How to Recover From Going Blank During a Presentation

I’m going to let you in on a secret: even the most experienced speakers have gone blank in the middle of a presentation. The difference between you and them is how they handle that moment of blankness. Experienced speakers use the following four simple tricks to deal with going blank and the self-doubt that comes with it:

1. Don’t Panic
2. Retrace your steps
3. Check  your notecards
4. Move on to the next section

 

1. Don’t Panic

This is both the hardest and the most important tactic available to you. Yes, you are going to want to freak out and yes, you will have the urge to run away and hide in the toilets but what you need to do is pause and take a deep breath, a really deep breath. Then take another, this will get oxygen into your brain and help you relax and allow your brain to do its work. Now that you’re starting to relax move on to step 2.

2. Retrace your steps

Think back. What were you talking about before you went blank? Go over what you just said in your brain, usually going over the words again will trigger your memory of what comes next, this should get you through most situations. If not then try steps 3 or 4.

3. Notecards

This is the emergency situation. Calmly take out your notecards and look through them to find what you should be saying next (and only check the notecards, not your script, checking your script may take too long). You could casually explain the notecards by saying something like “this is important so I really want to get this right”. If the notecards don’t help them then try step 4

4. Move on to the next section

If you have learnt your presentation in chunks then you are in a great place because you can keep going, you can move to the next chunk of your presentation and continue. This is why we recommend that you learn your presentation in chunks as each “chunk” is a mini-speech in its own right so forgetting part of the speech doesn’t mean that you can’t go on. Also what you will find happening is that as you continue through the rest of the speech, you’ll remember the important points that you forgot and you can cover them at a later  point in the presentation.

 

To solidify these 4 steps in your mind then as you’re practicing your presentation, make note of the areas that you have difficulty with or that you keep forgetting and ask yourself “If I go blank during this section, what will I do?” The answer naturally is to follow the four steps and if you forget things during rehearsal then practice the 4 steps so that they will naturally come to you if you go blank during the actual presentation.

 

 

If you enjoyed this post then why not try more of our presentation tips:

• 3 Steps to Writing a Great Speech
• The Secret to Learning a Speech or Presentation
• Four Ways to Calm Your Presentation Anxiety

Image: Het Nieuwe Instituut (Flickr)

Use Your Evaluation To Inspire

On the surface an evaluation at Toastmasters is about showing a speaker their strengths and suggesting how they can improve further but a great evaluation goes further, a great evaluation will inspire your speaker to become a better communicator. A great evaluation will make them excited about their next speech they’ll start planning it immediately and they’ll be imagining how amazing they’re going to be. This should always be your goal when you give an evaluation.

This is not as difficult as it might sound.

The best place to inject inspiration into your evaluation is in the conclusion, it will have the most impact there. In your conclusion be sure to include the following:

• Acknowledge – Acknowledge all that the speaker has achieved so far, this shows them that they are already on the path to their goals and they’ve already achieved great things.
• Believe – Encourage them, show them that you believe that they have the ability to reach their personal speaking goals.
• Challenge – Challenge them, give them a new target to aim for, keep them striving to be better speakers.

The key to success is your choice of challenge. It could something small like not using notes or controlling a crutch-word or it could be a bigger step like speaking outside the club or taking part in a speech contest. From your preparation you already know what level the speaker is at, you know what their goals and objectives are and you have seen the speech so use this information to select an achievable but challenging task for the speaker.

Make them excited by the new challenge. Show them that you believe that they can achieve it. Inspire them.

 

This post is part of our series of tips to help you become a better evaluator. To learn more about evaluating, check out these posts:

• Plan and Prepare Your Evaluation
• Organise Your Evaluation
• The Secret to Effective Evaluations
• Crafting an Evaluation that Educates the Whole Audience
• The Secret to Helping a Speaker Grow

 

image: symphony of love/chattygd (flickr)

Merry Christmas From Cogito!

Merry Christmas to all our members and also to all the people who have visited us in the last year, it’s been a great year filled with speeches, workshops and laughs and thank you for making it happen..

Next year it’s only going to get better, as well as the usual speeches, table topics and evaluations we’ll have the club International Speech and Evaluation contest in March, we’ll hosting the area contesrs in April and the Tall Tales contest in June

There will be no meeting next Tuesday and we’ll see you back in the new year at the Lantern Centre on Tuesday January 10th .

 

image: Kevin Dooley(Flickr)

Celebrate With Us this Tuesday

“Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection.”

Winston Churchill

For our last meeting of 2016 we’re going to embrace the theme of “Reflection”, we’re going to look back on the year and celebrate our personal and group achievements.

Derville will be our Toastmaster, we’ll have speeches from Jag,  Kevin and Jean-Marie and visiting  toastmaster Miguel keeping us on our toes with his selection of table topics.

There may even be cake…

When: 7.30pm, Tuesday 13th December

Where: The Lantern Centre, 17 Synge St (click here to see a map)

To sign up or see the agenda of the meeting, click here

 

image:  Rev Stan (Flickr)

Become More Confident Speaking in Front of an Audience

Speaking in front of a group of people can be very intimidating, it’s enough to make even the most confident person tongue-tied and unsure of themselves. And it doesn’t just happen to you, it happens to everyone.

The difference between you and confident speakers is that they have found tricks not to let the scariness of speaking in public stop them from presenting. And that’s Toastmasters is about, giving you the tricks to work with your uncertainty and the confidence to stand up and speak in front of a small or large audience.

At Cogito Toastmasters Dublin, each of our meetings are designed to provide a supportive environment where you can feel comfortable speaking and after practicing in the club you will have the skills and confidence to give a presentation at work or at an interview.

Come along to our next meeting and see how we can help you become the speaker you’ve always dreamed of being!

We meet at 7.30pm  on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays in the Lantern Centre on Synge St (off Camden St), see you there.

Improve Your Presentations with the Ten TED Commandments

For anyone interested in speaking and listening to interesting speakers, TED is always a great place to visit. Each TED speaker is given the “TED Commandments” to help them create a talk to suit a typical TED audience.

These commandments are useful not just for TED speakers but for anyone who has to stand up and speak in front of an audience. They’re filled with guidelines that, if followed, will make your speech entertaining and interesting for the audience while at the same time allowing you the chance to enjoy yourself.

The TED Commandments are:

1. Dream Big. Strive to create the best talk you have ever given. Reveal something never seen before. Do something the audience will remember forever. Share an idea that could change the world.
2. Show Us The Real You. Share your passions, your dreams … and also your fears. Be vulnerable. Speak of failure as well as success.
3. Make The Complex Plain. Don’t try to dazzle intellectually. Don’t speak in abstractions. Explain! Give examples. Tell stories. Be specific.
4. Connect With People’s Emotions. Make us laugh! Make us cry!
5. Don’t Flaunt Your Ego. Don’t boast. It’s the surest way to switch everyone off.
6. No Selling From The Stage! Unless we have specifically asked you to, do not talk about your company or organization. And don’t even think about pitching your products or services or asking for funding from stage.
7. Feel free to comment on other speakers’ talks, to praise or to criticize. Controversy energizes! Enthusiastic endorsement is powerful!
8. Don’t Read Your Talk. Notes are fine. But if the choice is between reading or rambling, then read!
9. End Your Talk On Time. Doing otherwise is to steal time from the people that follow you. We won’t allow it.
10. Rehearse your talk in front of a trusted friend … for timing, for clarity, for impact.

 

 

If you enjoyed this post then why not try more of our presentation tips:

• 3 Steps to Writing a Great Speech
• The Secret to Learning a Speech or Presentation
• The Key to Reducing Your Presenting Nerves
•  How to Recover From Going Blank During a Presentation
• The Key To a Great Presentation: Knowing Your Audience
• Four Ways to Calm Your Presentation Anxiety

 

image: Steve Jurvetson (Flickr)

Learn How to Engage Your Audience with Passion

One of the key ways to get an audience interested in your idea or topic is to show your passion for it.

When you stand up and speak with real passion, your audience will hear see and feel your passion, your passion will intrigue them, they will want to know why you’re so excited about this topic and they’ll feel that if you’re excited then maybe they should be too. Passion is the best way to connect with your audience

The opposite is also true. Think back to when you were in university or college, think of that one lecturer who always sounded bored when they gave their lectures. Were you interested in the class or were you just as bored as he was? If’s not just passion that we feed off . If the lecturer finds their subject boring then there’s nothing to keep us engaged so we stop listening which results in a whole group of people who don’t care and can’t wait for the class to end.

Have you got an got an idea that you’re passionate about but don’t know how to present it to an audience? Do you want to learn how to present with more passion?

Come along to one of our meetings and see how we can help you show your audience the passion you have for your topic.

We meet at 7.30pm  on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays in the Lantern Centre on Synge St (off Camden St), see you there.

Click here for more information.

image: PopTech (Flickr)

The Secret to Learning a Speech or Presentation

For most people when they learn a speech or presentation they learn it as they expect to say it,  i. e.  beginning at the start and reading through it to the end.  This is definitely a good way to learn a speech but there is one big problem with this method. You usually end up knowing the first half of the speech better than the second half. This is because when we make a mistakes we typically go back to the beginning of the speech and start again. The other problem with learning it in such a linear way is that if you go blank in the middle of the actual presentation,  it can be difficult to work out what to say next.

The way to solve this is called “Chunking” and it involves breaking your speech or presentation into smaller chunks of text. The trick is to learn each chunk of text individually i.e. as if each is a mini-speech and you don’t even have to learn them in any particular order, the key is to ensure that you know each chunk equally well  before learning all the chunks together.

There are a number of advantages to this method:

1. Your delivery is consistent – you know every part of your presentation equally well thus you can present each chunk with passion and confidence.
2. End with impact – Audiences don’t really remember most of what you say but they usually remember what you say last so it’s important to end strongly and with impact. By learning your speech in chunks then you know your ending as well as your opening, this gives you the extra confidence to punch home your message with a strong authoritative conclusion.
3. Going blank – if for some reason you do go blank in the middle of  your presentation then it’s not a disaster, because you won’t have to go back to the start, there’s no need to panic, all you need to do is calmly move on to the next chunk and continue the presentation.

 

If you enjoyed this post then why not try more of our presentation tips:

• 3 Steps to Writing a Great Speech
• The Key to Reducing Your Presenting Nerves
•  How to Recover From Going Blank During a Presentation

 

Image: Daniel Novta

Inspirational American Leaders

Our next meeting falls on the same day as the US Elections but instead of talking politics we’re going to dedicate our meeting to the theme of Inspirational American Leaders as most great leaders have also been great speakers and after all, the only reason to give a speech is to change the world….

Brian will be our Inspirational leader and our world changers will be Leah, Kevn and Jean Marie, we’ll have an icebreaker speech from our newest member Leah, Kevin will tell a spooky story and Jean Marie will give tips on tackling table topics then we’ll have the chance to put those tips into action during Jag’s table topics session.

See you there!

When: 7.30pm, Tuesday 8th Novemebrr

Where: The Lantern Centre, 17 Synge St (click here to see a map)

To sign up or see the agenda of the meeting, click here

3 Steps to Writing a Great Speech

Step 1: Your Audience

Before you start to write your speech or presentation think about who you will be speaking to, do they know anything about your topic? How do they feel about it? Do they even care?

It’s important to remember that giving a speech or presentation is not about you, it’s about your audience. You must be able to pitch your presentation at the right level for them, too technical and they’ll be confused, too easy and they’ll get bored.

To get an audience to listen to you you need to be able to answer the questions they’ll be asking in their heads:

• Why should I care?
• How will this affect me?
• How will it benefit me?

Once you can answer these questions in your speech then every audience will love you.

 

 

Step 2: First Draft

With all this in mind write your first draft.

This is not about perfection. This is simply about getting all your ideas down on paper and this achieves two things:

1. You’ve moved from the state of inaction where you are agonising over the right way to begin to a state of action and progress, this is a great place to be.
2. No matter what else you do, you have achieved something and more than that it gives you something to work on and improve.

Once you’ve finished writing the first draft done say it out loud.

This helps greatly because what looks good written down doesn’t always sound good when you say it. For instance your sentences could be too long, there may be some words or sentences that are hard to say or sound wrong.

As you’re speaking it out loud, you will also notice parts of your speech that you will want to change, make quick notes of the changes as you find them and continue saying the speech.

Once you’ve finished, start on draft 2.

 

Step 3: Drafts 2 to X

Continue the cycle of writing the speech and then speaking it out loud. Each draft will require less and less changes. Keep this cycle going until you either reach a version that you are happy with or it is time to give the presentation.

Another advantage of this cycle of writing and speaking is that it’s also a form of practising, it gives you the chance to learn the flow and language of your speech

It’s important that as you write each draft to keep checking that your speech is still being pitched at the audience’s level and addressing their needs. As you write always ask: “Will my audience get this?”

 

Following these three steps will ensure that you always write a speech that people will want to listen to.

 

If you enjoyed this post then why not try more of our presentation tips:

• Four Ways to Calm Your Presentation Anxiety
• The Secret to Learning a Speech or Presentation
• The Key to Reducing Your Presenting Nerves
•  How to Recover From Going Blank During a Presentation
• The Key To a Great Presentation: Knowing Your Audience

 

Image: EcoVirtual (Flickr)