Do you need or want to do presentations and/or demos at work? Does it scare you? It used to for me. But there are ways to make it easier and even enjoy the process and event, read on!
Your brain
It is totally normal and expected that you may feel very nervous about doing things like presenting or doing demos in front of other people. You are isolated, being stared at by a number of sets of eyes, the audience has expectations of you, and others on your team probably have expectations of you.
And so you exhibit physical and mental stress factors. You’re nervous, maybe sweaty hands, pace, stutter when you speak or have a quaver in your voice … whatever happens when you are nervous or under stress.
So the first thing to do is … recognize this is what is happening. Just acknowledging that this is the state you are in, allows you to begin to see how to combat it. And what works for me may not work for you.
Be Prepared
My absolute #1 practical step is to be prepared.
- Know your content
- Practice (more on this below).
- Eat in moderation before
- Drink water just before (and during, more on this below)
- Go to the bathroom. You need to, trust me.
- Wash your hands, do not use sanitizer (it makes your hands sticky which accentuates the nervous physical reactions)
- Dress comfortably, if at all possible wear what makes you feel safe, and don’t “try that new outfit or pair of shoes”, wear something you’ve worn many times before.
Practice
Here’s the thing about practice. It’s a goldilocks thing. You can not do enough of it. You can do just the right amount. You can do too much.
Doing “not enough” is fairly obvious … you’ll come across as reading the notes or the slides, you’ll likely stumble around the delivery and just generally do a poor job of it.
Doing too much can also lead to fatigue with the delivery and cause you to just want to get it over with on the day and go too fast or not have energy in the delivery.
Doing “just enough” is the thing to figure out. When are you “just right”? For me, it means that I can recite what I want to say without the visuals in front of me. Once I get to the point I can do that several times in a row, I’m done.
The Delivery
Ok, so it’s on. Here’s a few things I’ve been taught, learn to trust and do.
- You know more than your audience, and you know what’s coming. They don’t.
- It’s ok to take sips of water, always have some even if you don’t end up using it, gives your mind peace to know it’s there.
- Take a breath before you start, especially if you walk out to present or do anything other than just start or stand up.
- If you’ve done your practice, the delivery will come.
- As you get more confident and comfortable, you can start to focus on the secondary aspects like the speed of delivery in real time, looking around the audience, or intentionally moving around the stage.
Aftermath
Congratulations, you crushed it. Enjoy that feeling. Take a little walk, review in your mind how you thought you did, don’t be hard on yourself, improvements will happen and you’ll never be perfect every time.
Hopefully this gives you the confidence that you can do this, and to help you remember that this is a skill just like any other that takes time to hone and perfect, and will atrophy when unused.
Adam