Public Speaking Tips

The symptoms people experience when they are nervous presenting can differ significantly. For those who only have a mild problem; once they get started on the presentation, their nerves can fade, leaving them free to complete their talk, often successfully. At the most extreme people can experience their mind going blank amongst other symptoms.

A common symptom is losing track of where you are in your talk.

During a presentation, there is a logical order to the topics that you present. This order allows your audience to follow the concepts and ideas you put to them. Following a logical order enhances your audiences ability to understand your presentation. If you lose track of the order, you can miss out relevant sections. If this happens, it can lead to confusion amongst your listeners. This type of thing can reflect poorly on you as a speaker. The best way to avoid this happening is to deal with the underlying problem that causes this to happen. There are some excellent techniques that help, such as, EFT, NLP and Mindfulness Based Inner RePatterning. However, if you haven’t done that, there are a couple of things that you can do to help you cope with this problem. The tips below are for mild to moderate nerves.

1. Use Slides: Use a slide presentation to keep you on track. The slides should not be too wordy.
2. 4Mat your Talk: What is 4Mat? It is a straightforward way of structuring your talk that can make it easier to remember. The 4Mat system involves breaking the presentation into four distinct sections. These are; Why?; What?; How? And What if?

The reason this is useful is that so many people write extensive notes to support their presentation. While these notes might be helpful pre-presentation, they are near useless during it. It is challenging to pick them up and start reading them during the presentation, especially while you are nervous.

Breaking your talk down into four sections, the Why, the What, the How and the What if, can act as a memory aid. Provided your nervousness isn’t too high, all you have to remember is what section name. For example, if you are in the Why section, you ask yourself, Why is what I am saying important to them. Why should they listen? When you know the section name, it can help trigger the content of this section.