Cathy Liska Many coaches make presentations or give workshops regularly. Both are fantastic tools for staying current, connection with people, and demonstrating expertise. When expanding your business or coaching practice, grab the attention of your audience from the moment you begin until the last person leaves. Inspire and motivate easily and naturally with these 8 tips!
1. Start with an attention getter.
* How many times have you heard the opener “Welcome… the bathrooms are… the coffee is… the speaker has done blah blah blah…” Did it work for you? If the opening is standardized, chances are your audience knows it already and they are not interested. Think about getting on an airplane. Do you really need to learn how to buckle your seatbelt and therefore pay rapt attention?
* Given that housekeeping is easily handled before you start, and that in reality very few people care about housekeeping or even your background at this point, now is the time to shine! Start with a quote, a statistic, an example, or a story that ties to your content, connects with your audience, puts you on their level, and demonstrates your expertise.
What startling fact, inspirational quote, example or story will grab your audiences’ attention immediately? Use something that highlights the content of your presentation while demonstrating your own expertise. Connect with your audience immediately by relating to who they are and relating personally.
2. Poke fun at yourself.
* When watching others, how much patience do you have for the people that hold themselves out to be perfect, the end all be all, answer for every problem everyone ever had? Do you enjoy connecting with self-promoters?
* When the audience knows you are human just like them, they want you to succeed! Your audience is on your side at the beginning so keep them there by demonstrating your humanness. Self-deprecating humor is politically correct and sharing your mistakes followed by a solution both makes you real, it demonstrates expertise.
Chances are you are just like me and have made more mistakes than you can remember (welcome to the human race.) Share the mistakes, share you wrong ideas or approaches, and then move to what you learned and how that applies. Coaching expertise is, in part, based on how we learn from experience.
In the next post, we will look at more tips. For now, start considering stories or examples, researching facts or quotes, and listing your own mistakes that provide learning points.
Share one here in a comment now!
