They should be your best aid, having enough to act as pointers to you but not so much that they’re impossible to read. (Last Thursday I spent 2 hours working on an overloaded slide for my boss - a slide that takes 2 freaking hours has too much crap!)
When I get nervous during a presentation and it’s not for a particular reason (nobody asked a tough question, I’m just jiggly), I do that trick of focusing on one friendly person. And when I’m asked a question I always return it to the sender to make sure I understood; sometimes what people want to know and the question they manage to cobble up don’t match, plus it forces me to think instead of running off at the mouth.
Anybody can get up and read from notecards; good speakers are the ones who handle the disasters well.
My advice would be to go up and say “I’m an expert at this subject, with lots of experience, but I’m not a public speaker, and I’m nervous as hell.” Then hold out your hands so they can see them shake. “So, please be patient with me and this should work out just fine.”
Hi, everyone! Bumping my thread here to say THANK YOU to all of you who gave such wonderful advice.
Everything went great! I felt pretty good once I was up there…as I said, I really know the subject, it’s close to my heart, and I just tried to look at it as my opportunity to help them.
My boss was very complementary, and brought me flowers this morning! So I’m very happy it went well, and happy that it’s over!
I attended a public speaking course that IBM provided. We had to get up and talk about ourselves the first day :eek: and everyone was terrified. By the last day, everyone was fine.
It’s OK to use index cards. Number them. Highlight them. Do whatever you need to do to keep the flow straight in your mind.
Use your best asset to get your point across. If you’re funny, interject humor. If you can somehow make a little game of it, that’s fine, too. Present yourself in your own personal style.
It’s ok to put your hands in your pockets if you feel dorky expressing yourself with your hands.
It might be easier to do as little as possible in the way of straight presentation and let them ask lots of questions. Then you can fill in the blanks if they don’t ask about it.
Hand-outs are helpful if you can do that.
Just take a deep breath and get up there. You’ll do fine.
Aw…I love that book. Thanks, Cartooniverse! Your post was a big help. I actually didn’t bring the speech written out. I memorized what I wanted to cover on each slide. I printed out a hard copy of the presentation, and wrote the first sentence I wanted to say for that slide in bold sharpie marker at the top. I thought it would be more natural that way, and it worked. I made sure that I rehearsed what I wanted to say, but I didn’t worry about sticking to the script.
It went really well, and the weird thing is that it’s true…once you start talking, it’s not bad at all.
