Visualise Your Next Successful Presentation

If I told you that the secret to making your next presentation a success was to visualise it in advance, no doubt some of you would be wondering if I’d swapped a suit for a string of beads and a headband…

After all, visualisation and manifestation are often bundled up together with gamma waves, heightened perception and the third eye in the kind of new age language which is incompatible with the corporate seminar room or the conference stage. Nevertheless, stay with me!

Far from the stone circle, visualisation indeed has its place in the Magic Circle and has been shown to be highly promising in raising personal performances.

If I asked you to visualise a successful presentation, what would that look like? Perhaps the image of the kind of standing ovation given to Stalin in 1937 (11 minutes), followed by the granting of an immediate partnership in the firm and a month’s holiday on Necker Island.

Yes, most of us would fast forward to the finish, but that’s not the way to best harness the power of visualisation. It’s not the victorious end result, but the process that gets you to that end zone that is the technique popularly used by sports psychologists. It is the method which was credited with slaying the demons which had hampered England’s progress in major football tournaments.

As anyone who has spoken in public knows, it’s rarely getting enough material together which is the obstacle to a successful presentation, and anyone can just go out there and read the lines. No, it is owning the mental space and delivering a great presentation. It’s about having the confidence to go out there and be dynamic – while at the same time being yourself (genuine) – and having the presence and calmness to remember to practice all the stuff you should be doing, like controlling rhythm, tempo and pace.

Therefore instead of picturing the end result, psychologists recommend visualising ‘the process’. If fear is an emotion that you associate with presentations, then using visualisation is an extremely useful tool for placing yourself ‘in the room’ before a speaking occasion, so that when you actually arrive at the place you are mentally prepared.

So what does that look like? Visualisation – also referred to as imagery – is essentially a dress rehearsal for the mind. While the visual aspect is clearly important (as the name suggests), it goes beyond seeing yourself on stage or in the hot seat. There is also a significant kinaesthetic element to visualisation whereby you are acknowledging how your body moves, how it feels and how your other sense are engaged feels. How will your body react to scrutiny or challenge or even indifference in that room?

To use the example of pre-presentation fear, then by visualising the experience in advance helps you to mentally adapt to, be prepared for and be in a better place to overcome anxiety points. This could be how you engage with your audience using eye contact, how you position yourself and use your own body language or how you overcome any sense of being an impostor.

Used in tandem with practice and rehearsal (which I always recommend), using visualisation techniques also provide focus. It is a method which will ooze through your subconscious in the preparation period and you will be surprised by how much it will carry you on the big day.

There are speakers out there who bounce around from gig to gig and audience to audience and seem to be able to present without a care in the world. This is because over time, and with practice, the act of presentation becomes something else. This is a result of numerous factors – knowing your subject, developing a style, being confident because you know your material works. The thing about public speaking is that the more you do it, the less worrisome they become, even though many of those confident souls will still admit to a sense of anxiety before stepping on to the stage.

 

There is an old German proverb that says ‘fear makes the wolf bigger than he is’. Using visualisation techniques may not have you skipping skip into the next presentation like Little Red Riding Hood, but it will help you fight the urge to do anything to run in the opposite direction!