5 tips for a successful work presentation
Yesterday at work I had to illustrate new features of our main product to a team of about ten people.
It had been some time since the last time I treaded the board(room)s, but past professional experience and tips and tricks I picked up in my previous life as a (not very often) jobbing actor in Paris meant that I quickly found my feet and sailed away.
It went well. However, there are a few things I was unaware of or I had forgotten, and that I would like to share with you here.
- Do not guzzle one litre of Pepsi Max in the 60 minutes prior to being locked in a room for two hours with a bunch of people listening to you: No matter how parched you feel, caffeine + liquid = thank heavens for that unscheduled break halfway through.
- Do bring a bottle of water though, for you are likely to be speaking for most of the two hours. The trick is to reach for the bottle confidently as a notorious heckler asks you a question, then take a swig as you try and come up with something plausible to say. Take another swig when you realise that your mind has gone blank. Then pretend to have swallowed some water the wrong way and cough repeatedly. By this stage people might have forgotten that an answer was asked in the first place.
- It does not matter if you really like the shirt you are wearing. The last thing you want to worry about when your team lead ask you a tricky question is whether your top tugs a little too snugly across your post-Christmas belly as you sit down. It's work. It's the UK. You are not supposed to take pleasure wearing clothes you like.
- Do not let the fact that your team's tech lead's eyes have been firmly shut for the past ten minutes dishearten you. He might simply have had a late night yesterday. Nothing to do with the unexciting subject matter you might be delivering a bit on the monotonous side.
- Do not point at features on your laptop's display with your finger. Either wiggle the pointer around them or stand up and point at the image displayed by the projector you have connected to it. I figured that one out straight away, and yet I kept doing it wrong, thereby not exactly radiating the sharp, confident and professional persona I had planned to impersonate.
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