Download the Workbook

Video Transcript

My first job out of college was in sales for a large shipping company. And my sales manager at the time, she had a phrase that she used to say to us anytime we went on a sales call or right before we gave a big presentation, she would say, remember proper preparation prevents poor performance. She would call it the five P's and say it over and over. Remember proper preparation prevents poor performance. And it's been almost 20 years since I first heard that phrase, but it is something that has stuck with me because it is true.

You know, over our first couple of times together we've been talking about what it takes to begin to manage fear and nerves around public speaking and I said last time that the first thing you need to do is to learn to control everything that you can control. If you do that, that will go a long way in helping you relax, take a deep breath and calm those nerves control everything you can control.

The "P" in our acronym our CPR acronym that we are working through is this, that in order to manage your nerves and fear around public speaking, you need to make sure that you are planning and practicing before you present plan and practice before you present.

If we're honest, it's just you and me here. So if we're honest, the majority of the time, I bet that you speak and you give that presentation in front of your colleagues or that you give it in front of the client. It is one of the first times you have ever given that presentation. Many of us do not take the time. We need to plan out and to practice our presentation. And a big part of why we're nervous is we're actually not quite sure exactly what we're going to say. We're not quite sure exactly how it's going to flow and all that does is serve to stoke the flames of that anxiety that we feel.

So today I want to give you three tips when it comes to preparing and planning for a presentation and my first tip is this first of all, when it's time to begin work on a presentation, what is the first step that you do? When someone says, hey, next week at the meeting, you have to present what is step number one for you when it comes to planning that presentation.

My guess is step one for you is opening up PowerPoint. But my first tip for you is do not begin to plan in PowerPoint. PowerPoint is a great visual aid software. It is not a great presentation planning software and if you want to be clear on what it is that you're going to say, I would suggest that you begin planning on a white board or on a legal pad or in a word doc. Somewhere where you can write ideas and erase them and move them around before you ever get to building your visual aids for that talk. So step number one, don't start in power Point, start somewhere else.

Tip number two is this follow a simple template when it comes to planning your presentation. Follow a simple template when it comes to planning any presentation. And there's a lot of them out there, but when I plan a presentation, there's three big questions that I ask myself and I try to move myself from where my audience is to where I want them to be at the end of the presentation. The first question that I ask is this, what problem that my audience faces is my presentation helping them solve? What tension am I helping them manage? What issue do they face that I am helping them deal with? You see, we are most likely to listen to people that we think are solving our problems.

There are a million videos out there on YouTube on how to fix a leaky toilet. I promise you if I'm watching one of those videos, I have trash bags around my shoes, I have a plunger in my hand and I am trying to stop a broken toilet that's right in front of me. I'm not just watching those videos for fun. We listen to voices that help solve problems that we are experiencing and that we have so any presentation idea. I try to think what is the challenge my audience is facing? What is the problem of the difficulty that I'm helping them manage? And I start there. That's a question that many of us don't ask. We just start in the middle of in the beginning of our presentations giving information. But ask this question, what problem am I helping them manage? And start there.

Then you want to give your audience two or maybe three key points. I'm not saying to dumb down your data, I'm not saying to make things overly simple, but what I am asking you to do is do the hard work of making things clear, being not simple but simplistic in the way that you organize your presentation. If you know what problem or tension you are helping your audience manage, then you can give a few key ideas and you can list all your details under those ideas, but a few key ideas for your audience to move across as you help them manage that tension or solve that problem.

And then you ask the final question and that is what is it that you want the audience to do now that they have this information and these key points? What is it that you want your audience to do? And if you start with a problem that your audience faces, give them a few key points to move across and then tell them what to do. That is a simple template that can go a long way in helping your presentation land with the audience that you are speaking to.

And if you follow a simple template, your detail may be complex, but your brain is able to wrap itself around the path that you are following all of a sudden this is not 45 slides that you're trying to download into your audience's brain. Now, it is a simple path that your brain is following as you give this presentation.

Once you have that together, you don't start in power point, you build this path some other place and you understand the simple template you're following, tip number three is this, practice before you perform, practice before you perform?

You know when we watch someone who is great at what they do, when we watch that athlete who can perform on the big stage or we watch the musician who is amazing at their instrument, we often underestimate all the practice time that goes into getting to that point. We watch someone hit the perfect golf dot or make the free throw or ski down the mountain and we say, wow, what would it be like to be born with that gift? But we underestimate and we forget the tens of thousands of hours that have been spent perfecting that craft. The same thing happens with the musician who sings or who plays their instrument and we think, man what an amazing talent can be born with. But we forget all the hours that were spent in dark rooms with no one around practicing to get it perfect.

So many of us, the first time we give a presentation is when the lights are on and the audience is there. But if you really want to be comfortable, if you really want to begin to overcome your fear and anxiety, make sure you're building in time to practice before you perform.

Proper preparation prevents poor performance. My sales manager was right 20 years ago and she's still right today. If you want to begin to overcome fear and anxiety, start to learn to control everything you can control when you present and also begin to prepare and plan and practice ahead of your presentation. It will go a long way in helping you feel comfortable.

We just have one more letter in our CPR acronym. I'm looking I'm looking forward to sharing that with you, so I'll see you back here in just a little bit.

‍