Weak delivery can undermine your presentation and cause your audience to lose interest in what you have to say. Here are 8 strategies for delivering your presentation with confidence, whether you’re presenting in person or virtually.
1. Use a strong voice
Speak loudly
enough to be heard - use a microphone if one is available. Speak clearly,
enunciate your words and don’t rush.
2. Don’t forget to breathe
Make sure your
voice is supported by breathing fully.
Breathe from your core, your diaphragm, so the air can sustain you all
the way through the end of the sentence.
3. Stand up straight
Stand up
straight, not stiffly and keep your head and shoulders back. Plant your feet on the floor with your weight
evenly distributed on both feet rather than leaning on one leg or nervously
pacing. If you’re seated, sit up straight and keep your feet planted on the floor.
4. Make eye contact
Look at
different people in the audience. Making
eye contact helps you engage people and demonstrates that you know your
material well. If you’re presenting virtually, make eye contact by looking at
your camera rather than at the faces of people on your screen.
5. Gesture
Use your hands
for natural gestures that illustrate what you’re saying. When not gesturing, your hands should hang
comfortably at your sides (or if seated, rest on the table/desk in front of
you) rather than in your pockets or behind your back.
6. Smile
Smiling helps
to relax you (and the audience) and allows you to make a connection to the
audience.
7. Eliminate weak words
Using too many
filler words like “um” and “ah” makes you sound less confident. Overusing words
like “kinda” and “sorta” also undermines your authority.
8. Eliminate “throwaways”
Throwaways are the
words or phrases with little meaning that you throw in at the end of a sentence
because your brain is thinking about what comes next. You still need to finish the current sentence
so you say a throwaway like “and that kind of stuff” or “and you know what I
mean.” An excessive use of these throwaways makes your language sounds sloppy.
If you follow these 8 strategies, you will sound confident when you give a presentation and demonstrate that you have something of interest to share with your audience.