The seventeenth-century poet John Donne said ‘no man is an island’ (before gender equality had arrived in town). He was right. We can only exist in a civilised global society by comparing ourselves with our peers and competitors, in our behaviour, our culture and our standards.
Presentation is an activity that takes place everywhere from Beijing to Bexhill, from Delhi to Wellington … the whole time. So who’s doing it well? Who’s nervous? Who’s adding to the art of presenting? Who’s making the leap from presenter to persuader … and how are they doing it?
Aspiring to nerveless brilliance
In this part of the book I’m going to deal with the two biggest issues inhibiting the performance of many presenters:
- Nerves – the sort of nerves that stop you thinking straight and prevent presenting being a pleasure; nerves that induce such suffering people can’t see how smart you really are.
- How good you are – not knowing what ‘good’ is, not knowing how you actually compare with your peers, not understanding how to be smart enough to be (when appropriate) a ‘post bullet-point’ presenter.
The perspectives that give confidence
You know how it is when you are lying in bed at 3am and everything goes out of proportion. When your capacity to hypothesise is vivid and gloomily creative; when you are incapable of snoozing and focus on losing. This is surely the most negative you’ll ever get.
So here are the two key perspectives that will help:
- Sort out what’s going on inside our own heads.
- Understand what’s going on out there in the wider world.
Overall I want you to see just how good you could be, should be and deserve to be at presenting; how to do yourself justice and how to enjoy the experience. Self-knowledge and the ability to benchmark where you stand in terms of presentational competence are big first steps on the journey to brilliance. And if you are thinking, ‘Well, it’s all very well for him. He doesn’t know how I feel and how bad I am’, the answer is I do and I do! But below the surface you surely have the ability to improve dramatically … everyone I coach becomes brilliant. Truthfully. Not in a day or a week but sooner than they could ever imagine.
And to cheer you up here’s what Stevie Wonder said. Let it be your motto too:
‘We all have ability. The difference is how we use it.’
