Quora Answer: As a Speaker, How Do You Make Your Presentation Appear Effortless?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “As a speaker, how do you make your presentation appear effortless?” 

Every great speech and presentation that looks effortless means a lot of effort was put into it.  True mastery of anything, including rhetoric, involves work and practice, over and over again.  A great presentation involves good material.  That means you need to write a good speech to go along with it.  The presentation is an enhancement; it is not the star of the show and the focus of attention.  A good speech needs to have a reason built around a clear call to action.  It needs to begin with an opening statement that seizes the audience attention.  This could be stating the contention and the problem, which is the raison d’etre for the presentation.  This is the material from which you build your presentation. 

The purpose of the presentation is to illustrate specific points, such as data, and the context.  A presentation slide should not have blocks of text, and the presenter is not supposed to simply read text from a screen.  If that were the case, you may as well just give them the report and save everyone the time.  When doing up the slides, consider the time given for your presentation.  In general, depending on your style, it should take between 30 seconds to two minutes per slide.  This control of slides means you do not exceed the time. 

Now that you have your speech and your slide, you practice on your delivery.  You need to know your material so even if there is a slide failure, you can still deliver your material.  You should be a slave to your presentation.  You need to work on vocal variety, and eliminate filler words.  This is easily done by slowing down your delivery so that your brain has time to catch up with your tongue.  You also need to embrace the uncomfortable pauses.  What I mean is that when you state a major point, make a joke, or ask a question, look at the audience, and give them time to respond.  If there is silence, wait a few seconds more, and do not be afraid to call people.  You can do this when you recognise that you control the stage.  This is your presentation, and you are the master of that universe for the duration of your presentation. 

When practicing your delivery, pay attention to your body posture.  Practice power postures to emphasise authority or open postures to emphasise empathy and relatedness.  How you say things is as important as what you say.  When reviewing your material and delivery, consider what they hear, not what you say.  This allows you to tweak your presentation. 

Finally, you may think you have a fear of public speaking.  What you actually have a fear or embarrassment or ridicule because you might make a mistake.  The best way to overcome this is to prepare well, and practice until you know your material well.  Preparedness alleviates much of the fear of embarrassing yourself.  Practice and experience alleviates the rest.  As you get better, it looks effortless.