Presenting with Confidence.
Nerves are not a sign of weakness.
They show you care. When we reframe nerves for excitement, and focus on the audience-first, we transform our experience.
We are all presenting, all the time. Whether it’s in a virtual meeting, sharing an update with our boss, or sharing our side of feedback. These eight tools are great ways to start to set yourself up for success virtually.
Reframe the fear.
It’s estimated that approximately 75% of people experience some form of anxiety or fear of speaking in front of an audience (also known as ‘glossophobia’, a fear of public speaking). When you feel nerves cropping up (nervous tummy, shaky voice, or the sweats), it’s your adrenaline getting you ready to ‘fight, flight or freeze’.
As both anxiety and excitement are states of arousal, we’re able to use our adrenaline and put it to good use. In a study by Harvard Business School, participants who re-appraised fear for excitement and said ‘I’m excited’ in place of ‘I’m nervous’ performed 17% better in public speaking and karaoke, and 22% in maths tests.
So, next time you present, instead of telling yourself to ‘get calm’, try ‘get excited’. By gently reminding yourself that you’re excited, you’re well on your way to using your adrenaline for good and taking a positive step forward.
Rethink judgement.
A fear we commonly have is being worried about what other people are thinking about us. The thing is … people are judging you.
Experts suggest others make assumptions about us within the first seven to eight seconds of meeting us. In some instances, this is less time than it takes to set up the Zoom meeting and say, ‘hello’!
When we accept that others are judging us in an attempt to better understand us, we shift the focus from ‘this is about me’, to ‘the audience is getting a feel for what I’m saying’. This simple mindset shift helps us worry less about things we can’t control (others opinions) and onto things we can: how we can put the audience at ease and communicate clearly and confidently.
Shift happens.
In a virtual world, one thing is for sure: 80% of the time things will go to plan. 20% of the time they wont. That’s why having a great back up plan can help you navigate anything that might crop up. In a virtual setting here are tips we use at Happiness Concierge:
To protect against low bandwidth, we often share our materials as a PDF in the chat for people who like to read along at the start of the presentation. Don’t be afraid to use your chat function skills for engagement and to support people who mightn’t feel confident asking questions verbally.
If the internet is a bit uncertain, permission to turn off the camera to ensure there’s enough bandwidth to carry the sound. As Beyonce says, never sacrifice the vocals for a dance move, and we never sacrifice great sounds for visuals!
Presence over perfection: no one is expecting you to be perfect, but they do expect you to be present. Do what you need to to be present and focused on a great presentation on the day. If someone interrupts you at home, you can call the elephant in the room and say ‘one moment please everyone, let me address this so I can be fully present with you’.
Prepare a 5 min pitch.
In a virtual world, meetings can run over time, running into your valuable presenting time. That’s why having a ‘5 minute version’ of your presentation up your sleeve can be helpful to be able to present key takeaways for your audience, if needed, on the spot.
Before presenting, prepare a handy checklist that outlines:
If there were three key points that were non-negotiable for this audience to know, what would they be?
What do I want the audience to think of, or about, following this meeting?
If I needed to ‘plant a seed’ for this audience, what would that be?
What does this audience need to walk away from this connection knowing or having visibility across?
A short, powerful, simple presentation goes a long way in helping people understand. If you only have five minutes to present, or a shorter version to present, it’s actually a good thing: you’re able to focus on the essentials and follow up with a longer background should it be valuable.
Behind the screen.
The wonderful thing about working virtually is that you can hide a number of your nerve-setting techniques behind the screen. Here are tips our facilitators personally use to manage nerves:
Bare feet: having your feet on the ground can be very settling when adrenaline is at the steering wheel. Reminding yourself to centre and ‘ground’ yourself while presenting can help you slow down and focus on one message at a time.
Hit mute: the wonderful thing about virtual is that you can use technology to force a pause, or give yourself time to breathe and nobody needs to know. Between key statements, you might tell the audience you’re going to go on mute to see if there are any questions in the chat, and give yourself a minute to breathe, take time and reset or take a drink.
Ask questions for understanding: asking questions is an excellent way to see if the audience has the same understanding as you do, and bonus - it gives you a few minutes to breathe deeply as you await feedback. No questions? No problem, saying ‘no news is good news’, is a great way to move on.
The little green light is just one person: a fun hack all of us at Happiness Concierge use is to look directly into the green light indicating your camera is on. It can feel strange at first, but looking into the green dot lowers the need to feel faces looking at you and your camera will show that you are directly looking at your audience. Focussing on that as a 1:1 conversation can help lower the feeling of a ‘big’ presentation and help it feel more intimate.
Lamp or light on the face: talk about an instant glow up! Popping a lamp, or light behind your camera, onto your face lights up your presented face to the screen enabling others to see you. It does get a bit warm, but air con, or a fan is a great way to balance that.
Do Not Disturb mode: having this on your computer while presenting gives you that additional confidence you’ll be able to put your best foot forward.
Audience first.
When planning a presentation, it can be really easy to forget that the audience isn’t us. When we overlook the audience’s needs over our own, we can get start worrying alot about whether our message will land, instead of focussing on what our audience needs to know.
When we swap the lens to ‘audience first’, we can look at presenting in an entirely different way. By understanding who the message is for, and what you want the audience to do with that information, you can put any uncertainty aside, step into the metaphorical shoes of your audience and ask yourself, ‘if this person was me, what would I want to know and how would it benefit me? What would my audience most value hearing and understanding more about?’
When in doubt, simply asking, ‘what does this audience need to know’, can help you focus on essential facts and putting your best foot forward.
Provide certainty.
As humans we crave certainty. It’s one of the biggest drivers of how we make decisions. Whether you’re presenting a short update in a virtual meeting, or providing a presentation to a large audience, you can let the audience know what you’re going to talk about with signposting.
Signposting is a tool you can use to tell the audience what they can expect. Examples include sharing an agenda, outlining what people will walk away with as a result of your presentation or even simply sharing the top three facts you’re going to share in your update.
Audiences relax when they feel they are in safe hands. Show the audience you have an intent and plan for your session and let them follow along comfortably. If it’s a short update in a virtual meeting, you might outline what you’re going to cover and how it’s relevant to the audience. If it’s a training programme, you’d share an agenda, whether there are group exercises or individual reflections and whether you expect interactivity or listening along. In a formal presentation, you’d introduce your key themes and perhaps tell a story and link it to what it means to the audience and ask someone to introduce you.
If someone takes you off topic, or it moves into a different discussion, you can also use signposting to bring the conversation back. For example, posing questions for the ‘Parking Lot’, or to follow up in an email are ways you can bring the conversation back to the focus.
Regardless of what you’re going to talk about, or to whom, by outlining clues as to what the audience can expect, instantly they’ll relax knowing they’re in safe hands with evidence you have a plan.
Lights, camera, action.
You don’t need a fancy camera to have a great presentation (although it is great fun), but people do need to see and hear you clearly. Here are the guiding principles we find useful when setting everyone up for success virtually:
Can people see my face clearly? Is the light ‘on’ my face, so people can see me? If I am in front of a window, can I pull the curtain or blind to bring greater focus to my face? Take a screenshot and assess: would I have to make an effort to lip read if I needed the visibility? Would I feel as though this person had made an effort to be seen?
Background: it’s perfectly okay to blur your background for privacy reasons. Ensure you’re able to block out any sunlight in the background that could cause your face to be unclear.
Sound: would noise cancelling headphones blur out some of the background noise, enabling people to hear you better? Would moving closer to the modem bring you a stronger connection?
Presenting with confidence is a non-negotiable skill for any workplace.
Presenting with confidence means people can adapt their message effectively, for different audiences.
Bring our training to your workplace for your people to learn the five strategies that produce confident presenters at work. Learn more.