Reflection Shorts - "Win that Communication" - episode #9

Reading from notes and delivering your speech made easy

I always wondered how people maintain eye contact with their audience when presenting quality content from their notes..

I mean, when they have to look at their presentation slides or notes to see what to say, and then actually speak about that... how do they manage to not roll their eyes back and forth, making them look weird and unprepared?

Well, the reality is that good presenters do roll their eyes, but they do it so gracefully that you don’t notice it. They make it so effortless for the audience to receive the information that the audience doesn’t get distracted by their momentary eye-rolling.

The framework they use is:

1. Take a ‘short’ pause that doesn’t end up being awkward.

2. Look at your notes, read next ‘Spot’ word, and bring out the context in your mind.

3. Choose one person from the audience and make eye contact with them.

4. Now that you know what to say using a hint from the notes, speak with confidence.

In short, “see it, save it, say it”.

In practice, follow this process:

1. Embrace the silence: While delivering presentations, a momentary silence between sentences or topics works wonders. Optionally, you can use filler words like “Ummm,” “Ya know...”. It gives the audience an opportunity to digest what you just conveyed. It also helps you maintain your composure and keep a mature posture while you read and prepare your next point.

2. Refer to your notes: To keep the silence short and get the best out of your notes, you need to make sure your notes aren’t full sentences. Rather, they should be bullet points centered on a page, divided among 4-5 key ideas or themes. Each bullet point should have a key word, also called an ‘anchor’ or ‘spot’ word. The idea is that you know your content well, and the notes are just providing you with a hint of what to say. Using this layout, you can refer to the next point within a second or two.

3. Demonstrate using eyes and hands: Now that you are ready to speak, bring your attention back to the audience, choose one person to maintain eye contact with, and start speaking. While you do so, also use hand gestures to help visualize your content. It’s important because no matter how fascinating your content is, people’s minds are often busy with other things, and all these tactics will help you bring their attention back to your presentation.

That’s it for today. If you are wondering “What’s a Reflection Short?” Read here.

References

• Simply Said: Communicating Better at Work and Beyond

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