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One of the common conversation topics on presentation that I encounter is that employees feel that they are not having enough confident to present. Especially in a meeting where there are bosses and top management staff sitting in.
I would then ask them, "Did you rehearse your presentations?" The answer is common: No or not much. You see, whether in SEA Games, Asian Games or Olympic Games, when race starts, the 100-metre athletes take their stride, race with confidence and win that elusive medal; much to their joy. Similarly for actors doing live performances, the moment the curtains open, they put up convincing performances that delight the audience; and sometimes receiving standing ovations. So what makes them be good at their crafts? The answer is, practice. Athletes will train every day building up their muscle and in the process, build up their confidence to face other athletes in the competition. Of course, some may win, others may not, but for sure, they are so much better than when they first started training. For actors, rehearsals started 4-5 months in advance prior to their first matinee or premiere. In the process, the actors gain confidence to play the characters convincingly. Similarly, there is a need to rehearse your presentation; even if it is a mere 5-minutes! Constant rehearsals will help to make your delivery "second nature", thus making you look good presenting. Never underestimate the power of rehearsals. So how to rehearse? I would suggest 3 parts to this: Part One: Once you have your scripts or slides done, go stand up and rehearse. Don't just stand, move. Use gestures where appropriate. Do this a few times until you feel "second nature". Part Two: Gather a few of your close friends and make them your audience. Let them watch your presentation. Appoint some of them to be the devil's advocate, asking you tough questions, so that you can be prepared for such situations at the actual presentation site. Part Three: Just moments before the actual presentation, do a visualisation exercise. This is a powerful way to gain confidence. Find a corner or place, close your eyes and recall the rehearsals that you have done - mentally. Once done, take a deep breath, smile, and walk your way into the meeting room (or your presentation venue). When is your next presentation? Have you rehearsed? Towards your speaking success! Yours sincerely, Hazriq Idrus Speaking & Creativity Strategist Founder, The Speaking Factory Pte Ltd Author, The Stage Fright Antidote! ~ Hazriq Idrus is a Business Creativity and Speaking Strategist. He founded The Speaking Factory Pte Ltd with a mission to empower operational and middle-management leaders in achieving professional and organisational excellence through his signature high-energy, transformational theatre-based & experiential corporate training programmes.
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Not enough time to prepare for your presentations?
Remember these 3 H.O.T Tips that you must have as you prepare your presentations. 1) Hook If you start the session by saying, "Hi, I am <your name> from <your dept/ company>, it appears normal and boring. So, change the style. Engage the audience right from the start. Hook them. One way to hook them is to ask and get their response: An example: Ask them to answer this question by raising their hands: "Who believes that public speaking is an important skill to have?" We can easily get their responses and engage them at the same time. 2) Odd-numbered Topics Break your topics into three parts (or odd numbers). This is because human brains are designed to remember odd numbers easily. 3) The Call-to-Action At the end of the presentation, always include your call-to-action, so that the audience will know what to do next. It could be the next date of your meeting, deadlines for them to meet etc. Apply these three tips and your audience will appreciate you. Towards your continued success, Hazriq Idrus Business Creativity & Speaking Strategist Author of 3 books, including "The Stage Fright Antidote" Founder, The Speaking Factory Pte Ltd Hazriq Idrus is Asia's Dynamic Business Creativity and Speaking Strategist. Hazriq founded The Speaking Factory with a mission is to empower operational and middle-management leaders achieve professional and organisational growth through Theatre-based & High-Energy Transformational Expriential training. He is the author of The Stage Fright Antidote and co-authored two other books. If you would like Hazriq to speak at your organisation, or work with you in training & coaching, contact him at [email protected].  "Feedback is the Breakfast of Champions!" Have you heard this phrase before? This phrase was coined by leadership & management expert, Ken Blanchard. And it does make a lot of sense.
As an employee or a business owner, as a team player or a team leader, everyone needs to improve to move forward. One of the fastest ways to improve - whether on your skills, management or communication styles - is to seek constant feedback; and act on it accordingly. Through feedback from others, we can look into our 'blindspots' which are usually overlooked. These blindspots could make a difference in our lives. For example, if you are having an upcoming presentation at your next department meeting, seek someone's help to offer their feedback and advice on how to improve on your presentations. With that feedback, you would bring a different perspective in your presentation that could help you get promoted! Similarly, when working in a team, there is a need to constantly exchange feedback within the team members to improve the team's outcome and deliverables. One of the common questions I always receive is "What if the Leader is the one who needs to improve so he/she can lead the team better?" According to Michael Podolinksky, Singapore's Productivity Guru, whom I had the opportunity to work with some years ago, shared that, as a teamplayer, it is equally important for a staff to offer feedback to the boss. I call it a 'disservice' to ourselves and to the team if we do not offer our feedback to the leader to improve, much for the benefits of the team. A lot of people will find it difficult to convey this message to the team leader, but afterall the team leader is still a human. When you are planning to offer your feedback to your team leader, it is best if you could offer it privately, away from other colleagues. Make an appointment with your leader and have the session over coffee. Make the meeting informal. When offering the feedback, one method is to use the "Hamburger Method". There are 3 Steps to it this method: 1st Step: The Top Loaf - Extract and share positive outcomes that your leader had exuded that had helped the team in one way or another. 2nd Step: The Meat - This is where you go straight to the areas for improvement. Share 2 or 3 things that you feel your bosses are not doing right. Offer your suggestions to improve. 3rd Step: The Bottom Loaf - End the sharing with another positive outcome that you know about your leader. If he/she is a good leader, he/she would listen and improve. However, whether or not your leader will take in and respond, it is up to him/ her. But you have done your part as a team player. You will be respected for offering your honest opinions for the sake of the team. When I was working in the corporate organisation previously, I was fortunate that my bosses constantly asked for feedback to improve on their working and management styles. I used this 'Hamburger' method when I shared my feedback. It worked for me. How about you? Does this method work for you? Here's to your continued success! Hazriq Idrus Author of "The Stage Fright Antidote!" + 2 other books Founder, The Speaking Factory Pte Ltd ~ Hazriq Idrus is a Business Creativity and Speaking Strategist. He founded The Speaking Factory Pte Ltd with a mission to empower operational and middle-management leaders in achieving professional and organisational excellence through his signature high-energy, transformational theatre-based & experiential corporate training programmes. Occasionally, there will be somebody in the audience who seems to know more than you do - or rather they think they do. This are what I called the "self-proclaimed experts". What can we do to manage these people?
I had my fair share of "self-proclaimed experts" in my workshops. Once in one of my creative problem solving workshops, as soon as I opened the door for the participants to enter, an 50plus year-old man came in. He was one of the first to enter. He went straight to an empty chair and sat down. He looked around the room and started asking me questions. He sounded like an interrogator at first; asking me on my work experiences, how long I have been conducting training and various other kinds of questions. Some tough ones. I chatted with him while providing the answers he asked for. It turned out that he had been in the company for years and would be retiring in a few years' time. That was my cue "win" him over. So here are some tips that you can do if you face audience who are "self-proclaimed experts: 1) Chat and engage small talks with him/ her 2) Find out what are their strengths/ likes etc. 3) Acknowledge and lavishly (and sincerely) praise them on those areas 4) Get them to be on your side 5) Keep the conversations positive and professional throughout More often than not, these steps helped me in managing these situations. And back to the 50plus year-old participant I mentioned earlier, we turned out to be best of buddies during the session. He was very supportive of my presentation, willingly shared his experiences in the company to value-add my points which I shared and willingly offered to volunteer when I needed assistance to do some demonstrations. How about you? Do you face something familiar? Would like to hear from you too. Towards your speaking success, In any presentation, these 3 elements must exist.:
1) People The presence of people (audience) is an important factor before you go up and give your presentations. If there is no audience, there is no need to even put up a presentation! Having said that, it is important to know who your target audience are. You can use this checklist to help you determine your audience. a) Who are they? eg Working adults/ School kids/ Youths? b) What's in it for them listening to your speech? eg increase wellness, reduce debts c) What is the Call to Action for them after your speech? eg buy your books, enrol in your classes, join your emailing list By knowing who your audience are, it will help you prepare your content. 2) Presenter Once you know who are your target audience, you can then prepare your yourself as a presenter. You will have to decide two main factors - your message & the medium of delivery. You can use this checklist below to help you determine your message and medium: Message: a) Is your message going to inform/ educate/ persuade/ inspire the audience? Medium of delivery: b) Are you using slides/videos/ music/ or just you speaking on stage? 3) Place It is important to to know the location and type of room you are going to present. Knowing the place beforehand helps you to prepare your mind and energy. A big space requires you to exude more energy as compared to a smaller venue. You can use this checklist below to help you determine your presentation venue: - Is the presentation going to take place at the expo/workshop room/ seminar room/ on stage/ lecture hall Prior your next speaking engagements, ensure you have these primary information first. Hope these tips help. Towards a successful communications and creative confidence, Hazriq Idrus Author, The Stage Fright Antidote! Founder, The Speaking Factory Pte Ltd About Hazriq Idrus: Hazriq Idrus is a Business Creativity & Speaking Strategist. He founded The Speaking Factory Pte Ltd with a mission to help operational and middle-management leaders achieve professional & organisational growth through theatre-based and high-energy experiential corporate training. He is the author of "The Stage Fright Antidote!" and co-authored two other books. Visit: www.thespeakingfactory.com for more information.
8 MUST-HAVE Public Speaking Elements that made Dananjaya Hettiarachchi the World Champion of Public Speaking 2014
Dananjaya Hettiarachchi won the World Champion of Public Speaking 2014. Here we looked at what are the 8 elements that made him tick: 1) Theatrical attention grabbing opener with analogy. Dananjaya’s opening style was an attention grabber and theatrical. He took time to take the flower out of his left pocket (in theatre, this is called ‘moments’) and used it as an analogy in his speech. He even addressed the audience as “flower” because of the positiveness of it. That immediately made the audience as part of his presentation. 2) Engage Audience with questions and hand movements. Twice, he asked the audience to raise hands to respond his questions. “Raise your hands, if…” This is one of the simple yet effective method to get the audience to agree and respond to your questions. By getting the audience to move, that is a way to engage and eliminate any boredom. Interestingly, he didn’t use this method at the beginning of his speech (like some other speakers would) to grab attention. This is a mark of a confidence speaker. 3) Using parents as an emotional connection. Everyone has parents. By using his parents’ attributes (his emotional mama and cool dad) as anchor points to start his story, he gets the audience to relate with him easily. That again is a good connection. 4) Comic Timing for humour. His didn’t use slapstick humour to get attention or audience to laugh. He uses effective gestures and comic timing to illustrate “… when putting everything together, you’ll get my momma (or my dad)”. Audience laughed at that gesture (which he did twice) and during that moments when the audience laughed, he paused and let the audience enjoyed the laughter. I would call it a “sin” if you continue your story when your audience is laughing. 5) Stage movements – Moving with a reason. He used the different parts of stage to illustrate the different points of his story. At Stage Left (I call it ‘Stage Left’ because from the point of view as a speaker), it would be the story about him and his mother. At Centre Stage, it was about him and his father and also about him and this “strange” man he met during his table topics presentation. Stage Right would be about him and his father’s good friend. These different movements were different anchor points and brought the audience in the journey of his interaction among the different characters. 6) Gestures. See how he used his gestures – he used different hand gestures to illustrate tears of joy (right hand gestures), tears of sorrow (left hand gestures) and tears of shame (pointing to him, because in the story he had let his mother’s down.) 7) Using Repetition and punch lines. “I see something in you, but I don’t know what it is”: he used it three times as part of his storytelling… That’s repetition…a very good tool to get messages anchored in the audience’s mind. He also used it as punchlines to good effect to get good laughs. 8) Closing the speech. Towards the ending part of his presentation, he went back to the “flower”. It was a good link and recollection as to where he started off and talked about the flower again. And he ended it with his punchline, “When I look at you, I see something in you” which by then, the sentence had already embedded in the minds of the audience and got the audience in stitches again. He ended the show by portraying a “Star” calibre by throwing the flower into the audience. He won the audience (and the judges)! In conclusion, these are 8 elements that were present in Dananjaya Hettiarachchi’s speech that made him a winner: Good Script + Good Delivery + Theatrical elements = World Champion! Yours creatively, Hazriq Idrus Author, The Stage Fright Antidote!  Brunei Times, 18 Sep 2014, pg A12 I just gotten back from Brunei. It was my first visit after 14 years (the last visit was during my National Service in the early 2000s). More importantly, it was an honour to have been invited and represented Singapore at the ASEAN Literary Council (MASTERA) Theatre Festival 17-19 September 2014 at Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam. The event was held in conjunction with the annual MASTERA Conference and Seminar. It is organised annually with its country members taking turns to host. Brunei hosted the event for this year. Singapore will be next. To me, it was also a sense of responsibility; flying the national flag while doing what I enjoy - stage acting! For this project, I did a monologue (a solo act by an actor who also usually takes on several characters) called "Atuk" - a story about a grandfather who enjoyed sharing stories to his grandchildren of his adventure as a performing artiste that inspired his grandchildren. The theatre piece was also written and directed by yours sincerely. During my usual post-event reflection, I realised that there are 7 reasons why giving presentation/public speaking is very similar to monologue acting because … 1) Monologue actor delivers a message on stage alone; so does a public speaker; 2) In theatre, it is called “moments”; in presentation it is called “pauses”; the art of keeping silence! 3) Wonderful theatre plays amaze audience, but it was a product of sheer hard work and rehearsals. So do in presentations; 4) An actor requires him to project a strong and clear voice; no different from a public speaker; 5) Acting in front of an audience requires will power and lots of courage; same goes to a public speaker; 6) An interactive monologue piece requires actor’s response to the crowd accordingly; similar to a public speaker – audience loves two-way communication; 7) Acting skills can be learnt; Public speaking skills too! Since acting skills and public speaking skills can be learnt, the next time you have a presentation, give it a go at applying some theatrical elements. It will give your presentation a different and unique approach. If you need some help on that, just beep me. That's it for now, till we meet again! Yours sincerely, Hazriq Idrus Author, The Stage Fright Antidote!
In any stand-up presentation, the slides is an AudioVisual Aid; not the main attraction.
The presenter (You!) is the Star of your own presentation. So keep your texts on slides to a minimal (but more graphics is advisable instead). Because audience wants to see, listen & learn from you! Some tips to keep your slides with minimal texts: 1) Create a presentation that has 3-5 Main Points/ Categories 2) For each Main Point, have only 3-5 sub-points per slide 3) For each sub-point, have only 3-5 words per sub-point 4) Use pictures and graphics 5) Do not use animations unnessarily Yours creatively Hazriq Idrus Author, The Stage Fright Antiote! Founder, The Speaking Factory Pte Ltd |
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