Are you ready to present? 10 fundamental questions to work on before you even think of your content and structure.

This checklist is about the fundamentals of being relaxed in front of an audience and your connection with the audience. It's the stuff that often gets ignored when you think "I've got to do a presentation".   Once you develop a sense of presence and ease in front of people then presentations become a whole lot easier. This  list is about encouraging you to do some work on your confidence and and how to connect to the audience during a presentation BEFORE you panic about the content! So think about what skills you need to build on to help make you a better presenter.

building confidence about presenting and public speaking

1. Do you practice being present, in the moment, allowing yourself to notice what's happening rather than being controlled by it?
Learning to be present helps to allow you to be there without rushing or feeling overwhelmed 

2. Are you comfortable being in front?
Can you take some time to think and to have a pause? The audience needs time to absorb your words.

3. Can you be relaxed and connect and NOT put on a persona or perform?

4. Do you really get that blank faces in the audience are just listening faces?

5. Do you work with the assumption of support (unless proved otherwise)?
We often think that the audience is criticising us without any proof. It's just in our heads

6. Do you know that Fearlessness is not the absence of fear but doing it in spite of the fear and not being attached to the fear?
Nearly every speaker will get a heart rate increase - good speakers learn how not to be overwhelmed by the adrenaline surge. Not by stopping it completely but by not giving it any power to self- sabotage

learning how to connect and serve the audience

7. Do you see Public Speaking as a way of serving the audience and do you have respect for your audience?

8. Do you know that the audience wants to see a real person?
They want to be able to trust you and to know where you are coming from

9. Do you see public speaking as a conversation with one person at time?
Good speakers have great connection and are very comfortable being looked at and looking.

10. Do you speak up for what you believe in and are you humble enough to know that you are only speaking from your own view of the world?
Audiences are often turned off by arrogance - a little humility can help people to warm to you.

Any other points that should be here as well?

Presenting Yourself

Why do we find it so difficult to be the centre of attention? What's stopping us from being comfortable, thoughtful, connected, aware of our awareness, present, and somehow not self-conscious when we are in front of people?

 It shouldn’t be that hard – should it?

You would think that the order of fixing public speaking problems should be something like this:

1. Sort out my self-confidence problems.
2. Sort out my adrenaline problems–going red, increased heartbeat, dry mouth.
3. Sort out what I was going to say and prepare for a talk.
4. Practice, practice, practice.
5. Maybe conjure up a persona that I could just switch on when I need to. And with that big bold bright persona I can now look at the audience, and talk in a way that convinces everybody in the audience to do exactly what I want them to do.
6. And if all else fails there must be a secret pill/mind technique /physical stance that is out there somewhere which will help me.
That sounds like a lot of work with a fair amount of magic thrown in.

But after teaching this for 12 years I’ve learned that this is NOT the way to do things. If you are uncomfortable speaking then practice, practice, practice can allow you to practice being scared even more!
The way to do it is to simply become more comfortable being in front of people.That might sound strange and perhaps counterintuitive but you need to learn how to be PRESENT first.
To allow yourself to be in the moment without the need to rush or fill the time with noise.  Can I be in this moment without having to try*? (Here the "trying" is about having to entertain, perform, make people like you or any other of the pressures that people have when they are in front)

If I can learn to BE here right now, with each of you– then I won’t feel flustered or confused. If I am in the moment I am fully here with/for the audience.

Some people will find this strange advice. Maybe public speaking in their eyes is about performing, delivering, hiding behind PowerPoint and getting it over and done with quickly.
However what the audience wants is a real person standing in front of them. The audience wants to be able to trust the speaker. The audience wants to know where you are coming from and what's important to you.
The audience also want somebody who is relaxed and connects to people in the audience easily and at times powerfully. So presentations shouldn’t be about “delivering” a performance. The clue is in the word itself – it’s about being present.

So don’t start with practice, practice, practice but with presence, presence, presence

Are you suffering from Presenters’ Performance Syndrome? part one

 The physical gap between the audience and the presenter seems to have given rise to a newly discovered disorder called “Presenter’s Performance Syndrome" – a collection of serious delusions.

searching for the cause of presenters' syndrome

Somehow the syndrome only emerges when presenter walks a few paces away from the audience, in a darkened room in the presence of a computer.

 The seven symptoms of Presenters’ Syndrome:

1 .The delusion of complete audience hostility.

The presenter is convinced that all the blank faced audience members are thinking bad thoughts about him all the time. He is sure that they think he is doing very badly. The audience not only sees his weaknesses but also knows that he was mean to his dog that morning. 

2. The mixed delusion of perfect presenter performance and catastrophe

The presenter thinks he has to be a “proper presenter” up there. That pretending he really should present like his boss is far better than being a real person. As a peformer, he should be somebody with a smooth voice, someone who is perfect with whizzy slide effects and who never makes mistakes. If, however,  he does make a mistake during the presentation, he will of course immediately fall over, lose his job, then his wife and house.

3. The delusion that the audience is totally passive

This is where the presenter believes that there is no need to engage the audience by involving them in anyway apart from talking at them and showing them 60 sildes. They will remember everything because his rational arguments are sound and he has the stats to back them up. They will just sit there lapping it up. And having no questions from the audience at the end proves that he has explained the whole subject thoroughly enough.

 4. The delusion of presenter wisdom

The presenter thinks that they should tell the audience ALL they know about their subject. So that means 60 slides are prepared to give a sense of the presenter’s breadth and depth understanding of the subject and that should impress the hell out of everybody

5.  The delusion that the back of the presenter's head is more desirable than the face

The presenter believes the back of his body is what the audience wants to see. It also helps the audience connect with him better if he pretends he’s not really there. This is usually accompanied by  a speeding up of his presentation.

6.  The delusion of illiteracy

The presenter thinks that the audience has suddenly lost the power of reading and he is now the only one in the room who can. So he reads everything out s l o w l y because the audience has lost their intelligence too.

7. The delusion of knowledge.

The presenter knows exactly what he is speaking about so that must mean that everybody else thoroughly understands him too. No need to worry about the odd acronym, jargon or in-joke. And anyway it shows that he is really on top of his subject.

8. The delusion of time. Or why 7 points is never enough..

The presenter knows that the audience doesn’t really mind if he goes over his allotted time by 23 minutes because his next point is really SO important and they really really need to hear it. “The coffee break after my talk is not that important anyway”.

The good news is that presenters’ syndrome is temporarily cured as soon as he or he returns to sit in the audience and listens to the next presenter.

However the bad news is, that without intervention, presenters' performance syndrome is often a life-long affliction. Teams of top research scientists are currently investigating the best way of telling a presenter how best to think about their presentation.

The remedies are simple.

First and foremost - think about a presentation from the audience’s point of view.
Second - learn how to be present and really connect with your audience

But despite their best attempts they seem to be failing. Presenters and audiences, it seems, are doomed to mutually suffer for years to come.

Part two coming soon. "In which help arrives for the poor presenter and the audience"

Can you help me identify any more presenters’ delusions? Add them to the comments, Thanks

Trust me, confidence is a practice not a pill

I usually ask people why they want to come on my course. Often they will talk about lacking confidence to present or to go for job interviews. This lack of confidence stops them from going for promotion, or asking their girlfriend to marry them, or speaking up at meetings or just getting on with things.

Participants on my course will describe various reactions to public speaking
1. Body; "When i speak my face always goes red", "My legs start to shake", "My voice just crumbles" "My heart is pumping too hard"

2. Mind;  "My mind just goes blank", "I just think too much" "'I'm scared", "I put myself down" "I want to die when people look at me"

With the combination of these feelings comes fantasies of running away perhaps. We are overwhelmed.  We don't trust our bodies or our brains  to cope with the situation. We have lost confidence in ourselves. We think we can't handle it. So we don't do it.

Some people have a secret wish that when they come on my course I will give them a magic pill to give them confidence. I know because they tell me afterwards - usually with a wry smile. They want it instantly. Other people seem to have it - why can't they have it? I apologise to them of course - magic is not my thing. So how DO we go about building confidence?

Forgive me if this smacks of school essays, but I think its really important to go back to the definition. Confidence literally means complete trust.

If I have confidence in you it means I completely trust you to do what you say.  Self-confidence therefore is about trusting ourselves that its ok to be us and that we can handle things.

However it might be more useful to define self-confidence as the practice of trusting ourselves more.  The more we trust ourselves the more confidence we have.  That might sound simplistic. But I really like simple things- they have the virtue of making it more possible for us to change. But simple isn't always easy. Confidence-building then is really a process or developing a habit rather than a magic instant pill. You start with one step. Lots of steps means we can build up "chunks of trust" (comfort zones) that we can handle thing well. My courses are full of small steps which help people to build trust in themselves but of course you can develop your own practices too. 

Finally talking about trust. Why the dog?  Well, Fido the dog's name comes from the Latin for "I trust". So Fido is indeed the trusty hound. Anyone know what the Latin is for frisbee?

Mark Bezos, firefighter

A short, uplifting and humble tale of firefighting unheroics!

the inspirational Natalie Warner - aged 20

Natalie's talk to tedxteen is authentic, inspiring and moving and reminds me about the power of passion.Talking about the impact on her life of a film called "invisible Children" and Joseph Kony child abducting army. An antidote to the nay-sayers and doom- mongers about the young generation. Extra-ordinary and humbling.
On technical note: an Interesting and humourous use of powerpoint and good treatment of  the film clip.

a golden awakening to the new year!

For me moving house in November has been almost like a retreat. I've been creating a new place to work and my focus has been very domestic. Struggled to get into planning my work when all I've really wanted to sort out my books and how the firewood should be stacked. However I got some help to start changing my focus. I  was gardening on  new year's day when a large gold fish landed next to me in the garden still alive and a heron flying off in the distance. We have a small pond so in the poor thing went.
Golden things dropping from the sky on new years day is not a bad start to the year. So now I'm concentrating on being in the world rather than the attic.
I wish you a golden year too
cheers
John

ps Anyone local to me in Larkhall in Bath have a fish net? I've found a permanent home for the fish but we need to transport it.

Update on Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 4:12PM by John Dawson

Rather sadly the goldfish died a few days later. I was more moved than I expected. I'd enjoyed the story of how we met. As someone kindly said "John, you did your best".

Radio Bristol this Thursday lunchtime

I'm being interviewed at lunchtime today by the wonderful Steve Yabsley on Radio Bristol

The reason why I got into public speaking training in the first placewas an abysmal radio interview which went very badly That interview was 23 years ago and I cranked myself up hugely for that. I imagined; the whole nation was listening, that this was the most important interview I will ever do in my life and I was doing it for my mum. No self-imposed pressure then! I over-thought the situation hugely, and unsettled myself into  panic.
Its no wonder I didn't sleep at all the night before. Last night I slept well apart from someone standing outside our house with a radio on very loud at 4am in the morning. Maybe someone trying to create similar conditions to 23 years ago. It wasn't you was it Steve?

So today I'm going for a chat with about my work which is something I love and it feels very different.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p001d7bs.

taking her place powerfully in the world as policewoman of the year

Khizra Dhindsa, a course participant, wrote to me about what's happened since she came on a two day course last year. It's a remarkable story that she has given me permission to share. I feel very proud of her and her amazing work.

Since February I have been promoted to Detective Inspector rank.  I am working for the Association of Chief Police Officers in Westminster, which is the umbrella organisation which sets the strategies for all the 43 Police Forces of England and Wales.
Since attending your course, I am also the British policewoman of the Year, the Mosaic Community Leader of the Year, and the Asian Woman of Achievement in the Public Sector.  I was not expecting to win the AWA Award, but was able to deliver an unscripted but heartfelt acceptance speech on the night- which was, of course, enough.

Khizra receiving the Mosaic award for community leader of the Year

I came on your course because I was required to do a lot of public speaking as part of my upcoming high-profile role at the ACPO, and was frightened of not being enough, sounding wrong, letting the audience down.  The issues I was required to speak about were important ones, so naturally I wanted to do all I could to present them in the impactive manner they deserved.  But being at the front didn't feel natural to me, and I wanted it to. 

Your course helped me realise that when I am speaking, I am not "on display" so much as "serving the audience".  The focus needs to be on the message - not on myself.  This has transformed my thinking on public speaking entirely- I now love being on stage, take to the front easily and effortlessly, and deliver my messages clearly to properly serve the audience.

You taught me how to recognise the humans in front of me- not just a sea of faces.  I now work on the space between myself and my audience, and create relationships through the conversations I have from the front.  The results have been incredible.  I have motivated assemblies of schoolchildren, galvanised senior officers into action at large, formal briefings, delivered after-dinner speeches for charities and social enterprises etc etc, and I am loving every minute.  I am also now a "reverse paranoid" like you recommended- I believe everyone is on my side unless they demonstrate otherwise!  Putting my faith in others has changed my perspective beyond recognition.
 
We all have a message to deliver, and I am now able to put mine out there for the benefit of my area of policing.
I am proud and pleased that my "Project Shanaz", which I created in February in my mother's memory, is going from strength to strength and is making huge improvements nationally in the inclusion/ involvement and engagement of Women on the topic of Preventing Violent Extremism.
I am succeeding in this important area because you taught me that I am enough, and as a result I have been able to stride out and confidently take my place in the world.
Thank you so much
Best regards,
Khizra

cliche or not - the internet is amazing

On my last weekend course I had people travel from Kenya, Switzlerland, SW France, Netherlands and Wales! I might sound like a small-town boy but I think that is wonderful. I know that we should be thinking about air miles but it was very special to have such a wide range of backgrounds in the group. I felt very honoured by people's comittment to travel so far.