Learning how to be a fly on the wall at your own presentation, was a fun and emotional challenge when I joined the incredible one day bootcamp run by Michael Trigg, aka The Presentation Maestro back in July 2015 and had to jump over my own shadow to discover how much I got in my own way sometimes! My write up of the experience at the time was so good, that Michael used it in his marketing for the next bootcamp.

Here’s that blog post:

July 28, 2015
Public speaking is feared more than death, according to surveys. Which applies to those who do the public speaking. I wonder how a death-by-PowerPoint scenario would affect the ones who’re trying to do the absorbing! Here’s what I want to talk about:

Consider your audience.

I’d like to share how attending The Presentation Maestro’s one day bootcamp changed how I approach public speaking, so that you can decide whether attending his course could also change the way you feel about presenting to ‘them out there’.

To do this, I’d like to cover three of my main dilemmas, when faced with talking to a group of people.

1. Excessive preparation;
2. Agonising over content; and
3. How to ‘act’ in front of my audience.

• Excessive preparation
  Perfectionist thinking would prevent me from letting go of the research stages to land the thing in time and prepare for delivery itself. I’d worry about how much I could fit in to the given time in an ideal world; what subjects would serve to make me look big and clever; and at what point I would actually sit down and decide what to say. Another irritating aspect was that normal living would stop many days before event day, while I fretted about an unpredictable end result; and how to generate enough time pressure before it finally came down to committing.

So that was excessive preparation, and it didn’t make for enjoyable delivery of content. Could appear rushed and over-explained, to anyone trying to follow my drift. Me being too attached to what I had painstakingly put together.

Post-bootcamp
Weirdly, this pain has given way to excitement. I actively look forward to the creative Zoom-in/Zoom-out process that we learned and it takes me about a fifth of the time to prepare.

• Agonising over content
  Choosing what to include and how to link everything up, caused me to rely too heavily on coming up with clever themes, linkages, ploys, or threads to run though all items I wanted to include. These were devices to excuse me from messing the whole thing up—and hope that the audience would forgive me in view of the sheer ambitiousness, or Unusual Factor, at play.

So that was agonising over content, while trying to stand out for sheer ambition and cleverness. I wasn’t really shining through as myself with a message to convey. Too self-concerned and didn’t trust the process.

Post-bootcamp
Not anymore! There’s a simple clear structure to follow, less is most definitely more. Having a template to populate may seem counter-intuitive, but it allows for room to breathe, fun in the delivery, and not minding if agenda items get missed or expanded on. There’s built-in flexibility that feels natural, imperfect, and therefore ‘forgiving’ to the presenter, as well as to the listener. So, choosing what to include doesn’t trouble me any more and is pre-selected to suit the allocated presentation time slot.

• How to ‘act’ in front of my audience
  I used to worry about what I’d say, what I’d forget, whether I’d come across as I intended to. Could I fool them into thinking more of me, in a way?

Post-bootcamp
Yet the most fundamental change, has been in realising that none of this is relevant to the purpose of any presentation I do. It’s no longer about me, but about them. What are they getting from me, and how can I deliver this as clearly as possible for their sake? I feel calmer, less like I need to compensate for anything lacking in prep timings. Having a relevant and compelling aim, forces me to put myself in the audience’s shoes and really consider their needs before mine.

So when you next ask yourself How to ‘act’ in front of an audience?—Don’t.

So there you go then—consider your audience.

Why are they here? It’s thanks to addressing this one thing on The Presentation Maestro’s bootcamp, that I’ve conquered my three presentation dilemmas:

1. Excessive preparation;
2. Agonising over content; and
3. How to ‘act’ in front of my audience.

In conclusion

My aim was to share how attending Michael Trigg’s one day bootcamp, changed how I approach public speaking – so that you can see how this sort of course has the potential to change the way you feel about ‘them out there’.

I highly recommend this or any of Michael’s presentation courses, to teach and mentor you through the basic steps. You’ll hear about tonality, body language and expression; and discover a foolproof template that’s a way to absorb your content without the need for written notes. You’ll find that it taps into your subconscious creativity and awareness in such a way that it dispels fear and allows you to trust your instincts; to deconstruct self consciousness in order to build it back up in a more considered way…

Though it’s practice that will embed it.

So the next time you feel worried about being seen as the expert, or saying the wrong thing, just remember to consider your audience.

You owe it to them.

– in the words of The Presentation Maestro, Michael Trigg