The Eight Master Key Skills of Effective Presenters and Trainers
Fresh back from assisting at the October 04 Charisma Enhancement : Trainers Training in London, I made some notes of the key points to share with you. While attending a quality live training is always the best option, you’ll be delighted by how quickly you can improve your presentations by considering and putting into action just some of the following key points.
Eight action points for success are :
- Presence
- Voice
- Content
- Intention
- State
- Attention
- Command
- Emotion
Presence – Think about your stance, your position on the stage, facing the audience front forwards, or at an angle with one foot behind the other. When you move, do so with care and attention, and make your gestures larger and meaningful.
Tips: You can experiment with this in front of a live audience, or simply stand up and talk in front of some friends and ask them for feedback on how you come across. Failing this, get a full-sized mirror and watch yourself in this.
Voice – Think about your tonality, rhythm, volume, flexibility and scope.
Tips: Pay attention to your audience’s response, ask friends for honest, constructive feedback and tape yourself – even if the only way you can do so is recording an answering machine message.
Content – Know your subject inside and out, so this can be delivered fluently, without the need of notes, while your attention is outside, focused on your audience. Get yourself an effective memory system to organise or Mind Map® the structure in useful chunks, so you can be flexible in delivery.
Tips: While your initial memory tools or mind mapping can be on paper, you’ll want to store these internally / in your mind for best effect.
Intention – What are your aims for this presentation – what do you want your audience to know or be able to do by the end? What powerful learning states do they need to be in and when in the process do they need to access them, in order to be able to achieve this?
Tip: This is worth some forward thought and planning, at first, for unconscious excellence later.
State – First off, your own state, stacked with the resources you want for this presentation. Your own anchors set to use as you move smoothly through the states you want to lead first your audience.
Then for your audience, think about visual, auditory and kinesthetic anchors, “nested loops” etc.
Attention – Your attention needs to be on the outside – use “soft eyes” to taken in the whole audience and track their responses. Use Dr Richard Bandler’s “Hypnogaze” to take swathes of the audience into whatever state you want.
Tips: “Soft eyes” means relaxing your gaze so that you can see everyone with your peripheral vision. The “Hypnogaze” is best experienced in person. ☺
Command / Control – Command your space – timekeeping, questions etc. Troublemakers, hecklers etc. It is your responsibility to ensure that every aspect of the training environment supports the participants’ experience and learning.
Tips: Think about light, heat, water on hand, adequate breaks and regular changes of pace and activity. Start on time and set the right atmosphere to ensure participants arrive on time, support each others’ experience and that no one ‘hogs’ the questions or presenter’s time and attention.
Energy – Be passionate about your subject, deliver with drive and enthusiasm – if you don’t care, don’t do it (or if you have to do it, find a reason to motivate you first).
Tips: High energy and passion doesn’t mean being in one state of “high power overdrive”! The energy you put into your presentation can be something strong, steady, ethical and congruent, and can move through the full range of states.
Having read and absorbed these ideas to this point, you may well have some questions – after all, I have deliberately left some terms and ideas unexplained – allow these to whet your appetite for further research, experimentation and training and you will continue to move your trainings and presentations to increasing excellence.
