realise that you forgot that you wanted to say next.  Being thrown off track by a question and not knowing how to get back to where you left off.  Noticing yourself starting to fumble over your words or starting to speak faster and faster the more nervous you get – running out of things to say or mumbling on like a runaway choo-choo, not knowing how to stop.  And perhaps the worst of all, noticing yourself losing the audience to boredom or perhaps worse, indifference – as your monotone monologue isn’t quite as riviting it was this morning at 5am when you were practicing in front of the mirror…

Been there, done that many (many) times, and there’s only one thing to say about it really, and that is that it truly, deeply sucks.  No-one should have to go through that level of humiliation, ever.  Yep, for some of us it takes word to be great.

Mastery

#FILWP Module #2 teaches you how to structure, prepare and deliver your presentations in a way that makes them easy to remember, fun to deliver and interesting to listen to.

Pre-requisites

#FILWP Module #1 (scroll up)

If you have any nervousness about speaking in front of people, do the free self-help courses here.

There is always more to learn.

Now that you’re up and running and are enjoying delivering enjoyable presentations, you might wonder about how to …

• Deal with challenging audience members
• Make your presentations even more interesting through the power of story
• Use language patterns to create more connection and responsiveness
• Use the environment to enhance and lighten up your presentation
• Answer difficult, awkward or challenging questions skillfully

 Pre-requisites

#FILWP Modulea #1 and #2.

If you have any nervousness about speaking in front of people, do the free self-help courses here.