Welcome to our first guest blog in a series of “presenting made simple”  from Simon Raybould. In our November newsletter we gave you a snippet of rule number 1, so how about Rule number 2 to muse over?

According to his bio “Simon is a nationally recognised speaker on things like handling nerves, confidence, resilience and ‘dealing with the bad stuff’ Simon is a specialist trainer in presentation skills and the director of Aware Plus.
He’s based in the north of England, working nationally. Oh, and he’s a reasonably proficient fire eater!”
All we know he’s great at what he does so that is good enough for us!

Raybould’s Rule #2: do unto others…

To quote The Bible (Matthew 7:12 to be specific): ‘Do unto others as you would have them do to you‘. It’s a great rule for life and for presentations.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people complain about the poor quality of other people’s presentations and then, apparently without any realisation of the irony, stand up and give an almost identical presentation!

But Matthew 7:12 begs the question: why would you make other people suffer the same amount of boredom and mental pain that you’ve had inflicted upon you?! Why not do something different? As the saying goes:

So why not do your presentation differently? Why not – as my Rule Number Two says – do to others as you’d have them do to you? Why not take the time and effort to make your presentation effective? If you’re sitting through boring and/or pointless presentations why not do yours differently!

Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you…

This, I guess, my version of Nancy Duarte’s first rule: “never give a presentation you wouldn’t want to sit through”.

So the next time you’re wasting your time at a bad presentation, ask yourself a few key questions.

1. Why do I not feel this presentation is going well (be specific – don’t just say “‘cos it’s rubbish!”)?

2. What can I do to make sure my presentations don’t suffer from the same problem? (Again, be as specific as you possibly can be!)

3. How can I get the training (or equipment, or whatever) is needed to make the answer to question two a reality?

Of course, if the answer to number three turns out to be getting some presentation skills training from us, so much the better! (Hey, we’ve got to make a living you know – we don’t get paid for this stuff!)

…and at the end of your presentation, get yourself some good feedback.

By ‘good’ I don’t mean feedback saying how good you were – I mean feedback that is good of itself: good feedback should, amongst other things, tell you how to improve. Once again, it’s important to be specific – not just “Don’t forget to keep eye contact”!

It’s simple really – just do unto others as you’d have them do unto you!

Over the next few months we will publish more Rayboulds Rules but if you want more information pop on over to his site presentingmadesimple.com