Doing a presentation with soul

When I signed up for this module, I knew exactly what I wanted to improve on and that was my oral presentation skills. The specific shortcoming that I thought I had and therefore, wanted to improve on, was performance anxiety. However, to say that I do not like oral presentation because I am uncomfortable or scared was not helpful. I needed to figure out what exactly was the root of my anxiety.

At first, I thought it was because I had to stand in front of a bunch of strangers and be subjected to intense scrutiny. It is unnerving to have everyone’s attention on you and be expected to deliver an engaging presentation or else you would have committed a sin by wasting everyone’s precious time. In light of that thought, I have come to realize that oral presentation is not so much about how well I present it but also about how I can make it worthwhile for the audience.

Sometimes, I feel nervous presenting because I am afraid that what I have to say will be uninteresting to the audience and therefore I would have wasted their time. It is because of this that I begin to second guess myself and from there, my confidence is replaced by fear and anxiety. Hence, no matter how much practice I put into a presentation, if I don’t even believe in what I am presenting, then inevitably my presentation will suffer. In fact, belief in my presentation can be more attention grabbing than a presentation with fireworks, loud music and awesome animations. You can just watch a TED talk and be convinced of this. I like TED talks because they are so minimalist. It is all about the speaker and not so much of the slides, if there are any.

Unfortunately, TED talks take on a more story-telling kind of approach when it comes to presenting. I don’t think the story-telling style is appropriate for the corporate business world, although it may work in the creative industries. Nevertheless, what we can emulate from the story-telling approach is the earnestness in telling the audience about the purpose of our presentation. I have been so focused on practicing my eye contact, volume, pace and script that I almost forgot to be earnest in my presentation.

In the end, the structure of oral presentations will almost always be the same. In a competitive working world, the extra edge will come from the ability of the presenter to use his or her personality to project earnestness. I don’t believe that there is a course or a module that can help a person to do so. This is something we have to discover and build for ourselves. However, at least we can conquer half of the journey by arming ourselves with the right skills, which I feel this module has done for me. Now, I just have to continue on and somehow put a touch of my personality into these skills!