ovosh.info

In business presentations, clients and prospects are listening, watching and sensing everything you say, show and do.

Skilled experts read non-verbal facial expression and body language. Perhaps you’ve seen the Fox television series: “Lie To Me.” In this series, Dr. Cal Lightman is able to decode non-verbal facial expressions and body language. He uses this system to determine if someone is lying. 

This popular show is rooted in serious science.

Researcher Dr. Paul Ekman has studied facial expressions for 50 years. His blog offers a course on ‘micro-expressions,’ the telltale signs of whether someone is telling the truth or not. 

Ekman was named in 2009 as one of the Top 100 most influential people of 2009. Dr. Ekman’s training is used by government agencies, Fortune 500 companies, educational and medical professionals to enhance their ability to better ‘read’ people and detect potential lies.

Whether or not you want to study the art of lying, your audience is watching your face. Your audience may not include people with the same trained expertise. However, every person has the instinctive ability to sense lies or truth. This is the root of expressions such as: “I just have a hunch he’s not telling the whole story.”

If you want to radically change your success in presenting, it pays to understand the power of facial expressions.

What can you do to improve your presentation delivery skills?

Here are a few tips to help you master the art of using expressing yourself with authentic presentation delivery:

Tip 1: Show Your Emotions

While presentation coaches and trainers spend a lot of time on the face, this is often the easiest way to show believability. Adults have a lot of practice showing emotion with our facial expressions.

In professional settings, the emphasis is: show appropriate emotion. When your face conveys an appropriate amount of happiness or sadness, your audience will read this as alignment.

Tip 2: Smile Like You Mean It

A genuine smile can dissolve barriers and warm up a crowd. You don’t have to ‘turn on the charm’ or become an over-the-top performer. Simply smile with feeling as you would to a close colleague or friend.

Tip 3: Share What’s Going On

No doubt you’ve heard about the power of self-disclosure. It’s also called frank and honest expression. If something is going on, tell your audience.

This is a fast and easy way to let the audience into your personal experience. Perhaps you’ve just had a tough commute. Or you got lost on the way to the conference. Open up. It will help people to understand your expressions and emotions.

If you notice that you’re making a strong facial expression, let the audience come inside of your reaction. “This story makes me frown…let me tell you why…”

If you are sharing data you feel passionately about, tell the audience about your feelings: ” I get so worked up about this because I know there’s a cure…”

With small transitions and changes, you are building a bridge of trust with your audience. Because you want to be a persuasive presenter, connecting to your audience and telling the truth are extremely important.

The good news is, when you pay attention to the little things, you can get big results. With a precise focus on your delivery skills, you can be the kind of charismatic presenter you’ve always dreamed of being.

Want to be an animated and persuasive presenter? Show your feelings, speak the truth and connect personally with your audience. 

Communication- it is an essential business skill that is required in almost every type of industry. For those in the training community, superior communication skills are not only essential, but they are a pre-requisite to successfully explaining a subject.

The ability to convey knowledge to others is a powerful skill and must be developed in order to be an effective communicator. Without this training, we often use bad habits we’ve picked up along the way.
Slipping into these “bad habits” or deadly training sins can sabotage your training effort and minimize the effectiveness of your overall training objective. While there are many “deadly presentation sins” to avoid, some of the most common include the following:

o Burying students in detail- inhibits learning. Giving students more information than they are ready to absorb creates confusion and fear, and is scientifically proven to deter learning. Build a foundation of understanding and make sure they are comfortable with the information before you add details.

o Disorganization- developing a training plan, organizing your materials and your training facility can be as important as your knowledge of the training topic.

o Excessive use of words like “umm” or “and”- When we are nervous, we often unconsciously tack on these words at the end of a statement. They serve as a constant “interruption” between relevant training information and have an adverse impact on the students’ ability to fully understand the information.

o Fidgeting or foot shifting – is a nervous reaction to public speaking and is extremely distracting to students

o Lack of control over the pace of a presentation- In an effort to convey information, presenters often forget the importance of pacing. Many presenters speak too quickly for students to grasp the concepts; others speak too slowly to retain the attention of students.

o Diminishing students’ self esteem- Just as presenting in front of a group takes courage so does asking a question. Presenters must make efforts to maintain the self esteem of students who ask or answer questions or risk alienating not only the student asking the question but all who witnessed the interaction.

So now that we know what some of the deadly sins are, how can we avoid them? As trainers we must be aware of how we are presenting at all times. Learning the training techniques and skills developed by PrepMasters expert trainers can help you build your presentation skills and avoid these common pitfalls. Once you learn these skills practice, practice and practice.
Communicating in front of a group can be an un-nerving task for anyone- even training professionals! Committing to a training program can give you the tools to avoid these deadly presentation sins and enrich your training experiences. Challenge yourself- just like you should be challenging your students!