TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

8 Sept 2016 · 2 min

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1:59

Short live-stream segment in which TJ Walker gives pragmatic presentation advice: when you begin a PowerPoint talk, start with the screen blank (press B) and speak for about a minute before showing the first slide to establish authority, confidence, and credibility with the audience. The segment contrasts this approach with speakers who immediately read slides and appear unprofessional.

Chapters

Here's the situation. You may only have 10 minutes for your PowerPoint presentation. You may have a hundred slides. That's okay. Here's my recommendation. When you stand up to speak, do not have any slides showing. Use the technique that I talked about in an earlier episode where you hit the letter B, it blacks out the screen. Why do I say this? DJ don't you have to have the topic and your title and your name? No, you don't. I say this because when you stand up to speak, you want people looking at you. You want to establish your legitimacy, your authority. You're not there as the assistant to the slides. You're not a generic reader who was hired off the streets. You are the expert. That's why you've been asked to speak. Establish your authority. Establish your confidence. By just standing up, pausing for a second or two, and speak for a minute before you ever bring up the first slide. You will establish so much more credibility with the audience. How many times have we seen a speaker sort of amble up hunched over their slides, and they start talking, not even looking at the audience, like, oh, as you can see, today I'll be talking about blah, blah, blah. And they're reading from the slide already. Makes them look horrible, unprofessional, scared, nervous, timid, and not like a real professional, not a true executive. So find to use slides. Find to use a lot of slides. Speak for the first minute without a single slide showing, and the respect the audience will have for you will go way up.