How presentation skills can sky rocket your success at work

Having spent many years in senior executive roles experience tells me that when it comes to succeeding at work it isn’t necessarily about how much experience you have, how many qualifications you hold or even how knowledgeable you are.

It’s about how you speak!

It’s clear to me that the skill employers covet more than anything else is the ability to interact, influence and inspire the people you work with.

The ability to present yourself well to your peers and management is perceived as you having a high level of emotional intelligence, self- awareness and hallmarks you as a leader.

Effective presentation skills can be a complete game changer at work and can be a major distinction between you being looked over and over looked.

As well as catapulting your success in business the ability to present yourself with confidence, charm and creativity can make a tremendous difference to your personal impact and success outside of work.

Here are 5 key reasons why developing your presentation skills will transform your life in more ways than you can imagine.

1. Confidence

I believe that confidence is the elixir of life in and out of the workplace.

Speaking in public and presenting your ideas to others doesn’t come easily to most people as it’s not something many of us were taught at school, college or university.

It’s something which takes a great deal of confidence and the very process of learning, developing and practicing presenting to others provides a robust platform for building confidence.

One of the greatest pleasures our presentation skills coaches experience at Mindful Presenter is seeing people’s confidence soar at the end of our presentation training workshops.

2. Organisation

Effective presenting requires a great deal of personal focus, effort and discipline in getting yourself organised.

Researching and understanding your audience and your topic in the depth required to make a tangible difference and memorable connection is just the starting point.

Crafting a compelling structure with absolute clarity of your objectives, honing a message which is clear, powerful and concise requires personal management.

Once you have that clarity the next step is to find and organise relevant and impactful stories, facts and evidence to support your message.

It doesn’t stop there.

You need to build contrast, perhaps visual aids and support material for your audience to use or take away. You need to ensure your presentation is different, creative and memorable and when you have a presentation which is content rich and persuasive you need to focus on timing, delivery and what happens afterwards.

There are very few skills in the workplace which require such detailed and extensive finesse and as you develop the art of organising a presentation those skills become prevalent in so many other areas of your personal and professional life.

3. Impact

The benefits of effective presenting are incredibly far reaching and extend but are not limited to:

Connecting with, influencing and inspiring colleagues and management

Succeeding at interviews, either as the interviewer or interviewee

Having a strong presence in meetings at work

Making a great impression at networking functions, conferences or business events

Presentation and communicating to clients

Presenting at conferences

Interacting and negotiating with suppliers

Leading your team more effectively

Dealing with conflict in and out of work

Creating a strong and memorable personal brand

4. Self-awareness

It’s extremely difficult and many would argue impossible to be a highly effective presenter and speaker without a great deal of personal self-awareness.

In other words, having the capacity and mindfulness to stand back and reflect on what works for you as a presenter, what doesn’t work, what your strengths and opportunities are presents a springboard for personal growth.

Learning to be aware of yourself isn’t particularly easy especially as we live in a world where so many of us appear to be functioning on ‘auto-pilot’.

The ability to be aware of our own thoughts, feelings, behaviours and the impact each of these have on our results can pay huge dividends to us in and out of work.

Effective presenters understand that their priority is to understand themselves before they can even begin the journey of understanding their audience.
5. Creativity
Developing your presentation skills provides an invaluable opportunity to harness and exploit your imagination and creativity.
Unfortunately, many people in business today not only dread the idea of giving a presentation but a great number would do everything in their power to avoid attending them if they could.
The reason for this is because most of them are predictable and tedious.

Far too many professionals hide behind their content, dump data onto their audience and do little more that read out slides full of bullet points.

If you think I’m exaggerating, pay careful attention to the presentations you attend this week and let me know if I am.

Developing your presentation skills provides us with an opportunity to be creative and use our imaginations to stand out from the crowd, make an impact and be memorable.

It also makes the very idea and process of presenting far more enjoyable for both the presenter and the audience.
Whatever industry or business you are working in today it’s undoubtedly becoming increasing complex, competitive and difficult to stand out for a myriad of reasons. Knowledge remains critical to performance but it is no longer the key driver to success.

The ability to present yourself well to any audience is the key to success both in and out of the workplace.