Imagine this:
You're standing in front of a group of people. A hundred or so eyes stare at you, your pulse rate goes up, your hands begin to shake, and you've suddenly forgotten every last thing that you were going to say. All you can think to do is read your slides, get through the presentation as fast as possible, and sit down.
Many people find themselves in this very situation. We are often consumed as presenters by nervousness, disorganization, and worst of all -- the threat of losing the interest of our audience and having them drift off into blackberry land... or worse yet, iPhone land.
Even if presenters have learned to manage the nervousness that comes with presenting, they are still faced with the difficult task of keeping their audience engaged. Presenting can be a daunting task for even the most confident speaker.
Over the nearly fifteen years that I have taught Presentation Skills to corporations I have heard a lot of the same questions: Why are presentations so hard? Why is typical presentation skills training often unhelpful? How can we be more engaging speakers? How can we use presentations to help with our career advancement? How do I manage this nervousness, I'm a sweaty mes?! Why are presentations so important in this day and age? How can I present dry material in a way that people will pay attention and remember it?
This book will provide a step by step process developed with corporations and employees to change presentations from something you dread into something that you look forward to. Now I know when I say this you may be thinking, "That's crazy. I will never want to give a presentation. By the time you finish reading this book you'll find that your next presentation doesn't look anything like the ones you've been giving in the past. As you read this book and your understanding of presentations changes, you will find, as most of my students have, that crowds will be more engaged, more interested, and retain more information than ever before.
I do have one warning for the reader of this book. If you do not want people asking you to give presentation, if you want to stay out of the spotlight entirely, if you are not interested in being promoted of asked to lead initiatives, teams, or discussions -- DO NOT READ THIS BOOK.
The Business of Improvisation has painstakingly used the principals of improvisation, the fundamentals of human behavior, and the storytelling concepts of Hollywood screen writing to create an easy to learn process for presentations that is engaging, informative, and helps students retain information.
In this Book we will:
• Learn the importance of nervousness and how to manage it
• Discover a presentation structure that takes the guesswork out of presenting
• Lean an “elevator speech” format and how to use it when time is tight and it’s
necessary to impress, engage, and inspire
• Understand how to bring their own personal flair to a presentation
• Use metaphor, analogies and the hero's journey to inspire, deliver and communicate
• Learn and practice audience management techniques even for the most difficult
audience
• Reduce fillers and distracting movements
• Explore the use of body language
• Learn the importance of pace, inflection, and tone
• Bring presentations to a new level of confidence, poignancy, and
professionalism
