Step One to Presenting With Confidence

As a business leader or a manager of people, presenting information to groups of staff, to customers, suppliers or prospects may very well take up a large portion of your time. Communicating in this way takes practise and a willingness to share information in a way that people will easily understand.

It must come from a place of trust and integrity, which means you must be honest, authentic and congruent. By congruent I mean matching what you say in your presentation to the way you say it and to the non-verbal messages you give out in your body language (facial expressions, stance and gesticulations.)

If your message is emotive, your audience will pay more attention to body language and voice tone than to what you actually say!

In order to present professionally you need a high level of self-confidence, self-awareness and self-belief and a willingness to improve. You need to be willing to review your own performance and to ask for specific feedback from those you trust and you must really listen (or probe further) until you have some ideas for improvement going forward.

There are 3 steps to Presenting with Confidence:

1.Harness your attitude
2.Improve your approach
3.Work authentically through your own personality

In this article we’ll be exploring the first step – Harness Your Attitude.

By harnessing your attitude I mean recognising your internal dialogue when it occurs before, during and/or after your presentation.

Be aware of what you say to yourself.

What negative thoughts do you have? Thoughts like

This will be terrible.

Something’s bound to go wrong!

This isn’t going well.

That was awful.

These thoughts affect how we feel, which in turn affects how we perform now and in the future.
So, notice your internal dialogue, become aware of it. Figure out when it’s doing its worst to you – is it

• As you first start to plan and prepare your presentation?

• As you get nearer the date or time?

• Just before you start speaking?

• In the first few moments of your presentation?

• A little way in – as you start to become consciously aware of your voice or the attention of the audience?

• As you approach the end?
• Immediately after you finish?

It may one or more of these but knowing where and when this affects you most means you can have something positive to put in its place.

Get out of your vicious thought cycle, harness your attitude and step into a new virtuous thought circle and you’ll be well on the way to presenting with confidence!