How natural is your presentation style? So often it seems that presenters leave their personalities behind as soon as they set foot on stage.  It’s not clear where people got the idea that a presentation should be done without any personality or enjoyment, but it has resulted in many boring and ineffective presentations.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to be yourself. Rather than getting in front of the group and reciting your memorized script (or worse, reading it), just be yourself.  When you are being yourself, you come across far more confident – a big contributor to ensuring audience engagement – and the key to a successful presentation.

If you are naturally energetic and outgoing, yet get up on stage and become timid, apologetic, or even robotic, the audience will become uncomfortable – and an uncomfortable crowd focuses on the wrong things. Real audience engagement is then lost.

If, on the other hand, you’re normally more reserved and quiet, you can still give an excellent presentation.  Being yourself means drawing upon your strongest personality traits and incorporating them into the presentation. When you are particularly passionate about a topic, you tend to display more energy, more leadership, and more confidence.  By working within your natural personality, you’ll be able to give a great presentation.

Giving presentations is not easy for everyone, but it is something anyone can learn to do and improve upon.  Just keep in mind that the presentation is not about you, but about your audience. You’re just the messenger. So be the best messenger you can be.