Conquer the SSSStttuterring

Reporting, defense, reporting, defense.. anything that goes with presentation is scary for students (for some)… I’m a talker, I’m a people person by nature but whenever I do presentations, reports and during my first defense, what I did was all stuttering and tensed. I just don’t really like the spotlight, where everybody got their attention on me, gosh! that’s nerve breaking (again, for me and for some)… anyways.. I have some few tips on how to conquer them.. 🙂

1. Know your Audience. This comes from the art of war by Sun Tzu,

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself,
you will succumb in every battle” . 

By knowing your audience, you would be able to find hint on how in particular you would be able to connect to the audience. Yes, you can’t be a all-happy-and-animated-like when your audience are all doctors, and of course you can’t be an all-facts-presentor if your audience doesn’t are.

2. When Presenting, start with a bang! from starting a bang, you would be able to get the attention of the audience. Like what I did during my first thesis defense for my undergraduate (which I’m taking it again now, unfortunately :(….), I started with a command, a shout. Since my thesis is all about Taekwondo, what I did was command charyeot which means attention with a very authoritative voice (if you can’t figure out what I’m talking, imagine a military officer commanding-like-shouting, that’s what it is) and that caught all their attention. For others, you could start with a quote, a very powerful quote. It could be a short film clip, a song maybe (but make it short as possible). 

3. Make a Preview of the presentation. It is simply a bullet form of the presentation in general. By that, your audience would know the run through of the whole presentation. At least it would give them a hint of what you’re gonna blab about.

4. Eye Contact. Making an eye contact, even if you’re unsure of how the presentation would come out, would make your audience think that you’re confident. That you know what you’re doing and you’re not wasting their time. Eye of the tiger!

5. Know the presentation by heart. Audience and listeners would know if you were just memorizing the whole presentation or knows it by heart. The meat of the presentation might not be passed if purely you’ve been memorizing. If you know and study your presentation by heart, you’d be able to insert jokes, examples and apply adlibs.

6. Know your color themes for the presentation slides. It is very vital to have an interesting presentation slides. Put pictures, quotes,and animations but with moderation. And check the colors you use for the background and the fonts if it’s readable. (you might want to read my other post about colors, Know Your Colors)

7. Conclude with brief run through of the presentation. From that, the audience will know (and you yourself) that you’ve already discuss everything, and you could somehow have a brief summary of it. Again, do it with bullet form.

8. Presentation Ender: with a bang! If you started awesome, you could not walk out without being awesome. I also would like to go out from the hall LIKE A BOSS. A great mentor of mine,  Architect Mike Guerrero, who’s into sustainability and green architecture movement, always reminds us that… when you already awed your audience, you couldn’t walkout without ending it. It’s like starting a paragraph but never or forgets to put a period. Everything must have end and each must have a great ending. So, end it with a bang so you could literally WALK LIKE A BOSS. 🙂

Related Articles:

• Presentation tips and conquer stage frights (milobee.blogpost.com)