Standing in front of the crowd
I used to be terrified of public speaking. Based on discussions with people I have known in my life it seems to be one of the more common phobias. When I was in school I had it bad. Having to stand up in front of the class and read would leave me a gibbering wreck.
I’m still very nervous before any kind of public speaking but no longer to the point where it prevents me from doing it at all. This is mostly from practice. Survive a few presentations and you start to realise that life goes on regardless. Watch a few other people presenting and see that the experience is daunting for most.
There is one method that I have stumbled upon for presentation prep that has definitely helped me a lot. When working out a presentation I start with some basic ideas of content. However rather than focussing on the content I try and focus on the transitions between content (slides most of the time).
Note that I don’t mean animations and powerpoint magic, what I am talking about here is what I actually say before pulling up the next slide. As an example:
“So that is the theory but what does it look in practice I hear you ask. Well…”
This has a number of positive impacts:
- Smooth transitions make you look more at ease. You always have a sense of where you are going next
- Focus on transitions help shape the order of content to create a more flowing narrative
- Keeping content light means slides become memory jogs rather than reading lists
As always YMMV but I hope this might help someone else out. If anyone has any tips to share in kind they would be greatly appreciated!