June through August Public Speaking Class Schedule
May 18, 2012 by Doug Staneart · Comments Off
Upcoming Public Speaking Classes
Below is a list of the upcoming Fearless Presentations ® presentation skills courses in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Fearless Presentations ® is a 2-Day public speaking course that is held in select cities all over the world, so if you don’t see your city below, just visit the seminar schedule webpage for all classes and an interactive map where you can access upcoming workshops by city.
If you want to reduce public speaking fear or develop presentation skills, there is no better way than with Fearless Presentations ®. In two-days, our certified instructors can help you get rid of the butterflies, think more clearly when you stand to speak, and deliver confident, professional presentations with a whole lot less preparation time. Participants receive all manuals and training materials, one-on-one presentation coaching from their instructor, and video taped feedback so they can easily see their progress as the class progresses.
Click any of the Links Below for Details about a Class or Seminar
- 2012 Jun 5-6 Tampa FL
- 2012 Jun 7-8 New York NY
- 2012 Jun 12-13 Cincinnati OH
- 2012 Jun 14-15 San Francisco CA
- 2012 Jun 21-22 Chicago IL
- 2012 Jun 25-26 Baltimore MD
- 2012 Jul 10-11 Detroit MI
- 2012 Jul 12-13 Houston TX
- 2012 Jul 19-20 Washington DC
- 2012 Jul 19-20 Los Angeles CA
- 2012 Jul 24-25 Phoenix AZ
- 2012 Jul 26-27 Kansas City MO
- 2012 Jul 26-27 Atlanta GA
- 2012 Aug 21-22 Dallas TX
- 2012 Aug 21-22 Boston MA
- 2012 Aug 23-24 Philadelphia PA
- 2012 Aug 23-24 Seattle WA
- 2012 Aug 28-29 Miami FL
- 2012 Aug 30-31 Indianapolis IN
Not sure yet or have questions? Complete the form below, and an instructor will contact you.
Presentation Skills Checklist
April 27, 2012 by Doug Staneart · Comments Off
When folks go through our presentation skills classes, they are often surprised at how simple we make designing and delivering fairly complex presentations. In fact, one of the things that we cover in the Fearless Presentations class is how to design an entire presentation, from start to finish, complete with a slide deck in fifteen minutes or less. Class members are often shocked at how fast they can design presentations that would have typically taken hours (or weeks) to complete. Below is a simple checklist that you can use when you design PowerPoint presentations in order to speed up the preparation time and reduce your fear of public speaking.
Presentation Skills Checklist
- Step One: Start with the Presentation (what you want to say) and finish with the slideshow. Most people start with the visual aids and, eventually, realize they have too many slides or too many points and start cutting content. So they end up with a Swiss-Cheese presentation. Start with the presentation first, then choose slides that help you better explain the content.
- Step Two: Choose a Compelling Topic (Title). Pretend that you are an audience member, and ask yourself what you’d what to hear about related to the topic. This is more difficult than you might think, because, since we know so much about the topic, we tend to want to tell the audience EVERYTHING that we know. However, that is not practical, so you have to give the audience only what they need, right now. For instance, if you are giving a financial report to the board, they are going to want to know about profit, but if you are giving a report to the sales team, they will be more interested in revenue compared to prior years. think of your audience when you choose your topic.
- Step Three: Choose three to five key points to expand upon. Literally… three, four, or five points… TOTAL. Thinking about your topic, choose your key points by determining what are the three to five most important concepts related to the topic that the audience needs to know about. If you cover more points, the audience won’t remember them anyway, so focus on the most important points.
- Step Four: Insert Proof for each Point. Insert a few stories, examples, facts, analogies, demonstrations, or samples that prove that your key point is true. If you prove each point along the way, then the group will very easily agree with your conclusion at the end of the presentation.
- Step Five: Now Create Your Slides: Once you have the speech designed, now go back and choose visual aids to better explain your content.
Follow this checklist, and you will be able to create any presentation very quickly.
PowerPoint Tip Video-Use Pictures Properly to Better Explain Your Presentation
April 3, 2012 by Doug Staneart · Comments Off
PowerPoint Tip Video: Use Pictures Properly to Better Explain Your Presentation
This is PowerPoint Tip #6 of Ten in the PowerPoint Tip Video Series. Pictures can add a lot of clarity to your presentation, but only when we use them properly. Pictures just for decoration sake can add confusion, but remember that a picture is “worth a thousand words,” so an appropriate picture at the correct time can make your words even more clear. This video gives a number of tips related to adding pictures and other visual aids to your PowerPoint Slideshows to make the presentations easier to understand and easier to deliver.
For additional PowerPoint Tips, access our online Video Seminar, How to Do a PowerPoint which gives you all ten videos as well as written tips that will help you design and deliver better presentations.
Avoid Overuse of Animation in PowerPoint Presentations (Video)
February 24, 2012 by Doug Staneart · Comments Off
Free PowerPoint Tip #4: Avoid Overuse of Animation in PowerPoint Slides
PowerPoint will do some really cool types of animation, but remember that if you animate something, it should help you clarify your point. Bullet points that fly in, spin around, make sounds, and blink are just a distraction from your message. For the most part, the animation called “appear” should be your most frequently used. If you want your audience to follow you step-by-step, you can reveal your bullets one at a time. However, you’ll have more energy as a presenter if you just make your slide appear and physically move to your screen and point to your bullet point when you talk about it. You become the animation versus using the slideshow.
Don’t Eliminate Animation Entirely
Keep in mind that we are not suggesting that you eliminate animation entirely. If you do, you’ll be missing out on a great advantage of PowerPoint. A good graphic that is short and eye-catching (and that helps clarify your point) at the appropriate time can be very helpful and add some fun to the presentation. But if you rely heavily on animation to make your point for you, the PowerPoint Presentation will become the presentation, not the presenter.
Avoid overuse of animation in your PowerPoint Presentations.
Reduce the Data on Your PowerPoint Slides-Video PowerPoint Tip
February 17, 2012 by Doug Staneart · Comments Off
Reduce the Data on Your PowerPoint Slides-Video PowerPoint Tip
Too Much Data on Your PowerPoint Slides: Your PowerPoint slide deck should be a visual aid to help you explain your point, so if you put too much data on a slide (too much text, too many numbers, or charts and graphs – gasp – Is he saying we can’t use charts and graphs?) you will overwhelm you audience and cause them to attempt to draw their own conclusions about the data.
Your PowerPoint slide should convey a simple concept at a glance.
A good rule is what we call 6X6, which means to limit your number of words per line to six and limit your number of lines to about six as well. That way, no matter how big or small your room is, your audience will be able to read your data, and it will be easy for the audience to instantly understand the concept you are communicating.
Eliminate Death by PowerPoint (Public Speaking Tip Video)
February 12, 2012 by Doug Staneart · Comments Off
New PowerPoint Tip Video
Eliminate Death by PowerPoint is a new public speaking tip video in our PowerPoint Tip series. This is video #2.
Too many PowerPoint slides cause the audience to be bored and lose interest, so remember that in public speaking visual aids, less is more. Reduce the number of slides in your slide deck and create more of a conversation with your audience. Give more examples and analogies, and better explain the content of your main bullet points for a better presentation.
Creating too many slides and using them as a crutch to make sure that we don’t forget anything in our presentation sounds like a good idea when we start designing, our presentation, but in reality, it is a really, really big mistake. Oddly enough, this mistake most often occurs because we make the first mistake. (See PowerPoint Mistake #1 Designing the Slideshow First) Slide… Click… Slide… Click… Slide… Click… is a very boring way to deliver a presentation and makes the presenter look unprepared and uninformed about his/her topic. Only add a slide if the slide helps you better clarify your point.
What is the Most Embarrassing Thing that has Ever Happened to You or Someone Else in a Presentation?
January 28, 2012 by Doug Staneart · Comments Off
What is the Most Embarrassing Thing that has Ever Happened to You or Someone Else in a Presentation? We’ve ll had those hiccups in presentation delivery where we either just freeze, or a visual aid malfunctions, or we prepare an hour-long speech and are told just before we start that our available time has dropped to 25 minutes. These glitches can cause embarrassment, but they are also fantastic opportunities to shine. What was your most embarrassing presentation moment, and if you recovered… how did you do it?
PowerPoint is a Visual Aid Not the Presentation
January 15, 2012 by Doug Staneart · Comments Off
This video is a first in a series of PowerPoint Tips to help viewers more quickly and easily design and deliver PowerPoint Presentations. Tip #1 is that PowerPoint is a Visual Aid, Not the Actual Presentation. Most people start designing their speech by creating their slideshow, but that is backwards. If you design your presentation first, it is more easy now to design slides that help explain or prove the points in your presentation. If you design the slideshow first, you are likely to use Powerpoint as a crutch which increases nervousness and increases the chances that you will actually forget something or lose your audience along the way.
Three Ways to Spice Up Your Business PowerPoint Presentations
December 20, 2011 by Doug Staneart · Comments Off
Business PowerPoint Presentations have changed a lot in the last ten years, but some of the best presentation secrets have been around for a while. Almost 25 years ago I was given a little book published in the 1950’s. It was entitled, “Public Speaking as the Audience Likes It”. I don’t remember much of the contents, but I do remember the point- when you are preparing to make a presentation, consider the audience and think about the best way to present your material so they will enjoy the experience and remember the valuable material. So here 3 things you need to know to help you relate to your audience when you design a business PowerPoint presentation.
Consider Your Audience
Before you start to design a business presentation, spend some time thinking about those who are going to receive your message. What do they have in common? What do you know about who they are? What do they feel? What experiences have they had? Where are they coming from? Consider, from the audience’s perspective- what is so important about what I have to say? Why should they listen? How will they benefit? And how can I help them enjoy the experience?
Too often we begin our preparation thinking about what we want and need to say. We think about major point and what information we need them to assimilate or remember. We think about our responsibility, and if we have any fear or trepidation about being in front of people, we just wish it were over and prepare the message without much thought given to the audience.
That last line is too much too true. We prepare the message without much thought given to the audience. We think about the message, what we want to say and how we are best going to say it; we prepare our PowerPoint slides hoping that will “wow” the audience into valuing the material. We remember the KISS method of presentations and we keep is simple, stupid. Maybe we remember the old adage, stand up, speak up, shut up, sit down. Fun little sayings, but not much help.
First in your PowerPoint preparation is to consider the audience and the best way to communicate with them. Think about the specific people, the demographics, commonalities, idiosyncrasies; examine them from every angle you can. Also consider your venue- where you will be making your presentation. Will you be on a stage with people seated in front of you; will you be on the same level as your audience; will they be at tables, round or square; will you use a microphone- hand held, lapel, or stationary; what kind of interaction can I facilitate, and the list goes on based on your own experience and creativity. But always consider your audience; it will influence the rest of your presentation.
Second- Involve the Audience
The days of getting up and speaking and then sitting down have past. We live in an age of reality TV in which we get to vote on the results, interactive games on the computer and via game modems, we have unlimited accessibility through cell phones, email and texting. People are not used to sitting back and just listening, the presenter must get them involved. So you have considered your audience, and you know your message, now how do you get the audience involved?
It is more than asking questions and showing slides, it is putting something in their hands, it is incorporating movement, it is using as many of their senses as possible to get them and keep them involved.
Nearly every book on public speaking skills written within the last 15 years has a section on telling stories, but don’t just tell a story, show it. If you were riding a bike, then show it; if you were going over something, show it; if you were involved in a heated conversation, show it; if you were throwing a ball, show- never just tell a story, but show it, use gestures and plenty of them.
Are you talking about something, an object, show it, better yet, if possible give everyone a sample. If you are talking about something with an aroma, then work the smell into your presentation, use a candle, home baked cookies, incense, whatever it takes. Perhaps it is a sound, a firecracker, jet engine, ocean waves- find a way to duplicate it for your audience’s aural stimulation. Perhaps it is a taste, give them something to remind them of the taste, a candy bar; a drink; ice cream- be creative. Maybe it is a texture- then give them something to feel, sandpaper, a piece of cloth, a rock, use your imagination, but incorporate some type of extra sensory experience for your audience to participate with you in the presentation. Be creative and push the envelope. (Some things I have done- handed out ice cream, given latex gloves and pens so the audience could take notes on their hands (five points-five fingers), lit incense prior so the room would smell like pine trees, given out hotel size soaps; spoken in a Santa Claus suit and a guerrilla outfit; given the participants small craft packages to built a boat made out of wooden ice cream spoons a toothpick and a piece of cloth, given out colored pipe cleaners for participants to fashion antennas… the ideas are as limitless as your imagination. Do it- get your audience involved.
Third- Be Concise in Your Closing
Once you had delivered the main thrust of your PowerPoint presentation and have involved the audience, leave them wanting more. Be concise in your closing remarks. Highlight the high points and then be on your way. Too many speakers close with their main points but continue to drag on thinking that re and re-emphasizing will make the message stick. When it is time to end, then end. Don’t keep re-covering the topics and never introduce new material. If you have considered the audience, gotten them involved, then you can make a quick recap and let their involvement continue to speak after you have stopped.
Besides giving thoughtful consideration to your messages, these are three ideas to help your presentation be powerful and memorable- first, consider the audience; second, involve the audience; and third- make your closing concise.
VIDEO-Design Your Presentation Based on Your Audience
November 29, 2011 by Doug Staneart · Comments Off
When you write a presentation or design a PowerPoint slideshow, make sure and think of your audience first. This public speaking video gives tips on how to write a speech better by considering the wants and needs of your audience first. When your audience changes, your presentation should also change. When your audience changes, your PowerPoint slideshow also needs to change. Consider your audience, and you are much more likely to have a success delivering your presentation.
This presentation skills video is one part of a three-part video series that helps presenters design presentations more quickly and easily. Subscribe to our feed or LIKE us on Facebook to receive additional tips in this series.
