1.  What we can to set the scene and take control

2.  How we can say it in order to own the room

1.   Set the scene and take control 

To set the scene, all presentations should have a Purpose, and possibly some Background information, some Housekeeping and/or an Attention Grab.  For more information on these, have a quick look at my blog ‘Mission Control.  Ready for lift off’. 

Great, so now we have some relevant scene setting information to ease you and your audience into the presentation, plus they all now know why they are there listening to you.  Now let’s look at how we can own the room and create a really strong 1^st impression.

2.  Owning the room

It’s essential that you use the first 60 seconds to establish your presence, authority and credibility i.e. to sell yourself.

The first thing to do is MARK YOUR START i.e. decide where you physically want to be to start your presentation.  You obviously want to be where everyone can see you (usually at the head of the table) and you ideally want to position yourself as close to the audience as is comfortable.  This is because increasing your proximity to your audience increases your presence and appearance of confidence.  Once you’re at the spot where you want to begin, take a moment to collect and connect.  

To do this, pause as this will raise your perceived confidence and authority. As you pause, breathe.  Breathing naturally will help you to appear in control, whilst also reducing your nerves.  At the same time make eye connection with your audience.  Obviously don’t eye ball every individual, but you do want to start building some non-verbal rapport with them.  As part of this, make sure you smile!  This is one of the most important assets we have – it makes us appear relaxed, approachable and in the moment – and smiling also helps to reduce nerves!

The above sounds complicated but really it’s no different to how you would behave if you were being introduced to someone for the first time – and it only takes 2-3 seconds, and these few seconds can be crucial in helping you appear poised, self assured, and ready to begin.

Ok, so now it’s time to own the room.  Here goes!

Simply go through your first scene setting chunk (i.e. purpose, background, housekeeping or attention grab) then pause.  If you don’t pause at this point, what comes out of your mouth will sound like verbal porridge.

Now change gear, up or down it doesn’t matter.  This is to make sure you begin to engage the audience and don’t come across as monotone.

Next, see if you can move/change position.  This doesn’t have to be dramatic!  A lean back in your chair or a step forward will do.

Now deliver your next scene setting chunk.  Then pause, change gear and move and so on until you reach your agenda.

QUICK WARNING – This may feel unnatural at first! But I guarantee it’s well worth it as the combination of pausing, changing gears and moving is incredibly powerful. Together they will help you own the room and come across as comfortable, confident, and in control.  At the same time, you will get the audience’s attention, maintain their engagement and build a sense of anticipation for your presentation.  A pretty good 1^st impression I’m sure you would agree – all achieved in a matter of seconds. Plus, this will reduce your nerves, so that by the time you get to your agenda you should feel you’re firing on all cylinders and ready to deliver a really successful presentation.

If you want to kick off a presentation and own the room remember the first 60 seconds can make or break a presenter. So plan & practice the start so you know you’ll make a great 1^st impression

p.s. remember it’s your personality that powers your presentation performance.

So, firstly there’s the script. A crafted set of words, meticulously selected to convey precisely what the speaker wants to say. Nice and easy from the presenter’s view point. But to the audience, someone that reads from a script usually sounds scripted(!), stiff, formal and unnatural. Sure, when every word matters, and there is no other visual support, a script might be necessity. A good example of such a case was Jacob Zuma giving his acceptance speech earlier this month. But on the whole if you want to engage your audience and appear relaxed and confident, leave the script to Hollywood actors.

What about memorising the script? Well unless you’re a trained actor (back to Hollywood again!) this is possibly your worst option. It’s incredibly unlikely that you’ll be able to remember 3 minutes of a script, let alone 30 minutes; and the stress of just thinking about all that stuff to remember is likely to send you into a tail spin before you’ve even got to the agenda. My advice – rehearse and memorise your first 60-90 seconds, not word for word, just the key points, then acknowledge you’re human and that you’re going to need more than your memory to get you through the gig.

Which leads us to notes. Notes aren’t bad but they have 3 distinct drawbacks. Firstly you need to remember where you are within your notes, at any given time, if they’re going to be of any use. It’s no good rattling through the first 9 slides notes-free and then realising you need their help on slide 10. Unless you can go directly to that spot in your notes, you’ll be stuffed. So let’s assume you use your notes all the way through. Well, the second problem occurs if you happen to be someone that gestures a lot and is pretty animated as a presenter. In this case your notes, waving all over the place, can be a serious distraction to the audience. And finally, every time you read from your notes, you’re cutting eye contact, and therefore engagement with the audience.
So notes too can be a serious hinderance to successful presenting.

Having said that, if properly prepared (large, easy to read, bullet points only) notes can be vital when you are presenting with minimalist slides a la Garr Reynolds, so I won’t be completely black and white about their use.

A close relative to hand-held notes are the computer/laptop notes function that comes with packages like Microsoft PowerPoint®. I personally never recommend people use this option as to be honest I think it’s pretty rude, especially during a business presentation (vs a conference presentation). That’s because every time you look down at your computer notes you draw the curtains shut between you and your audience, which completely disengages them. In fact the disengagement is so strong that you almost have to re-engage them from scratch again when you look back up. I’m afraid using the notes function is a big pet hate of mine.

So that leaves us with looking at our slides. Now I need to stress that I am talking about business presentations – millions of which are probably taking place in meeting and board rooms around the planet as I write this. So, let’s be clear, I am NOT talking about large scale conferences and the like.

What I want to advocate is that your slides should be there to support you, as well as to add clarity and interest to your content. So your slides should act as your guide. But to use them effectively, I encourage people to ‘slide surf’.

For those of you not familiar with surfing – a quick intro. Once surfers are past the breakers, in the ‘take-off zone’ as they call it, they glance every now and again behind them to see what waves are coming. Once they see the wave they want to catch, they face forward and focus on catching and riding that wave.

This is what I recommend as a presenter. Every now and again, to remind yourself of the point you need to deliver, glance at your slide. Now of course I’m not suggesting that you stand with your back to the audience and read continuously from your slides. That would clearly be ridiculous.

What I recommend is a look that only needs a second. If you are using bullet points (and I’m not saying I’m a bullet point fan – in fact the opposite is true, but I acknowledge they are a major factor in business presentations today) and follow the 5×5 rule (No more than about 5 bullet points on a slide. No more than about 5 words per bullet point) a second is all you need.

There are 3 distinct advantages to ‘slide surfing’:

1. You don’t need to hold any notes, leaving your hands free to add animation, dimension, energy, passion etc to your delivery which keeps the audience involved and interested.

2. Glancing quickly at your slide actually adds to audience engagement because looking at your slide acts as a non-verbal signpost; indicating where you are and the direction you are going, which in turn adds clarity and comprehension.

3. For the second that you glance at your slide, you become briefly one of them – a member of the audience, all looking at the slide together. This is a great technique for creating synergy between you, your slides and your audience and therefore for building rapport

And the downside – well I seriously can’t think of any.

So, leave scripts and memorising scripts to Hollywood actors. Only use notes if your slides are minimalist. And never use the computer/laptop notes function unless you want to shut the curtains on your audience. Instead, slide surf! Work with your slides to keep your audiences involved, to signpost the journey, and to create synergy.

One final thing. Don’t forget that YOU are the presentation and YOU are the deliverer of your information.

Above all, remember it’s your personality that powers your presentation performance.