Dr. Kerstin Brehm

Structure your presentation and make sure you always have your audience in mind. What are they interested in? When preparing your presentation run a few cycles of design thinking to get your messaging clear. Then eliminate every word you don´t need for your message. And I mean every word not needed. Often presentation are too crowded leaving people reading through the slide while you are talking. Make your presentation visually appealing and include pictures in it. Think about the emotion you want to raise in your audience and select the visuals and colours accordingly. And last. Start with a great hook or story to keep your audience engaged.

Thorough preparation is key including actually holding your presentation in front of friends or your teddy bears, if no one else is around 😉, and film yourself. That will be a game changer in improving your public speaking skills. Before you go on stage do at least 5min of power posing, therefore your body language is right from the start and your audience can feel your presence.

Yes, feedback, I mean real feedback is time consuming! It requires a lot of time and effort from a leader to give equal and qualitative feedback to all. BUT, it will pay out in the long run. Not only do your employees know where they stand, but you as a leader can keep track of the team, of their performance and improvements on a regular basis instead of once a year.

You cannot not communicate! That´s probably THE thing to always remember when you are dealing with change. In times of uncertainty people will look to you for guidance, if you are not transparent with them, they will make up their "own" truth and draw consequences from that. I know sometimes you might think: oh, but I don´t know anything either, there is nothing I could tell my team. Wrong! Talk to them, tell them what you know, tell them your perspective, show them a direction and admit to things you just don't know. That´s not a sign of weakness but of strength!

Being precise in your messaging is important in every stage of your career. Yes, practice makes perfection, but even early on the time to be spent in refining and premising a message should be taking up most of your time in preparing your presentation.

Incorporation of storytelling in your public speaking is involving over time. The principles stay the same but it is your experience and your "life" stories that evolve overtime. Building upon them to get your message across. Awake emotions in your audience so that your message gets remembered.