Public Speaking, Presentation & Leadership Skills

In today's fast-paced world, effective communication is vital for success, particularly when it comes to delivering technical presentations. Engaging a larger audience requires a thoughtful approach that combines technical expertise with powerful presentation skills. In this blog post, we will explore valuable tips and techniques to help you deliver captivating technical presentations that resonate with a bigger audience. From structuring your content to utilizing visual aids and fostering interaction, we will cover essential strategies that can elevate your presentation skills and leave a lasting impact on your listeners.   Know Your Audience: Understanding your audience is fundamental to delivering an engaging technical presentation. Before crafting your content, take time to research the demographics, interests, and knowledge levels of your target audience. This information will enable you to tailor your presentation to their specific needs, ensuring that your message reso...

Public speaking is said to be the biggest fear reported by many adults, topping flying, financial ruin, sickness, and even death. Your breath speeds up, your pulse races. Your throat tightens as your palms sweat. You feel sick to your stomach, and when you speak, your hands and knees shake along with your voice.  These are common  symptoms of stage fright , also known as performance anxiety. Millions of people experience the involuntary response when they’re faced with delivering a presentation or performing in front of others. This assumption of being judged arises from the  spotlight effect  -- the belief that people are paying more attention (especially negative attention) to you than they truly are. It’s an evolutionary holdover of the “fight or flight” response. In this case, your body perceives actual danger from becoming the focus of others' attention. Stage fright is normal, but that certainly doesn’t mean that it’s no...

How many times have you gone into a presentation and within couple of minutes have said “Oh no! Not another of those boring Power Point presentations….!!!!!!!!!!!” The truth is, bad Power Point happens to even good communicator and quite often the person giving the presentation is just as much a victim as the poor audience. Here are few tips which help you to add a bit more spice to your presentation and make it interesting. By all means this is not a comprehensive tips but a start feel free to share your tips also. The Skeleton It has been a common phenomenon for presenters to make their presentations first and then work on the speech. They align their speech according to the slides. But honestly it should be other way round. The slides are the tools to aid in your presentations.  Unless you are an expert in improvising, make sure you write out the script of your presentation even before thinking about the slides. Your script should follow good storytelling...

slides – is it important? Do you always pull out slides or projector when you are having an important conversation with your friend or relative in a restaurant. Rather that will be the odd thing to do. We look into their eyes and give them the proper / full attention along with the words. They feel important and start taking your words seriously. This, I know will raise a question: then why do we use slides? If you look at the maximum of the best speeches of all time, you will not find any use of slides. Though there are question: would these speeches have been better if they were narrated over slides? In many cases, no. You’d have to listen carefully to figure out when ideas would be better presented visually rather than with words alone, which is the secret for thinking about your own presentations: when do you truly need a visual image to express an idea? And when would it be better simply letting your voices tell the story? Most of the time we speak with sl...

Every Saturday I take my son to his music teacher, the different ways of practice that his teacher teaches him is equally applicable to public speaking. Whenever he made a mistake, she got him to start from a few notes before the mistake and carry on a few notes after the mistake, rather than going back to the start each time. This meant that the part of song that needed the most practice got it, rather than becoming excellent at the first part of the piece and then gradually getting worse as it went on. She also made him practice in various styles and speed. This kept him interested and also started making him versatile. It is good idea to aim to memorise your speech and have notes or cue cards to refer when needed. But as you get confident you should aim to become less reliant on your notes and to leave the script behind at times and just go with the flow. You may find yourself with a different audience to what you prepared for and they may appreciate a different angle on yo...

The biggest fear of public speaking is what would my audience say? What happens if they are not interested? Capturing the audience attention is challenging, and from the onset is daunting. But if you can do it, you will be hooked on to public speaking. In today’s fast world, especially with so much portable gizmos, the speaker has to grab the audience attention from the word go or they may start doing other thing.  Here’s some tips of capturing the audience attention from the word go. Get acclimatised:   Join the crowd before the presentation. The last few minutes is not for going through you notes but mingling with them. This helps you to get rapport with the future audience, know them. This may help you to tweak your speech at the last minute to suit their needs. Moreover it will help you to be at ease in the presentation, by having some familiar faces in the audience. When you stand up to speak, first smile, look around the room and make eye contact with s...