I’m busy preparing for two upcoming talks, this coming Thursday for the Association for Career Professionals West of England and Wales Chapter and two weeks today I’m the Key Note Speaker at Adult Skills

Particularly for the first one I wasn’t going to do a PowerPoint presentation but have decided that some images on the screen with some bullet points helps to keep people focused on the topic. For a larger talk, like the 2nd one it is even more important to grab the audiences attention.  I’d love to just have images and video clips but don’t think I feel confident enough for that.

If you are interested in improving your presentations. or know someone who may benefit, I highly recommend this blog – http://www.presentationzen.com/. Over the time I’ve subscribed Garr Reynolds has made excellent comments and done some great critiques. for example he wrote about a wide range of sources for getting photos for use on presentations and more – both free and reasonably prices.

I love working one to one with people and am even happy talking to 2 or 3 people but more than 5 becomes a group and my comfort level drops – put me in a room where I need to talk to 15 or more and I am seriously outside of my comfort zone.

On Monday I was on a stage with about 70 people in the audience.

The night before I’d started to get nervous, and this wasn’t a major deal – not me talking all day,  just part of a panel for a 90 minute session, but even so …

Well decided to reframe this, and rather than look out and see a sea of faces, instead chose to focus on just 4 people, so I was back in my comfort zone.

All went exceptionally well. I was more able to be me, rather than move into a "presenter role" which is not me.

I also spoke from the heart, and gave relevant, practical and personal examples.

Afterwards I had at least 7 people come up and say how much they had enjoyed what I had to say, so I left on a high!

Think I might have cracked it, let’s see how things go next month when I am runnng a conference session.