Presentation training for climate change organisations.
As the issue of climate change moves up the agenda for consumers, voters, politicians and business, more and more climate change researchers, campaigners, investment firms are coming to us for presentation training.
They’re asking our presentation writing and delivery experts to help them to talk to investors, new staff, partners, customers, and regulators among other audiences.
In our presentation workshops for climate change organisations, we look at content and then delivery. We help those involved in combatting or managing climate change to define what they want to say and how they’re going to say it. We then move on to give them tips and techniques for better body language and vocal skills. Finally, we help them to make their visual support striking, memorable and relevant to their audiences.
Whether you’re a climate change scientist, an investment firm concerned with climate change or carbon credits and accounting or even if you’re a campaigner on climate change issues here, are five ways to deliver better presentations.
1. Think about the audience
As we say in our presentation training workshops for climate change organisations – it’s not about you, it’s about who you’re talking to. One of the main reasons why any communication fails is that the communicator has not thought of the person at the receiving end of their message. You need to put yourself in their shoes and see the world through their eyes.
Essentially, it’s about answering the question, “What’s in it for me?” What benefit is your audience going to enjoy as a result of giving up their precious time to listen to you? Telling them something that will make them more knowledgeable and effective and will help them to keep ahead of the competition will help.
It’s not just about the messages that you put across, it’s about your language. If you’re talking to other people from the climate change world, then there will be words, phrases and acronyms that your audience will understand. However, if you’re talking to a general audience or one that knows more about finance than Nature Based Solutions (NBS) as a way of combatting climate change, for instance, you’ll have to rethink what you’re saying.
Even if your audience can understand you, you still might not be speaking their language. As we say in our presentation and media training workshops for climate change executives, it’s good to use language that people understand – but it’s better to use language they use.
2. Pay extra attention to your opening or introduction
We’ve all had that experience during a presentation. We pay attention to the very start before we perhaps drift off during the middle and then come back into the room at the end.
As we tell people in our presentation courses for climate change organisations, it’s essential to make sure that your opening is powerful and memorable. In our presentation workshops we focus particularly on the intro, partly because of the effect on the audience. But we also know that delivering a great opening builds your confidence and sets you up to deliver the rest of the presentation well.
One simple bit of advice that we can share with you now is PBS – Pause, Breathe and Smile.
This means that instead of talking straight away, pause. This will enable your audience to take you in visually before they’re supposed to start listening to you. Breathing deeply and slowly will help to build your confidence, while a smile signals that you’re a nice person who is happy to be talking to them. It will also help you to relax as well.
Telling a story can grab the attention of your audience at the start of your presentation. We’ve also worked with presenters from climate change organisations, be they academic, financial or campaigning, to open presentations with short films. Another tip we give to climate change people on presentation courses – and this is especially good if you have the post lunch slot or the final presentation of the day – is to ask your audience a question. You can then come back to the question as the end of your presentation. Getting people to respond and do things will increase the chances of them engaging with you.
3. Focus on the message with a clear call to action.
Part of our presentation training for those working in climate change involves stripping away ideas and honing down the messages that the presenter wants to put across to the audience. The less you say in a presentation the more likely it is that those listening to you will remember it.
In the checklist that we provide during our courses we start with the aim. Why are you doing this presentation? What is the message that you want to get across to your audience? We also include the word “action,” because you need to think about what you want your audience to do as a result of listening to your presentation. We’ve all sat through presentations, some of which have been quite interesting and entertaining, but afterwards we’ve had no idea what we’re supposed to do as a result.
4. Add some stories.
Once you’ve defined and honed down your message, you need to think about how to make it resonate with your audience. The best way to do this is through the use of stories.
According to researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a story is up to twenty-two times more memorable than facts alone. Case studies, examples and even simple anecdotes will all help you to grab and hold your audience’s attention.
Alongside this, research from the University of Liverpool shows that up to two thirds of all of our conversations consist of storytelling. In fact, storytelling is the best way to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise and to show that you’re a great presenter. So many people who have done our presentation courses for climate change experts have told us about how transformational storytelling has been in their presentations.
Psychologists have discovered that storytelling lights up about seven different centres of the brain. This compares to just one or two when we hear facts only. Listening, for instance, fires up the auditory cortex, while the emotional engagement of a story activates the frontal and parietal cortices.
People are, of course, the centre of any good story. Talking about them can release oxytocin, the feel-good hormone as well as bringing a part of the brain called the fusiform into play. References to taste and smells in your story will activate your audience’s limbic system. Very importantly when it comes to ensuring that the people listening to you remembers what you’re telling them, these are the parts of the human brain which are most closely related to memory.
5. Think about the performance element.
In our presentation training for climate change experts, we don’t just look at what to say but also how to say it. Once we’ve helped our course participants to develop their presentation structure, their key messages and their stories, we look at vocal skills and body language.
Our trainers teach the techniques used by actors and television presenters to help participants on our presentation courses for climate change campaigners and others to come across as charismatic and passionate professional speakers. These are people who can connect with their audience and “own the space” as we say, to drive home their key messages.
No average person likes to see themselves on camera – we know that. However, filming and playing back key sections of the presentations delivered by the participants is essential to help them to improve their vocal skills and body language.
We show how to add emphasis and energy as well as varying the tone – what actors call “light and shade.” We look at the different styles and emotions connected with various sections of the presentation and help presenters to act it. This doesn’t mean going for an Oscar, it involves really sounding as if you mean what you’re saying.
The presentation courses for climate change organisations that we offer can be tailor-made for a one-to-one session with a CEO or for larger groups.
Media Training courses for spokespeople in climate change organisations
At Communicate Media, all of our training programmes are created from scratch to meet the exact needs of each client. This means that we can develop a presentation training course that will work for you. Come and talk to us. You can follow us on LinkedIn here.
