4 Top Tips for Preparing for Presentations

Let’s discuss the four actions you should take just before your presentation. We talk about two things you shouldn't do, and we are going to recap what you should not do. Don’t focus on your failures. What should you focus on? Focus on the end result for the audience. Focus your thoughts and mind on achieving a particular result for your audience. It's not about you, you are a vessel, your delivery mechanism, and your job is to impact your audience and transfer information to them.

Make sure that you have prepared yourself, anticipated the audience's needs, taken the information that you want to deliver, and structured it in such a way that it's clear. You want to be able to give the presentation and communicate information smoothly with confidence and authority.

When you are focused on the end result for your audience, then everything that you do, everything that you say, and the way that you say it will be geared towards getting that result for your audience. You won't have time to be focused on why I hope I don't mess up, what they are thinking about me, and those kinds of things that can disrupt your state of mind. Be so engulfed in the outcome for your audience that you are unable to experience doubt in your abilities.

The second action that you want to take is to mentally practice and preview your presentation. Take a few moments to visualize yourself walking in, smiling, talking to people, standing up or sitting down, and envisioning how you are going to make your presentation. Imagine every detail: if you have slides, you get your slides up, you see yourself connecting everything, everything's working, and if something doesn't work, you're still able to go along; you don't get flustered.

You see yourself walking through that presentation; you see yourself smiling, nodding, greeting people, thanking them for being there, or giving whatever your opening statement is; you see yourself asking questions. We're going to talk about that, maybe asking a few questions, even if they're rhetorical. You see people nodding and smiling, and you see people focused on you paying attention. You hear yourself and feel yourself using numbers and categorizing things. Mentally practice and preview a successful presentation.

The second action, you want to just keep running through that. When you're mentally practicing, you are literally activating the neurons in your brain that will be activated when you actually give the presentation. As a result, when you are giving the presentation, all of the things that you'll be doing are a reflection of what your brain is doing and how your brain is processing and working.

The third thing that you want to do is get there early enough, if at all possible, to talk with people. Shake hands to greet people and smile. This breaks down the barriers between you and the audience when you get to know them before presenting to them. It creates a comfort level, so when you give your presentation, you are not presenting to a brand new audience. It also warms you up, so you don't just walk in cold and unload your presentation on stage. While you want to take some time by yourself to mentally prepare for your presentation, come out and greet people.

Number four is simple. Just Smile. Try to smile as often as possible because it relaxes you and puts your audience at ease. Some people are just going to look at you with a straight face. There's nothing you can do about that, and sometimes, even though someone's looking at you with a straight face, someone might even be frowning, but it has nothing to do with you.

You'll see people kind of soften up and light up, which makes the environment's ambience lighter. Also, when you smile, it projects confidence; when you smile, you do not look nervous, you look confident. An audience senses confidence that the person presenting must know what they're talking about. It invites people to listen to you and wants them to listen to you.

These are the four actions that you want to take. To recap, first focus on the result you want your audience to get. How do you want them to feel? What do you want them to walk away with? What's the big idea? What's the walk away?

The second thing is that you want to preview your presentation mentally. The third thing is that you want to talk with people, get out there and talk, or spend some time alone, but then come out and talk to people, and finally, you want to smile. These are actions that you want to take just before your presentation.