NOTE: This is Part 1 of a 3-Part series on virtual presentations
Amanda sent me a recording of a virtual presentation she gave along with this question:
“Oh my! I read your latest Causative Communication article where you had one of your students watch a video of themselves presenting and/or talking. With this lesson in mind, I was curious to see how I sounded when during one of my larger (30+ people) leadership reviews. So I recorded the meeting and played it back….”
“The first 5-10 minutes, I am nervous and trying to sound professional and upbeat. I must have said ‘uh’ or ‘uhm’ about 50 times in the first 5 minutes. I am incredibly embarrassed injecting these stutters.”
“What is happening to me?”
The root cause of Amanda’s mystery can be found in something she said in her message.
It’s when she wrote she was “trying to sound upbeat and professional”. This is the wrong goal and will always make you nervous.
The more you focus on yourself, the more you worry about how you sound, the more you try to come across a certain way, the more your attention will turn inward (wrong focus) and you will become more and more self-conscious. And that will make you more and more nervous.
Your attention ALWAYS needs to be on the people you’re talking to.
In a virtual presentation, there’s a huge barrier in that you can’t see the audience. You’re operating with no data about their reaction to you. The answer to this is to imagine the real people you’re talking to, even though you can’t see them. And get the idea that they are right there with you, not far away in locations all over the world, but right there where your computer screen is.
You have to make the audience real to yourself or you are going to be talking to your computer…and that’s a surefire recipe for becoming nervous.
Imagine you are talking to just one of them, and talk to them just the way you would talk to them if they were right in front of you in person. Don’t try to come across a certain way. Just talk to them the way you normally would.
Thinking you’re talking to a whole group at once will make you nervous because it violates the natural laws of communication. Talking to one person aligns with these natural laws. It will relax you and calm you down.
Get your attention off yourself. Make your audience real to yourself so that you know you’re talking to real people. Imagine that they are right there in front of you and talk to them just the way you would if they were right there.
The BEST way to master virtual presentations is to master the ability to do them live and in person first. Learn how to do it with a REAL audience first, then you’ll be more able to do it when you’re blindfolded (virtual).
If you can figure this out on your own, great. If you want the most direct and effective route available for mastering this skill, then come to our next Transformative Presentation Skills workshop. You get to refine your skills LIVE, with IMMEDIATE feedback, and then apply those skills to any virtual audience you encounter.
(If travelling is an issue, contact us about the one-on-one virtual coaching that’s available for this.)
If you do virtual presentations, make the commitment TODAY to stop presenting to your computer and start presenting to the humans you seek to transform.
And stay tuned for next week’s Part 2 article on how to give effective virtual presentations!
Be the cause!