Skip to main content

Do's and Don'ts of Presenting

Presenting in front of any number of people is something I find extremely intimidating and very anxiety provoking. I do just about everything I can to avoid talking to more than 4 people at a time. My senior year of college I took an online public speaking class to avoid speaking in public to a random group of people. As a result, I continue to struggle with presenting and unfortunately, online public speaking isn't an option in grad school.

One of the topics we cover in our Leadership II class is how to best present yourself during speeches, projects or interviews. A resource we were given was titled "6 Ways to Look More Confident During a Presentation". I was intrigued. As I read the article my eyes were opened to just how much your body language impacts what you say. The article talks about how a group of people skilled in reading body language went to a tech entrepreneur competition and watched contestants body language and how it correlated to the scores they received from the judges. After watching the contestants they predicted who the winners would be and were spot on with their projections. It goes on to talk about how body language impacted the Presidential Debates of 2012 and how the candidates helped and hindered themselves. It then goes on to talk about ways to make yourself look more confident while presenting.

The article gave picture examples and the logic behind the 6 ways they thought would help boost your confidence while speaking. The first is "the box". For this simply keep all your hand gestures in an imaginary box in front of your chest while speaking. This helps you to seem more trustworthy and truthful. Another is called "holding the ball". While talking you pretend that you are holding a basketball in your hands and it helps you to appear more commanding and dominant. "Pyramid hands" helps you appear self-assured and relaxed. The article goes on to talk about the importance of a "wide stance" and how holding your palms up or palms down can help you during a presentation.

After reading the article I thought back to previous presentations, seminars, or speeches I have attended and every single one that came to mind, at least one if not more, of the 6 "tips" were used by the presenters. Who knew that something so simple as how you stand or how you talk with your hands could help you ace that presentation or interview. While I still have a fear of presenting, at least now I can stand confidently and finally have something to do with my hands besides fidget!






Here is the link to the article I used above:

https://hbr.org/2017/04/6-ways-to-look-more-confident-during-a-presentation

Comments

  1. I agree - so interesting! I love that you went back to see for yourself if what the article said was true :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is the OTPF?

The OTPF stands for Occupational Therapy Practice Framework. It is composed of ideas, concepts, and philosophies that guide OT. It addresses domain of OT, the OT process, occupations, and client factors. The domain of OT is the areas in which OT's have a great wealth of knowledge and expertise.  This is what defines the focus of OT. Client factors, performance skills, performance patterns, context, environment, and activity demand are all under the domain of OT practice. Each part of the domain brings a different part of occupational therapy to the table.  The OT process is the actions that a practitioner takes when providing services that are client-centered and focused on engagement in occupation. This is what defines the delivery of OT. Throughout the process, occupation remains central. There is also collaboration with the client throughout the process.  Occupations are ordinary, part of daily living, and are often taken for granted. They can be special when the...

Foundations Project

Nutrition & OT

Today in class we had a guest lecturer who spoke to us about nutrition and how OT's can be more involved. Nutrition is something that my OT's don't think about. Eating and feeding are within our scope of practice, but anything else to do with calorie consumption falls under the scope of a dietician. Essentially what we learned today was that when patients are in the hospital they are not getting enough calories/nutrients and so healing takes longer. This impacts therapy because without proper nutrition, patients are unable to do what we ask of them and do not make progress towards their goals. There are several ways that an OT can provide a nutrition intervention for their client. Prior to starting OT school, I observed a feeding session at a pediatric outpatient facility. Kids blew bubbles to prepare to eat and then rolled the dice to see how many times they had to lick/smell a food and then rolled the dice again to see how many bites of a certain food they had to take b...