Public speaking courses teach people the art of making speeches.  There are many things a course will teach such as presentation skills, managing anxiety and nerves, public speaking techniques and skills.   Also, one to one public speaking coaching can be an excellent way to really personalize your training.

One of the most common fears, or indeed phobias, is public speaking.  Not snakes or spiders!  Many people even fear it more than death.  The body has a strange reaction even if, with the best will in the world, you want it to remain calm and serve you in your desire to clearly and effectively deliver your message to the audience.  But, you’re up there on the stage in front of all those people all looking at you and your mouth goes dry, your hands begin to sweat, your heart races and your voice quavers in time with your knees knocking together in a nervous unison.  It’s not ideal!

So that’s why many companies offer a large range of courses and public speaking techniques to help people overcome these intense fears.  For most people, public speaking is absolute extreme pressure and they dread it.  But why to we get such anxiety?  Well for a start, it’s normal to have these sensations.  It’s back to fight or flight.  Adrenaline hurtles around the body – far more than is necessary.  And we feel trapped because we can’t flee so we have to fight and that’s scary.

But what are we fighting?  Perhaps our own perceptions of what we think might happen ie. the worst imaginable.  We think things like, “What if I’m judged badly by my audience”, “What if my mind goes blank” etc.  The fear of feeling humiliated, making mistakes, forgetting everything, comparing yourself to great speakers, they won’t understand my points, they won’t like me!

There are however good nerves and while public speaking may feel highly uncomfortable, being in the spotlight on stage is not the a place to comfort.  Nerves help keep you on the edge (in a good way!), alert and vital on stage.  Public speaking courses help you to manage fear and nerves so you don’t let them get in the way of progressing along your chosen path.  You move in time with your booming heart rather than letting it beat you out of the room.  If nerves are managed well, then it can mean the difference between a mediocre presentation and an alive, engaging one.

Here are a few tips for effective public speaking.  Public speaking techniques can go a long way to helping you to shine and a good public speaking course, workshops and seminars teach special exercises and skills to help you use those nerves positively to keep a clear head and excel.

Firstly, mistakes.  It’s okay to make them!  It’s about the recovery that matters and this can help build rapport with the audience as you appear human, not just someone delivering information.

Secondly, stories.  Do tell them because they help the audience connect with you on a personal level.  You are a person too.  Personal experiences can help support your information.  With stories, you could be presenting health and safety and still make it interesting.  Public speaking training will show you how to weave these skilfully in to your speech.

Which leads me on to humor.  The above health and safety quip might hit a nerve with some so humor is a little risky.  However, don’t leave it out totally.  If you’re good an telling jokes go for it, but if not then leave them out.  There’s a danger of getting lost in trying to be funny and therefore getting lost in your presentation.  Self deprecation is good, but not too much – less is more.

There are many more points to cover, however a good public speaking skills course will have you well on the way to feeling self confident and ready to take total opportunity of the time you have on stage whether it’s for work or social reasons.   Public speaking courses, workshops and seminars are able to assist you towards creating the value you want out of your time on the stage and to improve your public presentation skills too.

There are many types of negotiation skills training.  Usually companies tailor their negotiation course package to the particular need of the business and can be done in-house.  The usual training objectives of a course are to understand different styles of negotiation, reading other people, to notice other points of view, to define your own personal negotiation style, to negotiate downwards and upwards, to know how to play the game of negotiation, to become aware of the negotiating beliefs and rules you hold to be true, knowing what your bottom line is and knowing what to give away, making decisions, coping with hidden agendas, fine tuning and the closing the deal.

In general we all come across times in our life when we need to negotiate whether it’s with our spouse over the new wall color or to get our children to go to bed.  It’s not just in business.  This would be called soft negotiating.  Hard negotiating involves areas such as a pay rise or the price we will pay for a big ticket item such as a house or car.  But whether it is soft or hard negotiating skills, the principles are the same for both.

Negotiating is essentially a game.  It’s not really about winning or losing.  Learning to play the game however, is essential to maximize the chances of a successful result.  With any game, there are conventions and rules.  A good sales negotiation training course will help you become aware of how your own beliefs about negotiating with people or clients can  block success or perhaps support it.  Then you should have the chance to do role play exercises using your own style so trainers can assess what is good, what can be improved upon and observe what is happening for your partner too.  Feedback from others is enormously helpful for your own growth and forward progression in negotiating.  You will learn about how to deal with awkward meetings and how to read body language as well as assess your own.  In the end you get to define your own rules of negotiating within the generally accepted context of the negotiating game.

It sometimes seems that some people are born with natural negotiating skills and don’t need any negotiations training where as some of us need all the training we can get in order to encourage us to leap in.  In negotiating seminars, you should have the chance to observe how these top negotiators work with such skills as when to make demands, knowing what to give away, how to compensate during difficulties, when to let go, when to give up the position and how to choose another.

Good negotiators don’t let ego get in the way.  A good negotiation seminar will teach you how to get this delicate balance.  Top negotiators put up a good fight but also have the ability to lose with with no hard feelings.  They are great to negotiate with as they want a win win and care for themselves as well as the other party.  They don’t bulldoze their way through but play a graceful game.  And yes, it is possible to do the hard negotiating skills and still be one of the good guys.

There are many negotiation skills training courses, drop in classes, workshops and seminars that include many helpful exercises to help you excel in all forms of this skill.

Would you like to have more effective presentation skills?  These top presentation skills tips will help to focus yourself and give you the maximum chance of conducting a great, persuasive presentation for your audience.  In short, anyone can deliver a presentation, it’s just that not everyone can deliver an effective presentation!  Developing your techniques can really improve your prospects and take your career forward, so it’s no wonder people seek to improve.  These 6 tips are covered in more advanced presentation skills – all good key speakers follow them.

1.Be prepared.  It may sound obvious but you’d be surprised how many people fail to adequately do this which leads to nerves on the day and a shaky delivery.  Preparation is certainly the most important point.  Ideally you should be spending about 25 to 30 hours of preparation time rehearsing your speech for each hour of presentation.  Record or even better, video yourself so you can hear and see yourself presenting to note what you want to hone and modify to give the most slick delivery possible.  You’ll be surprised what you discover you do regarding your speech and body language.  Sometimes many ‘umms’ and ‘errrs’ are unconsciously spoken during sentences while nervous hand fidgeting occurs in others.  It is a learning experience too see yourself on video!  Good presentation skills win audiences.  Remember to use good English on your handouts.  If spelling isn’t your thing, get it checked over.

2.Share personal stories and examples from either your professional or personal life, or both, whenever you can to assist in supporting your speech.  People love to hear these it keeps your audience engaged and provides a personal link for them to understand your points.  When you are personal with others, they are likely to reciprocate and this is great for rapport and connection with your audience.  They see you as a human being as well as a presenter.

3.  Keep relaxed throughout.  Thorough preparation will make you relaxed.  It is also I    mportant to focus on your presentation’s aim and message rather than the audience.      Audiences tend to make judgments about presenters in the first 30 seconds, therefore it’s     critical to give them the impression you want by practicing the introduction exactly how you     want to say it.

4.Use humor.  Humor is a tricky one because people have such different senses of humor and a joke that some find hilarious, will go down like a lead balloon with others.  So keep it light and be natural.  Humor can be a powerful aid in increasing rapport but don’t try and be funny, otherwise you will lose focus on your point and may get your confidence knocked if something doesn’t go down well.  People love it when you mock yourself however don’t go overboard and definitely don’t mock your audience!  Keep it light and natural and it will  flow.

5.Body positions and hand gestures.   Do not stay hidden behind the lectern throughout the speech!  Nothing can switch off  an audience more than a speaker who stays in one position throughout.  When rehearsing, note particular points where you can support your speech with a hand gesture to power home your message.  Mark 3 or 4 positions of how you will stand and gesture to support the words you are saying.  Make note of the point you are demonstrating and practice saying it and gesturing and moving to the stage area you choose. For point X, you might want to be walking towards the audience with your hand in a certain gesture and for point Z you might be walking towards them but to the right of the stage for example.  Keep your hands free, but not overly moving and not in your pockets.  Be sure to keep eye contact with the audience and don’t focus on one person or one area of the crowd or others will feel left out and lose interest.  This tip goes a long way towards improving presentation skills.

6.Details details details.  When you think about the details as well as the bigger picture you are sure to plan effectively.  Think about the location.  Do you know how to get to it?  What about a contingency route in case of bad traffic?  Think about how large your audience is.  Keep a check list of items you need and check them off as you pack.  Pack the day before or at least, give yourself plenty of time.  Arrive early to iron out any last minute hiccups or make adjustments.  There is no such thing as over planning when it comes to presentations.

Remember the adage, If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.  These top tips on how to better enhance, improve and use effective presentation skills should have you well on the way to delivering an engaging speech.

There is a huge range of presentation skills training courses available to help overcome fear and fine tune delivery to create a very successful speech.  While a book on the subject can be useful,  classes provide that much needed experience.  Usually a course is split into 3 natural categories of beginner, intermediate and advanced in order to properly cater for all levels and abilities.  Make sure your course has a maximum of 8 to 10 people so you get individual attention.  Ideally you want to be looking for a workshop that will provide you with a toolbox of techniques ready to put into action for any presentation and that leaves you feeling a lot more confident.

Beginner presentation skills courses are likely to be one to two days.  You can expect to overcome your fear, focus on your oral presentation skills, present with more confidence and be able to easily create an effective presentation.  More knowledge and confidence can save you from the greatest fear and if you have a presentation in the near future and want to impress, then it is a good idea to do yourself a favor and seek help to overcome those nerves.  It can take as little as one day to take the first steps towards being a good presenter, to learn to control nerves and overcome common fears, to learn soft skills training, how to develop ideas to structure and plan a presentation and to speak more confidently in front of an audience.

For intermediate presentation skills workshops you might be looking at a longer course of at least two to three days.  Intermediate level is where you will already have public speaking experience and want to focus on your delivery skills.   As well as how to manage the inevitable nerves, a course of this level would likely focus on vocal style and how to be more confident and persuasive with your vocal style.  Also language techniques should be focused on to make sure the main message is received clearly, how to creatively structure and plan a speech, the use of body language to engage the audience and build rapport and how to control the audience using interactive techniques.

Advanced presentation skills seminars would be for those who are experienced public speakers or presenters but want to get more from presentations.  An advanced presentation skills seminar would likely focus on real practical experience like delivering a speech to the trainers and honing physical presence, body language and voice.   Other elements focused on at this stage would be the development of impressive and persuasive speaking styles, honing delivery style for optimum audience impact, powerful use of structure, pace and tone, control presence and space for better audience rapport and influence,  to know how to use different presentation styles to cater for different audiences and creative use of language to deliver more convincingly and powerfully.

Make sure that the trainer is well regarded and a specialist in the public speaking field.  A trainer who is unable to empathize with nerves and difficulties a student faces or isn’t able to work at their pace and level won’t be a good teacher.  Different people have specific needs and a one-on-one presentation skills coach is helpful to really nail those challenging areas and provide more individually tailored training.

So whether your purpose for improved public speaking is for business, work or social reasons these are some of the elements presentation skills training courses should be offering.

In order to hone your presentation skills PPT is an effective tool to use.   There are 3 essential tips that must be known before presenting, and with these in mind you can survive any public speaking situation.  Using these 3 tips will make your presentation soar and  that essential ingredient of increased confidence comes along with it making you enter into future presentations a little less daunted than before.

It is interesting because these 3 tips are common sense but it’s surprising how often they are overlooked.  So here they are revealed:

Firstly use visual aids whenever you can throughout the presentation to demonstrate your points.  This is essential and much more powerful and effective than bland bullet points.  Research has shown that if visual prompts are used, then the presenter is more than twice as likely to achieve their aim.  So why are visual aids so important and are they really so much more effective?

Well, it’s all about how we absorb information during a presentation.  A professor called Albert Mehrabian heavily researched exactly how we take in information when watching a presentation.  He found that only 7% of the of the information we take in is text and 55% is visual, leaving 38% of the information absorbed as the words we say.  So in practice, this is very important and useful information when planning our presentation.

1)  Use visuals wherever possible such as graphs and tables, props and pictures.
2)  Remember that when conducting a speech only 38% of the communication method is being used.
3)  Forget the boring bullet points!

It is important to make your presentation memorable. Universities have studied the effects of message retention and found that using visual aids/slides has a dramatic effect on this.  After 3 days they found that students remembered 50% of content where visual aids were used compared to 10% where bullet points were used.  Now, that’s a big difference and one to truly take on board when planning your presentation.  If you use visual aids then you double your chance of achieving your presentation goal.  So if you are trying to impress and stand out from the crowd at a job interview or sales presentation for example, then this point could make a serious positive effect on your finances.  A picture really is worth a thousand words.

For adding key visuals and honing your presentation skills Powerpoint is a great tool to use.  Business Powerpoint presentations are extremely powerful in getting your message across and there are special courses available to hone your Powerpoint presentation skills.  Using a public speaking PPT presentation is also powerful to keep the attention of a large audience.

On to the second essential point which is to rehearse.  Yes, this sounds obvious but it is surprising the amount of people who spend time perfecting their business Powerpoint presentation but forget about the actual delivery.  Rehearsing can make the difference between a good and mediocre presentation.  Rehearse at least 3 times, 4 is better and make sure it is in front of a challenging audience, ie. Your spouse, parents, in-laws and children!  They will be your greatest critics.

And lastly, the rule of three.  In power point presentations, less is more so make sure you plan which message you want your audience to take away with them.  Incredibly, people only usually remember 3 things from a speech or presentation so use lists of 3 whenever possible.  A presentation has a beginning, middle and end, so start off with a good attention grabbing opening and finish with a clear round off, re-establishing what you want people to remember – 3 key things.

Aside from being an abbreviation for Powerpoint, .ppt is also the name for the files and the application’s full name is Microsoft Office Powerpoint.  It runs on Microsoft Windows and Apple’s Mac OS X.

So, in order make the best impact to your audience and to hone your presentation skills PPT is a effective way to do this.