Presenting in front of anyone is a dreadful task, be it a single person or a room full of people. The constant stress of saying something inappropriate or stopping in the middle presentation where your mind gets completely blank is real.
Whenever you’re going to take on an important job or take part in a complex task, you tend to doubt yourself and your capabilities, which brings nervousness.
Researchers have discovered the level of your nervousness lies in the significance of the task in your hand. For example, you’re going to give a presentation for coursework, and it consists of 5 marks, you’d tend to be less stressed and bothered about perfectly executing it.
Although, if you’re presenting in a business competition where the stakes are extremely high, your level of nervousness will reach the roof.
Some common signs of nervousness include rapid breathing, sweaty palms, shaking your feet, increased heartbeat, etc.
If you’ve faced one of these before a presentation, nervousness struck you.
How can you tackle this nervousness and make sure your presentation goes smoothly?
There’s no hard and fast rule that you can follow, but there is a lot of advice given by experts, which you can definitely give a try.
Being well prepared for a presentation never fails, if you know, all the ins and outs of what you’re presenting you’ll hardly face any difficulty.
Taking an ample amount of rest before a presentation can help you in keeping yourself calm and composed. We’ll be discussing some more tricks and tips on how to avoid nervousness during a presentation, so hope you stay till the very end.
How to Give a Good Presentation without being Nervous?
Become Familiar with the Environment
The place you’re going to give the presentation will play a major role in your nerves. You’ll certainly feel more homely and comfortable in a place you’re familiar with.
For example, at the very first presentation of your university life, you stammered and became blank a number of times since you were in a completely new environment and presenting in front of a bunch of new faces.
Your nerves naturally kicked in because the environment was unfamiliar to you. But two to three months down the line you were giving a presentation without any hesitation because you knew the people around and you were familiar with the surroundings.
How do I prepare myself when I’ve to present in a completely new place? This is the question you all have been thinking about on the back of your mind.
There are some methods you can try out when presenting in an unfamiliar environment. If you’re presenting in an auditorium or a hallway, take a walk around the entire room, go to the stage and try to make a rough estimation of how many people will be in the audience.
Try finding four corners in the room where you can look at while presenting; this will help you to stay away from the awkward stares in the audience. Getting familiar with the environment is a smart way to get comfortable during the presentation and avoid nervousness.
Practice makes a Man Perfect
Practice is one thing that will never let you down if you are going to give a presentation. In reality, practicing any work will make you the master of that certain task. The more you practice, the more you get hold of the topic you’re going to present.
Your question might be, how do I practice? Do I make a script for my presentation? Well, there are several ways you can practice for your presentation.
You can also come up with your own trick or technique that helps you remember and confidently present the details of your presentation.
You can divide your presentation into segments; you can practice one segment rigorously and then move on the next, this helps you to learn a large portion easily.
You don’t necessarily have to practice by studying or memorizing your speech, and you can head over to YouTube and see how public speakers present their extempore in a “Ted Talk” or any other platform.
If you’re visually captivating how an individual is fluently presenting, you tend to follow and easily capture the small details.
This is an efficient way to practice because often you’ll see that professional speakers do something out of the box to grab the attention of the audience. The main idea is to let you know that the more you prepare for a presentation, the more you’ll feel confident about it. Your worries of messing up in between or stammering will lower down since you’ll know the answers to the questions.
Staying Confident is the Key to Success
I will start with a short story of a student who was extremely scared to speak publicly. He was an introvert, and he could never express his feelings articulately because he had this constant fear of being judged by others.
During his very first presentation, he was told to speak about “Ambition”; he had a shaky start but, in the middle, he messed up everything because he saw two of his friends in the audience laugh and that shattered his confidence, which ultimately ruined his entire presentation.
The same day he went home devastated by his performance, but he didn’t give up. He saw multiple videos on YouTube, and then he saw how people made a simple topic interesting to the audience.
The YouTube videos worked as a major boost to his confidence and spirit. In the next presentation, his get-up and his posture were quite different than before, and he looked way more determined.
He successfully aced the presentation and received a medal for his outstanding performance.
Ladies and gentlemen, that student was me. Not boasting about myself but during my latter presentation I was confident and well prepared about my speech and how I’m going to present it, and most importantly I ignored all sorts of distraction from the audience.
How to give a Good Presentation?
Now comes the ultimate question, what are the parameters of a good presentation, and how do you give it?
The verdict of your presentation depends on your audience and the judges, and how well you can convey your message to them.
There are some basic techniques you can adopt that will help in making your presentation more interesting.
Turn your topic of discussion into a story. Telling a story is a simple and effective way to connect with your audience.
Start your presentation by asking an energizing question! This will compel the audience to stay connected to your presentation. Another way to begin high in your presentation is by starting with a famous quote or caption and how it is related to the topic of discussion.
People tend to relate themselves with quotes, so you can easily grab their attention. Try infusing new information during your presentation; this will cause the audience to stick with you till the very end. These are some tactics you can try out to give a good presentation.
Conclusion
In the end, it is crucial for you to connect your words with visuals. A captivating PowerPoint slide always seals the deal because not only does the audience feel more interested, they eagerly wait for what’s coming next. There is no shortcut to success; you need to practice and work hard to be the very best.
