fear of public speaking

Key Points
It is much easier to overcome your fear of public speaking if you have planned the content of your presentation properly. Earlier it was stated that a presentation could be thought of as a journey - by which you take your audience to the destination you had pre-planned (the presentations aim statement). In structuring your presentation you may find it useful to divide your journey into a series of stages. You are then faced with the challenge of deciding how many stages there should be and what should constitute a stage. It was also recommended that you should look at your aim statement and try to develop between three and five key points that you would like to drive home. This represents as much information as most people are able to take away from a presentation. These key point messages can be considered as the intended destination for each stage of your journey. In other words key points are synonymous with stages in the same way that the aim statement is synonymous with the destination. Key points are synonymous with the intended destination of each stage of your journey. If you are working in a familiar subject domain the key points may well be apparent; but what if the subject isn’t familiar and the key points are not self-evident? Surely the fear of public speaking is the elevated?

Identifying Key Points
When you are preparing a presentation in an unfamiliar domain the most effective way to identify the key points is to ask other people. The people you should ask should be from a similar group as your intended audience. If they are predominantly directives, as is likely in the scenario of a sales manager making a case for equipping her field sales force with laptop computers then she should ask relatively senior people within the organization. If she asked a colleague in the training department their comments would probably be heavily biased towards the training implications, whereas technical staff would be preoccupied with the specification and interfacing of IT systems. Neither group is likely to ask the sort of questions that are likely to be of most interest to senior management.

By asking a representative group you should ensure that the key points are properly targeted and that the audience remains focused. You should ask them a question framed around your aim statement. What would you need to know which would . . . followed by your aim statement. In the current example: ‘What would you need to know which would . . . demonstrate the competitive advantage of equipping the field sales force with laptop computers?’ Ask as many people, from a representative group as you can, and record their comments as potential key points. The biggest advantage of this approach is its speed. It is quite common for people to spend hours sifting through information, collating it and then editing down into digestible chunks - whilst still struggling to devise a suitable presentation structure for it. Asking other people is a fast and effective way of devising potential key points and has the added advantage that the key points will be non-egocentric that is they will reflect what your audience wants to hear and not just what you want to tell them.

These are the sort of responses that you might expect when asking the question ‘What would you need to know which would . . . demonstrate the competitive advantage of equipping the field sales force with laptop computers?’
“How will giving them laptops improve their sales volumes?”
“How much will all this cost? And how long is the return on investment, in other words a detailed cost benefit analysis.”
“Would we be able to cut the sales force as a result of their increased productivity?”
“How long will it take to procure this equipment and software, and then how long will it take to carry out the training required?”
“What are the main business benefits, apart from cost-related issues - you know will the organization appear to be more professional, that kind of thing?”

Address Your Audience’s Priorities
Starting with the main body, your first task is to decide on what your key points will be and order them in a way that will address the needs of your audience. Once again, you should be prioritizing what it is that the members of the audience want from the presentation. The key points should be presented in the order that reflects their importance to the audience - with the most important first. If you do not do this you will find it difficult to hold their attention.

It may prove useful to write each key point on a piece of card and shuffle them in a variety of different presentation sequences and consider the effect of each on your audience. Ask yourself, or others, which will have the most impact? Your next task is to divide the presentation up so that the correct amount of time is allocated to each of your key points. This will ensure that the overall time allotted to the main body of your presentation does not overrun. For example if the main body is planned to last 10 minutes and there are three key points, as in this presentation, then you might divide it into two minute and one six minute segments. Alternatively you might create three equal segments. Once again let the requirements of the audience determine this division.

Keep Your Message Central
Plan the content around the message or messages you want to convey. The overall message of the presentation should be embodied in the aim statement. It is important to keep the focus of your presentation on the message and not on the information and facts that underpin that message. This can be very difficult; especially when the message is supported by a multitude of facts that you think the audience should know.

If your presentation does consist of a series of facts and supporting evidence, then the audience is likely to assimilate these and draw their own conclusions. If this happens you will lose the opportunity to influence and shape the audience’s interpretation. It is far more effective to communicate your messages and then support them with an adequate level of facts and information - so that the audience can line them up behind the message you wish to convey.

As you develop the content of the presentation you should devise a message, or messages, to communicate each key point. You should only include sufficient facts to support and validate these messages. Depending on the size and scope of each stage it may be necessary to devise one or more sub-messages to communicate the key point. Each message and sub-message should be supported by its own support facts and information. From your research you should have a surplus of facts and information available and the main challenge facing you should be the selection of an appropriate sub-set to support each of your messages. One of the best rules of thumb to adopt when screening your research information is to: Stop adding facts when your point is clear and present them in order of importance. Remember, whilst quoting authoritative sources may be useful when presenting support facts and information, your audience are unlikely to want a detailed explanation of all the processes and investigations that you have carried out.

You should:
1. Devise a message, or messages, to communicate each key point.
2. Include facts on the basis that they support and clarify the message.
3. Stop adding facts when your point is clear and present them in order of importance.
Identifying Messages - an Example
In the example used earlier - where a sales manager is trying to convince the board of directors to equip the field sales force with laptop computers three key points were identified, in order of importance, as shown.

1. Cost Benefits
2. Performance Projections
3. Business Benefits

Now each of these will require one or more messages in order to communicate the key point effectively. Remember, it is important that the information you have is communicated as messages - or the audience may carry out their own analysis of the facts and draw their own conclusions. These key point cards show examples of the kind of messages that might be used to communicate them.

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