Ask business people who know how to coach people to have more executive presence and confidence to speak up, be heard and advance their relationships with all stakeholders. Acting is not the answer!!
Taxpayers stump up for civil servants’ £650 acting lessons Sunday Times 24th December 2017
“The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public” George Jessel
This is why civil servants along with the rest of us can benefit from effective presentation skills training because when we get up to speak our nervous energy increases and oozes out of us diminishing the impact we have on our audience.
We all waste too many hours sitting in meetings being bored to death, disengaged form the presenter and longing to be back at our desks. It is such a waste of our precious time and energy and yet when we get up to present we are no better at engaging our audience.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- How many presentations do you listen to a month?
- What percentage of those presentations really engage you?
- Of the presentations that engage you how long do you stay engaged?
- Is it the speaker or the slides that grab you from the start?
5) Now work out how much time you waste every month attending meetings/presentations that don’t hold your attention…..for more than a few minutes!!
WHY IS THIS PROBLEM SO WIDESPREAD?
We have huge intellectual competence, we know our topic inside out and back to front so why when we get up to present do we fail so catastrophically to engage our audiences?
ANSWER:
We think we are only responsible for what WE say and not for what YOU the audience understands so we spend all our time filling the slides with detail to show how knowledgeable we are.
However, when we stand up to speak and look at our slides it is too much for our brains to deal with, nervous energy oozes out of us and we bore people to death.
I can share the optimum way to prepare content another time, but what we need to do is PRACTICE delivering our messages succinctly and specifically, which we never have time to do because we spend hours preparing slides that no one engages with.
We stand up to speak and the adrenalin surges through our bodies and makes our eyes scan the room, look up and down, our arms and legs take on unconscious movements that we’d never do consciously and our voice………squeaks, words rush out, ums, errs, so, like etc. spew forth randomly all with the effect of disengaging our audience very effectively.
DO WE NEED TO LEARN HOW TO ACT?? NO!!!
We need to learn how to use the non-purposeful nervous energy in a way that enhances our executive presence, helps to project messages in an influential manner and be our best, authentic selves possible to engage listeners to such an extent that they ask for more information, expand the dialogue and advance the relationship.
ark consultants transform YOUR ability into profitability – Ask business people who know how to coach people to have more executive presence and confidence to speak up, be heard and advance their relationships with all stakeholders.