I had a great time in Chicago recently with more than 60 staff from the YMCA of the USA offices from around the country as they held their annual conference, which included a breakout session workshop on Adding Impact to Presentations. The YMCA of the USA is the national organization that umbrellas the YMCA branches found in more than 10,000 communities across the US. This organization has been around for 160 years and serves millions of children and families every year. As one of our partner recipient organizations for our Build-A-Bike team building workshop, we were excited to have the opportunity to work with the Y in their staff’s development.
With only an hour together, it was a fast-paced workshop from the start! We talked about several powerful presentation skills tools for adding impact to any public speaking situation, and then did two exercises that gave everyone the opportunity to try them out. Storytelling is one of our most powerful tools, and the participants had a great time learning more about each other as they practiced our specific format.
“Everyone loved the presentation skills workshop! It was the first one to fill up when we offered it at registration, and it exceeded everyone’s expectations. Ellen was wonderful to work with before, during and after! We will definitely do this again in the future!” — Jackie Gordon, YMCA of the USA
Even hour-long breakout sessions can prove highly effective for enhancing your team’s presentation skills. The interactive style of workshop gives everyone the chance to try out what they are learning. If you want to give your next conference breakout sessions a boost, consider one of our many presentation skills or team building skills workshops!
The fastest and easiest way to eliminate public speaking fear is to insert more examples and stories into your formal presentations or PowerPoint Slideshows. When participants in public speaking classes are first introduced to this technique, many of them will often resist the advice thinking, “My presentations are technical (or numbers oriented or academic) so my audience isn’t really into stories.” When a presenter has this attitude, he/she is missing out on a fantastic opportunity to make their presentations easier to follow and understand, more memorable, and easier to deliver. Your audience not only wants examples, but they also expect examples to help them better understand your content.
Stories Make Presentations Easier to Follow and Easier to Understand
The more technical a presentation, the more vital it is to include stories and examples. A technical presentation without examples is purely theoretical, whereas a technical presentation with examples is extremely practical.
For example, let’s say that I’m delivering a presentation on last quarter’s financials for my company. If I just give the audience the numbers… Last quarter, we had a 15% increase in revenue, but profit was down 1.2%, I’ve given the audience the technical aspects of the presentation, but the audience is likely to be unclear of exactly WHY the numbers came out the way that they did. So in order to give the audience a clearer understanding, I’d need to include the story behind the numbers. What happened to cause the increase in revenue and why did profit suffer?
The presenter could relay the explanation in a story by telling the audience how in the middle of the last quarter, the company invested in some new advertising that finally hit in the last month of the quarter. As a result, for the last few weeks, the phones have been ringing quite a bit more frequently, but not all of the new leads generated from the advertising have closed yet, so profit should return shortly. For example, Chris, one of our telephone sales reps got a lead two weeks ago from Microsoft in which he is in the process of negotiating a big $80,000 contract. He expects that contract to close in the next 10 days. We have another seven pending contracts that should close in the next 30 days as well.
The example clarifies the data and makes it easier for the audience to understand—even if they are unfamiliar with the technical side of the business. You don’t have to be an accountant to understand how the revenue can be up and profit down temporarily if you’ve just listened to the story above.
Stories Make Presentations Easier to Remember
When we give our audience a list of facts, figures, and numbers, most often, the audience will remember only a small percentage of the data that is presented to them. However, when we give the data in a story format, the data becomes much more memorable. For example, year to date, Joe’s closing ratio is 12.3%, Colette’s ratio is 21.7%, and Bill is at 7.5%. The average ratio is 13.83% which 3.8% higher than our 10% goal that we set in January. Many presenters will give lots of data in a format such as this (a list… a chart… a graph), but if we just recite the data and numbers without the context, the figures are very challenging to remember.
So let’s test the theory. Without looking back at the numbers above, who had the highest closing ratio, and what was that ratio? If you were able to remember the number, then congratulations. You are in a vast minority of people. Most people forget numbers the moment that they hear them. Now let’s deliver the numbers in a story format and see if it’s easier to remember.
At the beginning of the year, we set a goal of have a 10% closing ratio for our sales team. One of the ways that we wanted to accomplish this goal was to focus more on repeat business. Colette, who is one of our best sales reps, took this goal to heart, and she has really focused on working with her current customers. For example, last fall, she worked with Jet Blue on a series of contracts that brought in about $50,000 in business in their New York hub. Since they are such a good customer, she started working with them to do similar programs in one more of their hubs in Salt Lake City. As a result, she was able to generate an additional $50,000 on the West Coast last quarter. She increased her personal closing ratio to 21.7% because she is getting multiple contracts off of the same lead.
After reading that story, who is our best sales rep? What was her closing ratio? How much total revenue was she able to generate from Jet Blue? If you were able to correctly answer these questions, you’re now seeing the power of stories.
Stories Reduce Public Speaking Fear
Just as a long list of numbers and statistics is hard for an audience member to remember, it’s equally hard for the presenter to remember. As a result, when we stand up to recite a list of facts, we put tremendous pressure on ourselves in increase nervousness dramatically. However, when we deliver the facts and figures in a story format, the delivery is much easier.
Basically, when we tell a story from our own first-person experience, all we really have to do is play the video tape in our head of what actually happened and just recite it as we remember it. This takes away a lot of the pressure. One of the most dramatic changes that class participants receive when they learn this secret is a dramatic reduction in public speaking fear. In fact, if you can use stories or example to prove or verify your bullet points, you’ll wow your audience and pretty much eliminate your fear of public speaking. It’s a win-win solution to public speaking nervousness.
This is an embarrassing example, but it really shows how this works. I was hired to deliver a keynote speech for an association in Chicago, so on the plane trip into ORD, I wrote out the speech that I’d be delivering a couple hours later. (Since I teach people how to write presentations pretty quickly, this is kind of a normal habit for me.) Well, about three or four minutes before I was introduced, the director of the organization introduced me to the president of the organization and let me know that the meeting would be called to order shortly. He said that he would start with a few points of order, but that I would be introduced shortly after the start of the meeting. As I sat down in my seat, I looked over at the seat next to me, and it had a meeting agenda sitting on it. As I looked down at the agenda, I noticed that it had my name listed as the keynote speaker, but the topic of my speech was total different than the one that I had designed on the plane. My heart dropped, and I started to feel a little dizzy. Panic was just about to hit me, and I paused, thought about the topic, came up with a few tips, and basically wrote the whole speech as I was walking up to the front of the room to deliver it. When the speech was over, I got a standing ovation. What made the speech work, though, was that I reinforced each of the tips with a simple real-life story of how to use it. Every time I completed another story, my nervousness dropped. It worked perfectly, and the audience loved it.
So give examples and stories, and you’ll feel more comfortable and your audience will love you.
In this public speaking tips video, Rob Jackson, instructor for the Fearless Presentations® Public Speaking Class, shows how when you add stories to your presentations, you make your speeches much more memorable. Audience members will remember statistics and data much easier in your PowerPoint slideshows if you relay the stories behind the numbers. Give your audience the examples that explain the data, and they will remember a lot more of your presentation. Adding stories to your presentation is one of the most important public speaking tip that you’ll ever come across.
This public speaking skills video helps presenters make their presentations more understandable and easier to follow by adding stories and examples into the structure of their PowerPoint presentation or slideshow. In addition to reducing public speaking fear, stories allow the audience to better picture in their minds exactly what the presenter is trying to communicate. So if you want to improve your public speaking, add stories and examples into your presentations.
Public Speaking Tips Video: Stories Reduce Public Speaking Fear
One of the easiest ways to reduce the fear of public speaking is by inserting stories or examples to reinforce or back-up facts or statistics in your presentation. Stories are easy to deliver, and you don’t have to memorize them, so they reduce public speaking fear.
Public Speaking Class in San Diego helps participants deliver Fearless Presentations. The Leader’s Institute® traveled to beautiful San Diego, California to conduct its Fearless Presentations public speaking class on September 20-21.
Participants attended the course to overcome the fear of public speaking and to improve their presentation skills. By working with a trained coach, each participant was able to receive personalized coaching and take their presentations to the next level. This group was able to incorporate stories into their presentations very effectively. Stories help to capture the audience’s attention, build rapport, and relax when they feel those nervous jitters coming on. They experienced firsthand how the use of stories in presentations is a win-win situation!
Whether your are in San Diego, California or any one of the other fifty cities where we conduct Fearless Presentations®, we have public speaking classes scheduled year round.
The fear of public speaking is still one of the biggest and most debilitating fears. Public speaking fear causes competent professionals to miss out on fantastic opportunities to persuade and win people to their way of thinking. So where does this fear come from? Better yet… How does the average person get rid of it? The truth is that public speaking is a skill just like any other skill in that the first time that you do it, you will be nervous. However, if you are still feeling the fear time after time, it’s probably caused by some of the things that you are doing to try to eliminate that fear. That’s right… Often the things that you do to try to reduce public speaking fear actually end up CAUSING this presentation nervousness.
Where Public Speaking Fear Comes From?
Anytime a person tries something for the first time, he or she will feel nervousness or anxiety about it. Remember back when you got on a bicycle for the first time? Or the first time you tried to drive on the freeway? We tend to remember situations like riding a bike for the first time or driving a car for the first time because in those situations, we felt an imminent threat to our safety — the bigger that threat to our safety is, the more intense the fear or nervousness. For instance, if you have ever been sky-diving or bungee jumping, you probably felt a lot of fear.
Last week, I took a trip to London with my wife, and since we had been to London a few times, we decided to do some of the things that we always wanted to do, but just never got around to it. So we ended up going to St. Paul’s Cathedral, which is the big architectural centerpiece of London that the US Capitol building was modeled after. On the tour, we got to walk up over 500 stairs up to the very top of the dome. When we got to the top, an usher was sitting in a chair and looked at us and pointed to a small peek-hole built into the floor. My heart started racing as I leaned over and peeked through. Now I knew that there was a solid floor between me and the cathedral floor hundreds and hundreds of feet below, but that didn’t really help. I could feel the room start to spin a little as I got just a little queasy. Somehow my sub-conscious mind came to the conclusion that if I wasn’t careful, my 225 lb body was going to squeeze through this four inch hole and fall to my death on the hard stone surface below. It was a crazy thought. I quickly looked up and realized that I was still in the safety of the confined room, and I started to think more clearly. When I looked a second time, it was still scary, but not nearly as debilitating. Fear when you attempt something new is normal, and if it’s NOT there, you’re likely to have a much bigger problem than if it IS there.
To a lesser extent, though, we feel this fear constantly when we try something new even if the threat of bodily harm is not apparent. For instance, when I got my first Smart Phone, and I accessed the App Store, I was really nervous about downloading that very first “Free App” because I was scared to death that I’d end up with a recurring charge on my phone bill that I’d never be able to get rid of. I felt the same way years ago the first time I entered a credit card number on Amazon.com and bought a book. Nervousness is normal when we try something new. The more imminent the threat to our safety, the more nerve-racking the activity will be. For instance, my heart beat a lot faster when the first time I went bungee jumping than it did the first time than when I bought a book on Amazon.
I good analogy for this fear is when you are walking down a lonely street in a big city. If you see petite woman in a white lab coat walking toward you, you may not feel a lot of fear. However, if you see a teenage with tattoos and gang paraphernalia, you might start to experience a bit a anxiety. If you see four people dressed the same way, and two of them are carrying baseball bats, you will likely feel great fear. The more that you are threatened by an experience, the more fear you will fear during the experience.
Public speaking fear comes from an internal sense of a threat. The more that you see the speaking activity as a threat, the more fear you will feel. So, the key to lowering the threat is to lower the risk. For instance, in the analogy above where a gang of hoodlums is coming at you with baseball bats, if you happen to be accompanied by a couple of armed bodyguards, you will probably not feel nearly as much fear as you would if you were alone and unarmed.
Lower the Risk, Lower the Threat, Lower the Fear
When the risk of harm is lowered, the fear will diminish pretty dramatically. When I was high above St. Paul’s Cathedral, and I took that second look, I had consciously reassured myself that it would be impossible for me to fall. So the second look was not nearly as shocking as the first look. The first time I drove on the expressway, I was a nervous wreck (no pun intended), but after years of success driving at fairly fast speeds, now when I drive on the expressway, it’s almost second nature.
There are times that I’ve driven to the store or my office, and I put my car into park at my destination and think, “How did I get here?” The process was so second-nature to me, that I didn’t even have to think about it.
The skill of public speaking can happen in much the same way. Public speaking training with a good coach can ensure that you gain confidence in a step-by-step fashion so that as you get up in front of the next group, you have a pretty good shot at having a successful experience. Since the risk of failure is now lower, your fear will lower as well. The lower that your risk of failure becomes, the lower your fear will be as well. So after you train with a good coach, and you deliver your next presentation, because you are better prepared, you’re more likely to have a successful experience. The fear may still be there for this first run, but once you complete the presentation, and you have performed well during the speech, you’ll feel more confident about what you’ve accomplished. So the next time that you stand up to speak, it should be much easier. And the next time, easier still.
Are You Growing as a Speaker?
The point is that every time that you speak, you should have a success — You should set yourself up for success. And every time that you have an additional success, your confidence should grow. If that is not happening for you, then something is interrupting this cycle. For instance, some public speaking classes have a teacher or an instructor who uses constructive criticism as a coaching tool. Typically, the class member will deliver the speech, sit down, and receive a critique of his/her performance.
So instead of the teacher helping the class member deliver the initial speech better (helping the participant succeed), the teacher waits for the participant to fail and then gives a critique that reinforces that failure. As a result, when the class member stands up to deliver his/her next speech, instead of confidence, the person is experiencing a higher risk of failure. “I failed last time, so I’m likely to also fail this time… As soon as I sit down, I’m going to get another critique.”
A good public speaking coach will help a speaker deliver a better speech in the first place and then build on each of these successes. The difference in styles would be like letting a four-year-old get on a new bike and pedal and fall… pedal and fall… pedal and fall, and then once the kid is really frustrated coming over and critiquing her performance by telling her the three main things that she did wrong. Then waiting a week or two and repeat the process again. Although the fear would be high on the first attempt, the fear would be even higher the second time this new rider tried to get on the bike. A good coach will hold the seat for the child and then praise her performance once she has a small success. Once she has even a small success the risk of failure lowers, and although she’ll still be nervous, she’s now willing to attempt something more complicated. As the successes grow, the confidence will grow as well.
A new video about how helpful coworkers, supervisors, even spouses who give us constructive criticism to help us reduce public speaking fear actually have an opposite effect. Constructive criticism causes public speaking fear!
The Leader’s Institute® conducted a presentation skills class in Chicago, IL, where participants not only improved their public speaking skills, but also delivered outstanding presentations by the end of the second day!
The class is designed to reduce the nervousness that often comes with public speaking, and teach students how to design a world class presentation in 15 minutes or less. We had a very enthusiastic group of people who came from both the Chicago area and from across Illinois and the United States to take the class. They especially enjoyed learning tools to improve impromptu speaking, and had a lot of fun in the process. Good job everyone!
Public Speaking Video: Reduce Public Speaking Risk and Reduce Public Speaking Fear. The fear of public speaking basically comes from an increased risk of failure. The bigger the risk, the bigger the fear. So if you lower the risk associated with public speaking — in essence insure that you have a success when you stand up to speak, the nervousness and fear diminishes significantly.
