Delivering your presentation

Presenting to a tough crowd – It’s a bit like playing golf in Scotland

Golf lessonsI’m playing golf in Scotland. A group of 8 friends come every year and play 7 courses in the home of this addictive ‘walk spoiled’ pastime. 7 different courses every year. A new course every day, and this year we’re in Edinburgh on the North East coast of this golfing paradise.

We’re reasonable golfers and we like to pit our wits and skills against the toughest courses in the world. This year we’ve played Gullane’s 3 courses. They lie on the strip of sandy land between the sea and the green fields.  This ‘linking land’ or ‘links’, provides the basis for golf courses defined by the sand, the sea and the wind. When the sun shines and clouds are still, they’re simply a test of your ability to hit a little white ball in a straight line to the cut grass. But those calm days come seldom. This year the winds have been blowing at 20-30 miles an hour and golf is now a test of every element of your skill, mind and patience.

On day 1 I failed the test. I lost 6 balls in the first 6 holes. And you don’t need to be a golfer to know that that’s very poor indeed. I was all over the place in every sense of the phrase. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t work out why I couldn’t even start to play into this strong wind. The answer was obvious. My technique is not good enough for these conditions. So what to do? In the short term you’ve got to take fewer risks. Play safer shots using the easier to hit clubs. Protect the ball and your score. And that’s what I did here. And I finished the last 9 holes without losing another ball and getting three times as many points as I did on the first 9.

But in the longer term, if I want to be the best I can, I have to accept that I need to go back to lessons. To build that capable golf swing that will allow me to reach my goals. The teacher will break my swing down and start again. How I stand, how I grip the club, The ‘take-away’ (how I move the club away from the ball), the downswing (how I move the club back to the ball).  Simple fundamentals that most people like to skip over, me too, until I find that my shortcuts and bad habits lead me to where I am today. Regularly shooting 10 higher than my single-figure handicap.

Presenting is harder to master than golf. In golf the ball never moves and the course is always there. In presenting, ‘the ball’ is always moving and the landscape ever-changing. Presenters have the audience, the subject, the context, the mood, the venue and a million other variables to consider. This makes public-speaking a fantastic challenge. That’s part of the attraction.

The principles of excellence in speech-making are as simple as the fundamentals of golf. They’re also easy to move away from as we progress and get more confident. But sometimes we encounter occasions when what we’ve done before doesn’t work, and moments when we have no idea what went wrong. That’s when the advice of a skilled presentation ‘pro’ can really help. What are the 3 ‘swing’ fundamentals for a really excellent presenter?

  1. Fit – understand your audience and how they will best receive your message.
  2. Focus – your message to their priorities, follow classic story structure, and say as little as you can to provoke questions and engagement
  3. Flair – Make it unforgettable, Remove ‘clutter’, make it interesting.

For hundreds of free tips in download form see our freebie section.  I’m off to the golf course.

 

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