Melissa, Account Manager at Presentation Studio, shares a recent experience that helped her overcome a fear of public speaking.
The team at Presentation Studio were lucky enough to have one of our presentation delivery partners Gabriella Maselli McGrail come into our creative space and take us through one of her presentation workshops.
This was no ordinary workshop. It was so niche and specialised, something not many people have the opportunity to do in their lives, yet one of life’s most valuable skills to have!
The valuable skill I’m referring to is Presentation Speaker Training.
Gabriella shared with us that in the USA, public speaking is included in children’s education as a compulsory subject as soon as the students learn to read and write. In Australia public speaking has not been a major focus in school curriculum at all.
So it is no surprise that when you arrive at your professional life, public speaking tends to be the elephant in the room, the task you hope your boss will never give you and the situation you hope you never have to deal with.
Guess what, the day will come where you have to speak in front of a group and you want to be prepared for it. Whether you are preparing a speech for your peers, for a conference, or even just for a meeting in front of your colleagues. You want to feel confident enough to express your key messages to your audience.
Three top takeaways from the training session
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It’s ok to be nervous. With Gabriella’s techniques, we were able to understand how to overcome these fears, how to prepare your body for the public attention it’s about to receive.
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Structure is the key. We learnt the process of structuring your content into _??blocks’ and asking ourselves _??what do I want my audience to do in this section of my speech?_??. These simple techniques ensured we felt more confident about our content.
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Don’t be afraid to get feedback. One of Gabriella’s techniques is to film you talking in front of your audience – in our case, our colleagues. Once we had delivered our short presentation, our peers gave us constructive feedback on our positioning of our body, tone of voice, speed of delivery, little nuances that come out when you are nervous and put on the spot.
The Result
If you had have heard my presentation at the start of the workshop, compared to the end _?_ wow, what a difference. The first presentation was rushed and I was speaking really quickly because I didn’t know my content, I had no set structure, I didn’t know my audience, I didn’t think about what they wanted to hear, why they may be interested, I basically just started talking with no purpose.
We all went from shaking, stumbling, and mumbling_?_. to laughing, captivating, inspiring, challenging and supporting each other. It was just brilliant to watch it all unfold. I can wholeheartedly say that every single one of us walked out of this workshop feeling confident, inspired to just get out there and actually present.
What you can do
Whether you’re preparing a presentation for your boss or if you have to present in front of clients, it’s definitely a workshop that I personally and professionally recommend doing. If you’re interested to find out more about Gabriella’s Delivery workshop at Presentation Studio, simply click here, send us your contact details and we’ll give you a call back to talk through the details.
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