10 Ways to Alienate
Your Audience
With Every Word You Utter!
1. Start by telling everyone what you're going to say before you say it. In fact, carry on doing that throughout the presentation – it'll pad things out a bit; besides, it'll make you more appealing to people who like those lifestyle telly shows that take up most of the programme recapping everything you've just seen or trailing everything you're going to see later.
2. Neverpauseforbreathever.
3. Practise appalling diction (easy – just don't move your mouth much).
4. Speak very fast and not very loud. (If they're having to strain to hear you, it's their fault for not sitting nearer the front. Anyway, there should be a microphone. Oh, there is. Well then, you should have no further worries about being understood.)
5. Use as many long words as possible, and express things in the passive as much as you can. 'A check and balance procedure was continuously utilised by the service unit under consideration' instead of 'we measured progress' – that kind of thing.
6. Use AMJAP (As Much Jargon As Possible). It'll make you sound AIYKWYTA (As If You Know What You're Talking About).
7. Start with the word 'Right' or 'Okay' and end with 'Thankyou' – or if you want to be supremely cheesy, 'Thankyou for listening'.
8. Ask the audience questions that only you know the right answer to. That way you can have lots of fun belittling anyone brave enough to attempt to answer because they got it wrong.
9. If the audience doesn't laugh at your jokes, tell them off. They obviously have no sense of humour.
10. Background noise beyond your control (e.g. a road drill outside) can be infuriating. Make sure everyone knows how infuriating you've been finding it throughout the presentation: keep commenting on how much it infuriates you.
---------------------------------------------------------------- On the other hand…
if you are truly not guilty of any of the above,
the chances are you’re better
at delivering presentations than you think.
But then again, if you could do with
a few more positive tips and techniques than these,
why not seek help
from a professional presentation skills coach?
Three little words that may already seem a bit outdated, what with it being February already and – for some of us at least - the New Year's Resolutions well out of the window by now.
So if the WORDS you speak in a presentation seem equally stale or clichéd, how can you best freshen them up for your audience?
How can you connect with them yourself to make them sound like your own… even when they're not?
How can you put them across with power and make them memorable?
Those are exactly the questions Play4Real helps you find answers to. So for starters, have a look at today's instalment in our series of handy bulletins – on the subject of what NOT to do with your words.
And then, if you want to know more about how we can help... just say the word.
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