Antes de comenzar
Tarea 1. Sustitución del Código Interno bajo Licencia
order for your efforts to pay off.
Become passionate about your message and your ability to communicate it. Pursue the goal of excellence in both knowledge of your topic and your ability to present it. Half- hearted wishing will only bring disappointing results.
If you do not sincerely desire to develop your skills, you will give up too soon and your efforts will have been wasted! Persistence and self-improvement go hand in hand. After all, you cannot improve unless you try and you cannot improve if you give up too soon. But most of all, you cannot improve if you do not know what you want to accomplish!
As the saying goes, "If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there." Therefore, once you know the areas in need of improvement, you will know where you should focus your attention and energy.
Some people may need to develop more confidence in speaking to a group. Others may need to create a more
interesting style. Some should polish their skills in one or two areas to give them the extra edge. In each case the secrets are the same:
- Analyze your weak points and then improve! - Know your strengths and build on them.
- Develop a plan of action for improving your technique. Then, keep practicing until you get it perfectly right! It might take you one attempt or it might take one hundred. It might happen the first time or it might take a year. However, you must persist or you will not make any progress at all!
Persistence
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not: Nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.
Genius will not: Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not: The world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
- Calvin Coolidge
I want to be honestly open and brutally frank with you. Nothing great will happen without effort, sweat, tears and lots of preparation. . .
It doesn’t matter if you have an M.B.A., a Ph.D. or a high school diploma. Whether you are a President or have a million in a Swiss bank account you must still learn the hard way to make powerful and impressive presentations. To paraphrase Thomas Edison, learning to present effectively takes 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration!
Study Other Presenters
The best and simplest way to improve is to pay attention to other presenters and analyze what they do. Observe the great ones and also the beginners. Determine what it is that makes the good ones good and the bad ones bad.
Do this every time you hear a speech or see a presenta- tion. Then examine your own style and make adjustments. Persist. Do not expect immediate results. It takes time to become a master. But you have it in you to become one.
Appraise Your Presentation Skills
Refer to the checklist in the Appendix, entitled "How to Evaluate Yourself". Go through the exercise thinking of the last time you made a presentation - it doesn’t matter whether you were talking to just a few people or fifty!
Did you prepare your message well in advance? Did you have a clearly defined objective? Did you rehearse all or part of what you said? Did you have rapport with your listeners? Before you can improve as a presenter, you must know what you need to correct. After you have done this, concentrate on the techniques outlined in this book and you will become better.
Acknowledge your strengths and use them to your advan- tage. Analyze your weaknesses and work on them. Focus your
energy and time on bringing confidence, impact and polish to what you have to say.
Does Practice Make Perfect?
There are four stages through which we pass to learn a new skill: unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, con- scious competence, and unconscious competence. These are highlighted in the accompanying chart.
Having purchased this book you probably aren’t an un- conscious incompetent! However, you might be a conscious incompetent or a conscious competent. Many presenters re- main unconscious incompetents. Unfortunately, they are the ones who need to improve their skills the most, and they didn’t buy this book!
Very few people are unconscious competents - this means that they can give excellent presentations without thinking about what they are doing.
The problem with being an unconscious competent is that it is easy to fall unexpectedly down the stairs to unconscious incompetence!
These people might be company Presidents or gurus of the industry and nobody dares tell them how bad they are! Always be aware of where you are. This way, you will have more control over yourself and your presentation.
When you're green you grow.
When you're ripe you rot!
Remember When You Learned to Walk?
When we acquire a new skill or perform a task for the first time, there is an initial start-up period during which the amount of effort we put in far exceeds the results gained.
This happens when learning to ride a bicycle, going on a diet, or learning to speak in public. In the beginning it is a real struggle and the results are minimal.
Most people give up after the first or second try. Very few last beyond three attempts. All it takes is one bad speech or one shaky impression and a lot of us chicken out! Some never try again.
However, we all eventually learned to walk. The reason we did is that we just kept trying and falling down until we finally succeeded. Nobody with a normal mind ever stops a child trying to walk because they fall on the floor a few times! The problem with being an adult is that the risks of
failure seem too great for us to be willing to take chances. We are often afraid of what others will think of us if we look foolish. For this reason many never try to become better presenters. They abandon their goal because of concern with what others will think of them should they fail.
Our greatest glory is not in never falling,
but in rising every time we fall.
- Confucius
Confidence
There’s no question about it - making an effective presentation does require self-confidence. One must work to develop greater belief in oneself and the ideas being presented. The benefits of greater confidence go far beyond developing improved commu- nication skills.
Self-confidence is what prepares you to take on new and greater challenges in your company and pursue new career opportunities for yourself. The confidence required for a pow- erful business presentation is a means to an end as well as an end in itself.
In many years of teaching public speaking to all kinds of different folks, I have found that everyone looks more confi- dent than he/she feels. People (99%) are nervous when they present the first time. Yet, with practice they feel more self- assured and develop more poise.
In my classes, students’ perceptions of themselves and each other were tested at the beginning of the course and then after 14 weeks of weekly presentations.
Each student received positive and negative feedback from me, as well as from the entire class after every presenta- tion they made. Here are the results:
Differences in the Perceived Confidence of Public Speakers
After 1st Presentation After 14th Week Looked confident 75% 99% Felt confident 5% 65% Was nervous just
Ways to Improve Your Confidence While Presenting
When you are being introduced, smile and glance at the audience and then at the person saying all those nice things about you. Do not look down in modesty. Be proud!
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Start very slowly, with your shoulders back and chin up. Then gradually speed up.
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Open your presentation by saying something genuine like:
"I am glad to be here today..."
"I am happy to be talking to you about..." "I am delighted to share with you...."
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Recognize that you know more about your topic than any of your listeners. You are an expert.
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Wear your best clothes.
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Above all, have a smile on your face. Your body should feel positive too. Keep telling yourself how good you feel.
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Talk to Yourself
Self-talk is very effective in helping you to feel positive and confident as you make your presentation. How you feel is everything in life. What you think determines how you feel and how you feel determines how confident you are. Try saying this to yourself as regularly as you can: