Making an impact and why schools need to teach it
Day 1 of this year's 'You're Hired!' final is on Thursday, with day 2 the following Tuesday. I'll post about these next week or the week after if I get the chance. (For the third straight year I have managed to combine the YH final with my absolute busiest time of the work year
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One thing I have noticed is that the less confident people push the more confident people to the front every time there is a presentationy situation likely to arise. This means that the people who were already relatively confident (ie, me) tend to get lots of practice, and the ones that aren't, rarely get to try it and see if it's really as bad as they thought.
I think presentation skills is an area where you learn more by doing than watching.
One thing I think is good is to spend some time talking around a subject with someone else - not presenting, just talking to someone who will listen and ask questions, so you can talk about the topic, rather than reading/reciting something that you've previously written down. Being too dogmatic about exactly what you are going to say and obsessing about exactly how long it is don't improve the impact and makes the whole process much more stressful.
The only formal presentation training I have had was when I did my final presentation from my museums diploma, and although it was quite detailed, I don't think in retrospect it was very good, because although it highlighted a lot of things, it also led me to stress about time limits and put my talk into too rigid a format.
Oh yeah, and 'don't talk too fast' and 'watch the audience, if they look baffled, SLOW DOWN and ask a question. Do NOT accelerate in panic in the hope of getting to the end and escaping!' This is something I used to tend to do and it's not good.
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There are notable exceptions though. Last year's final featured a fairly unassuming guy called Nathan from Saltash Community College. Not particularly memorable to look at, generally quite quiet. One of the challenges last year was to come up with a new clothing brand and pitch it to a panel of industry insiders (including the founders of trendy retro t-shirt retailer truffleshuffle.com). Nathan really got into the design thing, but wasn't going to be involved in the pitch before one of the judges persuaded him.
His presentation style wasn't great, but when it got to questions, and he was answering about his own designs, he was great. Truffle Shuffle gave him some work experience as a designer (in fact they almost offered him a job on the spot), he's doing a fashion design course at college and with a bit of luck, he'll make it. And he makes money from the t-shirts he designed for Truffle Shuffle. (You can buy them here: http://www.truffleshuffle.co.uk/store/mens-everything-else-brands-good-times-tees-tshirts-m-100-g-1-d-313-s-2.html .)
Good point about being too dogmatic about what you're going to say. Being able to memorise a speech is not evidence that you know what you're talking about, and most of the time, the audience want to see exactly that.
I remember timing your practice museum presentations.
'Don't talk too fast' is a pretty good golden rule.
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