Presentation Skills are Foundational Skills Part Five: Confidence

This week’s post is the last of the “Presentation Skills are Foundational Skills” series. It’s also going to be the last post of 2020. If you’re craving more content, I suggest picking up my book and diving deeper into many of the topics at greater depth that we’ve covered in the blog.

As a reminder, here are the five main things to consider the next time you find yourself delivering a presentation:

1. Know your audience

2. Know your subject matter

3. Know your limits

4. Know the situation

5. Have confidence in your presentation

Using these five things, you’ll be able to come up with an effective presentation that helps your audience get the most out of your time together. Over the series of posts, we’re diving into each of these topics a little bit further…and this week we’ll be focusing on number 5:

Have confidence in your presentation

Confidence is really important in delivering your message, but you have to understand the first four parts of delivering a presentation before it’s even relevant. If you’re confidently presenting inaccurate material to an audience that knows better, the confidence is irrelevant. If you’re answering loaded questions with confidence, you might be shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t understand the context. That being said, you can check all of the other boxes and lack confidence and completely miss the mark with your presentation.

If we consider each of the types of presentations from last week’s post, confidence is important for different reasons in every one.

When you’re presenting to a captive audience, delivering material in a way that comes off as uncertain will detract from your message. If you’re asking for executive support or sponsorship on something, you need to be able to stand up behind your ask. It’s important to know what you’re asking for and why you’re asking for it. The sales-type presentation requires confidence in your understanding and position or your audience might latch on to your lack of confidence and attempt to detract from your message…especially if they’re inherently against you.

In my book, there’s a full chapter on the importance of confidence in your daily work life. When you consider that a presentation is a spotlight, the confidence factor is even more important. Using an example from my own work, I’ll dive into this a little further:

At a customer meeting, I had prepared to deliver a message to ‘a business and developer audience’ and I knew that this customer was considering a somewhat sizable investment in our technology. I knew my material, understood that the audience was mostly interested in learning and was less about the selling, and ultimately I knew the limits of my knowledge but also of how the technology could be used at this customer.

I’ve had this kind of preparation several times before, but what was never made clear to me was that in this case, our audience wasn’t six people…it was 200 people. When presenting to an audience of this size, confidence is even more crucial than delivering a presentation to a smaller group, and you’ve also got a whole different set of ‘public speaking nerves’ to deal with. Confidence is crucial to overcome these nerves, but you absolutely cannot ignore them.

I later learned that this presentation was the foundation of the investment and the eventual sale. This group included several executives, many developers, and a business audience focused on problem solving. Gripping the nerves, working a microphone, being on camera and recorded all added to the usual stress of a presentation. The confidence in message and delivery is what made a difference for a group of this size. Coming in, I knew I had the first four points down before learning about the size of my audience and importance of this presentation. Confidence in my knowledge, subject matter, and the situation allowed me to carry the confidence into the presentation to the large audience.

When it all comes down to it, all five of these points are important points to any presentation. Confidence in your presentation and material is simply the icing on the cake. Confidence comes from preparation, and is not a shortcut.

Wrapping up the series, it’s important to remember that each of the parts play an important role in delivering an effective presentation no matter what your audience or the circumstances and no matter what job you’re in. All of the previous parts in this series set you up to allow you to handle curveballs and any unexpected situations that might arise. You can handle things that come up that would have otherwise thrown you off by understanding the previous four parts of the series. Confidence will come from those four things…and all five things combined will help you to deliver more effective presentations.

As mentioned, this will be my last post of 2020. Posts will begin again in January of 2021, and will happen weekly on Sundays at 7PM. I wish everyone the best of holiday seasons and that everyone remains healthy.