A Focused, Patient Start to a New Year
To help you get off to a strong start in 2017, I want to help you focus. If you’re like me, you have a big list of goals in a lot of different areas of your life. I love goals. But too many goals are as bad as no goals because they can leave you feeling overwhelmed, which in turn undermines your effort to make progress.
Less is more
The key to improvement is limiting the number of goals and tightening your focus on those goals.
If you want to become a more effective, impactful presenter or public speaker in 2017, I want to help you. Let’s start with a simple approach: focus on only a few areas at a time. You can’t improve everything at once–or even many things at once. Take one part of your presentation game and sharpen it, improve it, polish it. When you have nailed it then–and only then–move on to the next area of your skill set you want to develop.
Where to begin
Not sure where to begin on the path to improving as a presenter or speaker? Here are some areas to consider:
Openings
Getting your audience involved
Storytelling
Effective use of PowerPoint
Reducing the size of your presentations
More effective Q & A sessions
How to manage anxiety before and during a presentation
What to put in and what to leave out of your presentations
How to use handouts to increase the effectiveness of your presentations
How to create and deliver more powerful closes to your presentations
Resources to help you
To help you get started on your journey, I am listing the three most popular blog posts I have put up recently as well as the three most viewed videos I have posted on my YouTube page. Each focuses on one specific aspect of presentation skills. See if one, just one, resonates with you. If it does, start your journey there.
If you improve one skill set a month over the next year you will look and feel like a master in front of the room by this time next year. But if you try to improve in 12 areas right away, you’ll find yourself right back where you are this time next year.
Most Popular Blogs:
Where Should You Put the Q & A in Your Presentation?
The Voice The World Needs to Hear
Gold Medal Focus Precedes Gold Medal Results
Most Popular Videos:
How eye contact can improve your presentations
3 Ways to Improve the Close to your presentation
How to handle presentation panic
Start small
Start with one of the blog posts or one of the videos. See if it speaks you. If it does, take what you find valuable in it and put it to use, focus on it, practice it. When you have merged that skill or insight into your presentation skills, then–and only then–move on to another blog or video. Be patient. Doing one thing really well will take you much farther in front of the room than doing several things poorly.
Here’s to a great, patient, and focused 2017!
Feel free to share your goals with me in the comments below. Sometimes committing yourself publicly to that one big goal can help you continue to bring your focus back to that goal.
The post A Focused, Patient Start to a New Year appeared first on Presentation Skills Training | Gerry Sandusky.
