Imagine this is what will happen to you the next day. You are going to give a presentation to a group of people whom you have not met before. The presentation topic is something you are familiar with because this is not the first time you present this topic. As a result, you believe that you can do a good job to deliver this topic smoothly to your participants. On the day of your presentation, unexpected events happened. You have unconsciously used a wrong phrase to explain a concept and you participants spotted your mistake. You have just discovered a typographical error on one of your slides. You were challenged by one of your participants who disagreed with a point you made in your presentation. How would you react to these unexpected events?

Here is the truth. In all presentations, always expect the unexpected. If you were hesitant, your confidence level would go down immediately and this could affect the flow of your presentation. The question is what you could have done to maintain your confidence level notwithstanding these unexpected events. In this article, I am going to share with you 4 tips that could help you to exhibit your confidence when giving a presentation.

Dress appropriately

As a speaker and trainer, I do presentation on different topics, for example, tax training and personal development training. I have my own dress code for different types of training.

In my tax training, most participants will be working professionals. Hence, I will put on my business suit to make me look professional. This is always my way of building rapport with this group of participants and raising my credibility.

When it comes to my personal development training, I will dress differently. The reason is that my participants can come from all walks of life and it does not make sense to wear business suit. Instead, I tend to wear black shirt because studies have shown that black colour signals power and authority. Whenever I am in black, I feel strong and unstoppable, and this helps to boost my confidence level and prepare for the unexpected events during my presentation.

State clearly your purpose

Have you come across with speakers who are experts in their relevant fields but do not look confident when giving presentation? Based on my own research, I discovered a secret. That is, they do not have a clear purpose of giving the presentation. There is a saying that “the bigger the why, the easier the how”. What this means is that we must know why we are giving the presentation before doing it.

Here is what I do for my presentation. I will write down my purpose of giving that presentation. I will put myself into the shoes of the participants and ask this question – “Why should I listen to you?” Very often, what I have written down becomes part of the introduction of my presentation and this is another powerful technique of building rapport with my participants and maintaining my confidence level.

Learn to say “Yes”

I am not sure if you notice that we are surrounded by a lot of negative people and negative thoughts. I was told before that for each positive statement we made, there would be 14 negative statements before and after that. In my presentation, I do my best not to allow any negativity to be present because I know that it will affect my confidence level.

Here is what I do in my training. I encourage my participants to say “Yes” with me whenever opportunity arises. When saying “yes’, say with conviction and make sure that all the people in the training room can feel the positive energy. Positive energy in my view is clearly a booster of my confidence level.

Put on our listening ear

Here is my final tip – to put on our listening ear. As mentioned above, one of the unexpected events is that my participants do not agree with what I said in my presentation. Even though I feel strongly that I am right, I will remain silent and let my participants finish their point. I will listen carefully to what they say and handle the objection tactfully based on my business training. Sometimes it may be useful to handle such objection offline because the longer it drags on, the more negative energy will be built in the training room, resulting in a drop of my confidence level.

I hope you enjoy my sharing. Use these tips if they make sense to you and share with me your success stories in my website. I would love to hear from you.