Some people think that people are born to do public speaking and some people are not. Public speaking is a skill, like any other. If one person can do it, so can you and you can do it well. It requires observation, practice, training, learning and an ability to be open minded. All of this is available to anyone.

Presentation skills are not something you suddenly acquire. You gain confidence every time you present and this in turn prepares you for your next delivery. You must reflect on your performance, identify weak points, address them using presentation skills training and then carry on presenting to become better at it.

There are many areas that you need to consider within presentation skills or when you are getting trained on it. In particular you need to cover these areas:

• What you say
• How you say it
• Body language
• How you interact with your audience
• Your message
• Your pace
• Structure and composition of your sentences

Let’s consider body language as an example. Try the following:

• Stand in front of a mirror
• Hunch your shoulders
• Hang your head down
• Lean to a wall next to you if there is one
• Look at your feet
• Now, introduce yourself with enthusiasm and positive energy!

You will probably find this quite difficult or impossible. Now try this:

• Stand straight
• Lift your head high
• Look directly at the mirror
• Now, try again to introduce yourself with enthusiasm and positive energy

It works! It is much easier this time around. All you have done is to change your body posture but the result on you and your audience was significant. Good body posture can increase your personal impact and convince others that you are an important person that they should to listen to. Inappropriate body language or weak postures reduce your presence and you might lose your audience before you even begin to present.

Let’s try another area. Imagine you are about to give a presentation and start like this:

“Emm.., hi there, I am going to talk about the effect of substrate TGY on ants, well, I will also cover beetles as well, but most of the talk is about ants. I have some images to show later. Oh, some of them are bees as well. Hang on, do we have a projector here... The images are not that great but at least you will get to see what I mean. I will show them at the end though...right... let me get these notes...emm. We have used TGY in BHF for many years and the GTHI has been very impressed with our 3% increase....”

By this time, the audience is likely to be sleep, not so interested or utterly confused. It is simply not professional and is full of errors. Here are some. The presenter:

• Appears unprepared
• Undermines her own presentation by saying it is not that great
• Jumps from topic to topic
• Does not explain why the audience should care to listen
• Her sentences or the talk doesn’t flow
• Uses jargon and does not explain them for those who might not be unfamiliar with them

All of these issues can be resolved by following specific guidelines on presentation skills and public speaking. The best way to quickly acquire these skills systematically is through presentation skills training. This way, learners get to practice in the controlled environment of a training class and immediately get feedback on their performance from the trainer or even other learners.

Companies can also benefit from presentation skills training materials which allow them to develop tailored training solutions for their staff and their specific industry. The content can also be used for personal impact training which again is an important skill that helps individuals to become more competitive and efficient.

Chelsea Elm is a training consultant with a UK based courseware provider which offers training resources for trainers on emotional intelligence, project management, time management and train the trainer materials. You can find out more about this article in presentation skills training materials. Also see course materials and trainer activities.