Emily showed up for the Transformative Presentation Skills workshop with a script for a presentation about her organization she’d delivered three or four times. She wanted to use the script many times again and was hoping to hone her words.
By the afternoon of the first day, the script lay forgotten on the table and Emily was speaking passionately from her heart. She was also sweeping the audience away, creating a very powerful emotional impact.
Life is not theater, and your presentations shouldn’t be either. The more scripted you are, the more disengaged your audience will be. You’ll never connect with your audience. You’ll never create an emotional impact. (I’m describing most corporate presentations.)
The audience knows whether you’re performing or truly communicating. Performing leaves them cold. REAL communication creates a powerful emotional impact.
It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about dry financial numbers, an engineering design or giving a sales presentation. If you want to be a GREAT presenter, the emotional impact you create matters.
We are at our absolute best in life when our thoughts come forth spontaneously from a deep place within us, a place that is the source of our wisdom and creativity.
Most people need to have a breakthrough to reach this place. After the breakthrough, people give the best presentations they’ve ever given in their lives.
They are so spontaneous, so in the moment, that I often hear them say, “I don’t even remember what I just said! How will I ever say it again?”
This happened to Emily. Even though her topic was the same, the next time she gave this presentation it came out completely different. Emily was startled and said, “I didn’t say the same thing at all that I said the first time!”
I told her to never, ever try to do it exactly the same way again, because trying to do that will throw you straight into the past (and into worrying about the words) instead of being in the moment. That’s an emotional impact killer.
When you’re spontaneous, brilliant and in the moment, it never comes out exactly the way you did it before. It’s not supposed to and it never will.
Emily hit that zone of brilliance that comes straight from the real you. Not your words. You.
I see people find this within themselves every day.
It requires spontaneity to come to life.
There are three important steps to remember:
You have to trust yourself that the brilliance is within you… (it is!)
You have to let go of your script and get the full concept of what you want them to know without worrying about the words…
You have to be completely in the moment and totally connected and in powerful rapport with the people in your audience.
Do those three things and your brilliance will never fail you.
That’s what Emily discovered how to do at the Transformative Presentation Skills workshop. What could happen in your world if you discovered how to operate from your zone of brilliance?
Be the cause!