Giving a presentation is a nerve-wracking experience for most people and they wonder how anyone can ever give a smooth and end-right-on-time presentation. Take a cue or two from popular author and speaker Malcolm Gladwell to give a stronger presentation.
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Gidean Rachman, a writer for the Financial Times, found himself at a speaking conference with Malcolm Gladwell. He was enormously impressed with Gladwell's presentation, specifically with the way the presentation appeared effortless, unrushed, and ended with perfect punctuality — a contrast to Rachman's own speech which started off well paced but ended up rushed and didn't finish the way he would have liked.
So how does Gladwell do it? Afterwards, I broke through the autograph-hunters surrounding him and asked him how he managed to time his talk so beautifully - so that it ended bang on 45 minutes, without ever looking at his watch. He answered - "I know it may not look like this. But it's all scripted. I write down every word and then I learn it off by heart. I do that with all my talks and I've got lots of them"
It sounds like a most elementary sort of advice &mdash ;just memorise it! — but it contrasts sharply with the "put a few bullet points down on a piece of paper" camp that most people belong to when it comes to getting ready for a presentation.
Although Gladwell may come across to his audience as though he is having an informal chat with them, he's heavily invested himself on the back-end by memorising his speech, ironing out any problems, condensing it for the time he has, and refining his performance before it ever hits the stage. Treating his speeches like a performance and not him simply talking about the topic at hand allows him to polish his presentation in a way that informal speaking doesn't allow for.
Have a tip or trick of your own for preparing for presentations? Let's hear about it in the comments.
Comments
I've heard Malcolm Gladwell speak and he was indeed impressive, engaging and polished. In fact, I loved his talk. However, I was fully under the impression that he had memorised every word, not that this in any way detracted from the presentation.
I did a public speaking comp' years ago, did a ten minute slot. Did the above technique and memorised every word. Found one very big problem with this, I wasn't nervous in anyway, infact I was very relaxed so much so that I got completely bored on stage. Felt very disconnected from my speech.
After that, decided to do the next talk totally unscripted, even without knowing what the subject was - got up and had the audience eating out of my hand. Got 100% and beat all thirty other wannabes.
i totally agree - practice, practice, practice! also it helps to record yourself either with a video camera or a voice recorder, the more you do it, the better you will get at it!
I've tried the scripted approach, but it just doesn't work for me. I recently gave a presentation where I'd scripted the first half but, due to time limitations (or PPP), the second half was unscripted. I was told that the second half flowed much better and I was far more relaxed and interesting. Everyone has different methods, scripting is one that I've crossed off my list.
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