Public speaking and presentation training

Article

Public speaking - presentation training, public speaking training Warsaw 

Have you ever felt like the ground suddenly fell out from under your feet and your mind went blank when you had to express your opinion on a forum or speak in a group discussion? Or maybe during a conversation with your boss? Are you generally afraid of your public speaking? The training will show you that there is no reason to worry. Regardless of gender, age or position, stage fright can affect anyone. This is a type of anxiety felt not only in stressful situations. The fear of not presenting the image of ourselves that we want others to see. Public speaking and business presentations training will make you realize that it is not the audience that is the source of your stage fright, but you yourself. The purpose of public speaking and business presentation training is to make you realize that success depends only on you, and only you can influence your presentations. That's what training is for, after all, few people are born as rousing speakers, but anyone can learn to speak in a way that is interesting and memorable!

Contents:

1. Public speaking
2. Public speaking – training
3. Public speaking techniques for stress, body language and voice
4. Public speaking techniques: persuasion
5. Public speaking techniques: making things interesting
6. Public speaking techniques: dealing with difficult audience behavior
7. Public speaking – stress
8. How to prepare for a public speaking
9. Public speaking book
10. Public speaking course
11. PowerPoint's presentation and public speaking

Public speaking

Although the word "public" is associated with many people, we talk about public speaking with two people, when our goal is to present some content to them - that is, to convey something to our recipients. Most often, it will be verbal content, i.e. we will talk, but it also happens that the content is only expressed through body language, e.g. models appear in public by speaking with their bodies - movements, facial expressions.

So what is the difference between public speaking and a conversation among, for example, managers? We talk about public speaking when someone has to convey some content publicly, and therefore we have a "communicator" - a speaker, a presenter and an "audience", where the speaker has a goal and effect to achieve with his speech. So it is not a casual conversation or dialogue - it is planned and structured content intended to produce a predetermined effect.

Public speaking – training

It is fair to wonder whether public speaking training is warranted. You are probably wondering whether practicing alone in front of the mirror or repeating the prepared content while walking around your room is enough. The answer will probably surprise you:  training will not give you what your own practice will give you, and vice versa - your own practice will not give you what the training will give you.

Public speaking and presentations are unusual, non-standard situations in our lives, so they require a completely new approach and new skills to be effective and derive satisfaction from them. To make this happen, you need something that your own training cannot give you:

1. Learn to turn stress into positive energy and self-confidence
2. Unlearn bad habits in body language and sound
3. Thanks to the two previous points - unleash natural, expressive body language and dynamic sound modulation
4. Learn to design content structure and narratives aimed at convincing the recipient of your own point of view
5. Learn to intrigue and arouse interest through content/substantive methods and the form of narration
6. Learn to deal constructively with recipients' reactions, e.g. difficult questions, malicious comments, lack of attention, boredom, antics, etc.

Unfortunately, these skills necessary for public speaking and presentations are not taught in our educational system, nor do we learn them on the job, because public speaking is a relatively rare situation in which the speaker is alone on the "stage" and concentrates on his message, and doesn't whisper in our ears a lesson on "how to perform well"...

So, during the "Public Speaking and Presentations" training, you will get new techniques that you will practice several times at best, and in order to feel like a fish out of water with these techniques, you need to practice them a dozen times. So your own training is necessary after the training. On the other hand, your own training only practices what you already know and know, so you don't practice new ways, you just consolidate the old ones, and this can be harmful to you if you have incorrect habits - which, unfortunately, is most often the case.

Where do these incorrect habits mentioned above come from? What new things can you learn – what techniques?

Public speaking techniques for stress, body language and voice

Well, under the influence of stress and tension, our body begins to behave unnaturally - just as during an ordinary conversation we do not think about what to do with our hands and how to gesture, while during a public speaking we try to master:

• stress in the hands - we deprive ourselves of natural gestures, the hands are stiff, clenched in an artificial gesture
• stress in the voice - our voice begins to tremble
• stress in the torso, neck, face - flushing appears, the neck trembles
• stress in the legs and hips - uncoordinated movements begin - legs dancing, hips swaying, legs intertwining or nervous walking resembling a clock pendulum or a circling helicopter

Public speaking training will equip you with techniques for reducing stress and building self-confidence, as well as channeling stress into positive energy in expression - body and voice. And for this to happen, during the training you will free yourself from old patterns and habits, the so-called weeds in body language mentioned above and in sound such as:

1. paralinguistic sounds, e.g. "yyyyyyyyyy"
2. stuttering
3. slips of the tongue
4. monotonous modulation, i.e. its lack: uniformly speaking too fast, or speaking too quietly, or flat intonation and uniform timbre/timbre

paving the way for natural, expressive gesture techniques and a strong, dynamic voice with rich modulation.

Public speaking techniques: persuasion

Since we do not learn in life, apart from training, techniques of persuasion during presentations or speeches, most often when preparing content we simply gather everything we know about a given topic and, unaware of the importance of the order of the elements of our content, we arrange the narrative intuitively "somehow", at the same time feeling uncertain how it will be picked up. During the public speaking and presentation training, you will learn content design and narrative techniques that will make your content persuasive and your presentation effective.

Public speaking techniques: making things interesting

Nobody teaches us how to tell an interesting story, so very often, even in our private life, at a party, when we want to tell a story, we wonder whether to speak up - whether what we want to say will be interesting, funny... let alone in front of an audience during a speech and presentation, where they often weigh our professional fate. Therefore, during the public speaking training, you will learn and practice substantive techniques and the way of building a narrative that cause curiosity, attentiveness and positive tension that enhances concentration - just like during the best thriller, when you are absorbed in the narrative to such an extent that you do not want to go to the toilet to avoid lose not a second!

Public speaking techniques: dealing with difficult audience behavior

And finally - our natural reactions to difficult questions or malicious comments or lack of involvement on the part of the recipient are conflict-generating - we either respond with malice or "extinguish" the "opponent" - because after all, he is our enemy - so it seems to us subconsciously, and we deal with those who talk or do not pay attention. in a teacher's way - directive... Unfortunately, the effect of such interventions is that at best we "lose" the participant, in the worst case, and unfortunately the most common one, we gain an enemy who will look for opportunities to depreciate us even more. Therefore, training in presentations and public speaking will equip you with techniques for conciliatory, partner-like dealing with participants who are bored, inattentive, laughing, malicious, smart-ass and shy.

Public speaking – stress

Where does stress come from when we think about our planned speech and during our public speaking? Stress in the context of speeches is governed by two mechanisms:

1. Stress caused by fear of being assessed – both by yourself and the audience. This mechanism is governed by the neocortex, the newest part of the brain, the so-called mammalian brain, responsible for thinking. Well, we think, we imagine that we will make a mistake, that we will say or do something "wrong" - that is, we create worst-case scenarios for which our body prepares by increasing the tension in the body - that is, stress.
2. Stress caused by a subconscious threat - this mechanism is governed by the so-called the reptilian brain, i.e. the evolutionarily old brain responsible for automatic reactions to life-threatening situations: escape, attack or "freeze". And when we stand during a presentation or public speaking, as one person in front of several, several dozen or several hundred people, our reptilian brain recognizes this situation as a life-threatening situation - after all, there are many against one, therefore it increases the level of tension in the body, i.e. stress, to prepare the body to defend life.

Fortunately, there are ways to deal with both brains that you will learn during the Public Speaking and Business Presentations training, thanks to which stress will give you positive energy and strength instead of paralyzing you!

How to prepare for a public speaking

As I mentioned earlier, nothing can replace your preparation and training, training is supposed to give you techniques and momentum, and before every speech, everyone, even the best speaker, prepares. So before public speaking and presentation:

• Define the goal - what do you want to achieve with your speech and presentation?
  The goal will determine the components of the content of your presentation and can radically change the content and your narrative.
• Prepare arguments and counter-arguments - after all, most of us want to convince our recipients of something - an idea, an idea, a solution, a decision. If you prepare counter-arguments well and find your own arguments for them, there is a chance that you will take the weapon out of your audience's hand. You must remember, however, that arguments are not everything - to convince the recipient to make a decision or even change behavior or take a specific action - in most cases it is necessary to use an appropriate content structure, based on the psychology of influencing (and it has nothing to do with the rules of influencing). Cialdini). You will receive such structures during our Public Speaking and Business Presentations training.
• Replace negative fears with positive visualization – what percentage of your fears come true? Insignificant. So if you have to live a fiction before public speaking, maybe it's better to live a positive fiction? Start imagining how great your presentation is, how you speak fluently, see how the recipients are sitting attentively and with a slight smile of curiosity looking at you... Feel the strength in your body, the energy coming out of your colorful, dynamic voice. Feel the smile on your face, your eyes shining - see yourself from the perspective of the recipient's chair - it's so nice to see!
• And if this doesn't help you and you are still stressed - sign up for training in public speaking and business presentations, because most likely you simply recognize too well that public speaking and presentations are an area in which, without good habits and patterns, knowledge and skills - you need support. And that's OK - remember, no one taught us public speaking, so it's completely normal that you feel stressed, your speech is uninteresting and not very dynamic - because even people from the highest positions of presidents, management board members or directors struggle with such problems!

Public speaking book

If you don't have the budget for public speaking training - a book is always better than nothing, although you have to choose the book very carefully, because I assume that you will buy one and you may be discouraged if you do not find solutions to your problems in it. Please note that the area of ​​body language, sound and voice is an area that requires corrective experience - knowledge is a negligible element of success here. The greatest area in which knowledge has a powerful impact on your change is the area of ​​persuasion and interest - there is a lot of psychology that needs to be understood in order to skillfully persuade and interest during a public speaking. Of course, because this is a difficult area, knowledge alone is not everything - you will need a mentor who will check how you implement this knowledge in your presentations, i.e. how correctly you use persuasion structures and forms, as well as methods of interest - and here again, speech training public is irreplaceable!

Public speaking course

An online course is a very good idea to equip yourself with knowledge of public speaking techniques, and it will be easier to acquire this knowledge in the course than in a book, because we will be able to look and observe immediately how the trainer presents the techniques with his body language or voice.

However, we must always remember that public speaking is an area in which the main importance is exercise and training in acquired techniques, because our old habits manifest themselves most strongly under stress, in which we lose a significant part of our conscious control over our behavior in public speaking. Therefore, the ideal solution if you want to reduce the budget or duration of training is a combination: a book or online course on public speaking + public speaking training during training, under the supervision of a mentor. With us, such a combination will soon be possible - an online public speaking course is in preparation, and advanced training can be found in the training program options!

Powerpoint presentation and public speaking

Presentation training, understood as learning a program for presenting, is a very valuable addition to your public speaking skills! Most people who have not been trained in PowerPoint presentations treat slides as prompters - they cram everything they need to say onto them so as not to forget it. The effect of this is that the recipient reads instead of listening to you and is unable to focus well on either your public speech or your PowerPoint presentation. PowerPoint gives you powerful opportunities to enrich your message with images, movement, colors, transitions and animations - and this is another trap - most people overuse these functions, which means that the recipient of your speech is distracted by visual effects instead of focusing on understanding and absorbing the content. PowerPoint is also your time for preparing a presentation - it has many functions that significantly shorten this time, and most people do not know these functions - e.g. patterns and layouts, SmartArt and other "buttons" that can be used to do something automatically. Do you want to speed up the creation of PowerPoint presentations and reinforce your message with your presentation? Sign up for our PowerPoint presentation training!

Start achieving quick results!