Presentations: Performance speaks louder than words
Content may be considered king but an award-winning script – badly presented – will swiftly dilute audience attention, according to Mike Atack, the man behind Talking Presentations.
He said that statistics reveal that boring presentations are those that focus only on the content.
“The Wall Street Journal conducted a survey among company executives leaving conferences and found that 93% of the speakers’ message was delivered by their performance and only 7% via the content.”
Atack, who delivers the two-day UAE-based presentation skills programme believes that the art of public speaking is an essential leadership quality for every senior executive.
“The ability to engage, inspire and convince, internal and external audiences is a must-have skill for managers throughout the organisation. However, many business people do not generally think of themselves as orators and struggle to get across an accessible, high impact, memorable message. Many do not meet their objective.”
He said that a great presentation that stirs action is about packaging relevant content so that the audience find it logical, persuasive and motivational.
Atack uses a training format that encourages delegates to raise their voice level, use roving eye contact, energetic body movement, as well as firmly imprinting their mind with an easy-to-retain presentation formula.
“Auto-cues and scripts are not permitted in the Talking Presentations training session,” said Atack. He supports what he calls a fail proof eight-step presentation structure.
“You don’t need notes or a script to remember what you already know. You just need a process that accesses your memory bank in a logical sequence,” he states.
Atack said that the art to keeping an audience hooked on what is next, is to turn every presentation into a series of ‘stories’ that link together.
“A picture paints a thousand words. When we communicate by painting pictures and telling stories we build a reputation of being a powerful presenter.
“Our mind is able to visualise a story, then we just tell it as unfolds. The same is true of a presentation, turning content into a story board process is a magic formula.”
Another must-have skill is building rapport with the audience. Atack coaches participants and provides tips and techniques so they do this effectively. He has another eight steps up his sleeve but stresses that whatever route one adopts must be delivered with sincerity.
“The audience, however big or compact, known or new will be quick to spot if the presenter is spinning a yarn or giving a plastic smile.”
More than 1,000 business executives have already experienced Atack’s highly energetic programme that commits to enhancing the presentation ability of every delegate by at least 90% when evaluated against self-measurement criteria.
Talking Presentations programmes run monthly, throughout the year. www.talkingpresentations.ae
