When it is time for you to give your presentation, you simply need the strength to follow through on your commitment to yourself. Don’t think ─ simply do what you planned to do.
Slideshows I sometimes am compelled to use slideshows in my discussion, but I do my best not to rely on them. Resting on them, using them as a crutch, reading them to the audience is a sure way to lose them. The appropriate focus is typically the result of a balancing act. It is, of course, useful to have the slides available to you. Certainly, in a talk about the flow of a novel. you don’t want to have to force yourself to memorize small but important details. Also, if you get distracted, for example, by an unanticipated question that temporarily interrupts your train of thought, the slide is there to help refocus you. My goal in giving a talk is not reading my slides, but reading my audience. I want to gauge their reactions to my talk. Are they upset? Bored? Energized? Focused? My sense of how the audience is reacting helps to guide the words that I use to reach them. I may need to alter my voice cadence or volume. I may make a point that I had not planned to make, or I may pull back and not extend myself as far as I had planned. Staying and remaining calm is the key. Focus on the audience, and discover what moves them.
Countenance When I first started speaking publicly, I used to spend time memorizing the first one or two minutes of my planned remarks to the audience. This maneuver helped me to relax and to settle down. However, although it was a useful exercise, I no longer use it because it changed my concentration. I am not well focused on my audience during this recitation, but am instead focused on steadying myself. Thus, I now make my final, settling adjustments before I speak to the audience, helping to ensure that, when I begin speaking, the audience has my full attention. Vocalisms: An important key to relaxing your audience to what you have to say is your use of vocalisms. Vocalisms are not the words, but the sounds that accompany your speech. Specifically, they are the tones, pronunciations, speech rates, pitches and inflections in your voice. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche thought of vocalisms as the most intelligible part of language. When you’re confident, your voice has one sound. When you’re hesitant, it has another. It has been said that, just as lyrics need music to come alive, spoken words need vocalisms. The challenge for the speaker is to produce the right vocalisms in order to engage their audience. For example, if you are afraid, then fear will infuse them and through them be transmitted to your audience. To address this, consider that, just as vocalisms are the music behind the words, there is emotion behind the vocalisms, and a person behind the emotion. Therefore, to correctly influence vocalisms, the speaker has to be the right person i.e., has to have the right attitude. From the right attitude flows the right emotions, and from the right emotions comes the right combination of vocalisms. You control your vocalisms through your emotions. The right attitude is commonly an open one. In order to open up your audience so that they can hear what you have to say, you must open yourself. When you relax and open up, your audience follows suit. Actually, a very simple process can produce the timely transformation that you need. As I approach the podium, then turn and face the audience, I ask myself how would I explain the material that I am presenting to my most special loved one. How would I educate, convince, and persuade her of the content and implications of my work? Immersing myself in this context produces the change in my attitude and outlook that I need. All sense of anxiety, of resentment, of frustration, and of anger drain away. In full anticipation of being trusted, and with the certainty of forgiveness for any mistake that I might make, I cannot help but relax. Relaxing, in turn, reconnects me to my best faculties. My memories, my vocabulary, my sense of humor are all once again under my control and command, and I can enjoy the experience. My vocalisms adjust to my attitude and emotions, and I have created the environment in which I have the best opportunity to reach my audience. Actively choosing to submerge myself in this mindset evokes from me the perfect countenance. When, as the speaker, I relax, the audience members themselves respond by relaxing. When the audience is relaxed they more easily learn from my presentation. The rest is anticlimactic.
