Read two amazing articles on the Harvard Business Review blog.
The first one can be found here.
The second one titled, How To Give a Killer Presentation (need to sign up on the HBR site for reading the complete article) is a must read for anyone who has ever had stage fright. Speaking from experience I know just how terrified I get when getting up and speaking in front of an audience. Well this article is heaven sent, it provides a systematic process of how to prepare yourself to give a great (actually killer :P) presentation. Now while it might not be very practical to follow this method for every single presentation we ever make, but if we shortlist the most important ones and prepare really well, very soon it will become a habit, a habit that will give us the confidence to speak up (and well!) every time.It's quite a long article but well worth the read. Summarizing the key points here..
1/ Frame your story (figure out where to start and where to end)
2/ Plan your delivery (decide whether to memorize your speech word for word or develop bullet points and then rehearse it over and over)
3/ Work on stage presence (but remember that your story matters more than how you stand or whether you're visibly nervous)
4/ Plan the multimedia (whatever you do, don't read from PowerPoint slides)
5/ Put it together (play to your strengths and be authentic)
The summary really doesn't do justice to the complete article which is written by the curator of TED Talks, Chris Anderson. For more than 30 years, the TED conference series has presented enlightening talks that people enjoy watching and the article is interspersed with plenty of examples of brilliant talks from the series.
Happy Reading. Cheers!
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