SPEAK UP: Focus Power

Putting more Power Play Purpose into your life-work balance

The focus topic is crucial for effective public speaking when preparing and delivering presentations. When working with clients and TEDx speakers, emphasizing the importance of preparation and practice provides the most desired outcomes.

The importance of focus for a speaker addresses their ability to prepare, practice, and deliver their message. Focus is crucial for all of us in business to accomplish our tasks.

The lack of focus can lead to a disjointed presentation, fogs the ability to edit the content for clarity, and reduces audience engagement. 

There are three common challenges that speakers face:

• Nervousness and anxiety: These two emotions are the most common, but we can work with these and not allow them to become distracted by them.

• Distractions: This can be caused by covering too much information or the audience's lack of engagement. External distractions by the audience's perceived or honest reactions can break the speaker's concentration. Especially the technological hick-ups that happen before the presentation begins.

• Information overload:  As speakers, you must deliver the information vital to the audience with clarity and confidence. With focus, we learn to inform the audience but not overwhelm them. In speaking, we must allow the audience to absorb the content.

With these key points in mind, here are three suggested tips for the speaker to stay focused.

1. Preparation & practice:  the power of these two builds and solidifies confidence and makes you less likely to be thrown off point, should you miss the point or forget a line.  Practice creates a kind of familiarity with the contents, which helps to reduce anxiety.

1. Mindfulness techniques: techniques such as deep breathing, meditation, or visualization have been well-researched, and such practices help the speaker become more centered before, during, and after their presentations.

1. Clear structure points:  having a clear structure and focusing on key points can help speakers stay on track.  Using bullet points or cue cards, along with visual pictures in our presentations vs wordy content, serves as quick reminders of the main topic.

If you want to level up your speaking or presentation skills or plan for a TEDx speech, let's have a 'get-acquainted chat.' janetjanssen.com