By James Leong

It has been said that the difference between an ordinary speaker and a great speaker is a thousand speeches. There’s plenty of truth in this statement. Experience counts. The more times you deliver your presentation, the smoother will be your delivery. But what if you need to present something for the first time, and you must do it well? There is no room for error, and you may not have the opportunity to deliver the presentation in advance to a trial audience and gain valuable experience. Yet you want to come across as confident, fluent and spontaneous, even though it may be your first time. How do you do it?

Well, in the absence of a real world practice environment, you can still prepare yourself thoroughly in the virtual world, using just the power of your imagination. Albert Einstein once said, ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge’. So let’s learn how we can use the same power that have been assessed by all top athletes and performers to boost their performance– the power of visualisation.

To state it simply, visualisation is about using your imagination to conduct a mental rehearsal. There are three levels of visualisation states you can access to prepare and prime your performance. They are the first, second and third person perspectives.

First Person

At its most basic level, you can visualise your presentation from the First Person perspective. What this means is that you see the presentation through your own eyes looking out at your imaginary audience. As you deliver your presentation, you will hear the words and feel the emotions you wish to convey. If you get stuck in delivering a particular idea across, it means that you lack mental clarity. It would be a good idea to revisit your understanding of the material later and rephrase in a way you are comfortable with. In this perspective, you can also practise certain gestures that would have an impact on your presentation.

Second Person

From this perspective, you are seeing your performance through the eyes of the audience. You will be imagining the way you stand, move and talk from the perspective of the audience. This is like watching a video of your performance. You can assess if your message is clear from the point of view of the audience. You will be able to experience how the audience would react to your message, and what questions they would have. This is a very useful exercise to help you anticipate questions from the audience or to pre-empt them by adjusting the flow of your presentation, adding more structure or explaining things in a different way.

Third Person

This is the perspective of an independent and detached observer who is watching the on-going interaction between the speaker and the audience. You are imagining this from an ‘out-of-body’ experience perspective. From here, you will have an overview of how the audience might react to the presentation and the questions they ask. You also observe how the presenter deals with those questions. As you listen to the dialogue between the speaker and the audience, the result is a very dynamic mental rehearsal that will sharpen you and prepare you for the spontaneous flow of conversation that might occur during your actual presentation.

Visualise to Actualise

Mark Twain said, ‘It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech’. If you want to be fluent and spontaneous with your presentation, you would need to rehearse and practise thoroughly. Make use of the power of imagination to prepare for your next important presentation. Visualise the results you desire to actualise. You will be amazed at how much more confident, spontaneous and powerful you become when you go ‘live’ with your actual audience.

About the Author: James Leong C. Foo, Chartered Accountant, is CEO of VisionsOne Consulting Pte Ltd and Adjunct Associate Professor with National University of Singapore. He is also the Year 2000 Toastmasters International Pan South East Asia Humourous speech contest champion. His highly popular workshop, Finance for Non-finance Managers, coaches managers and executives on using financial numbers to drive their business better. James can be reached at jamesleong@visions1.com.sg or

visions1.com.sg

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