The biggest risk a person takes is usually something that drastically changes their life. The thought that you could fail miserably and be laughed at or put down by your nonsupporters can deter you from taking that significant risk. It’s easier to do what’s comfortable and be in your safe place.
I took a major risk years ago when I decided on a career change. The big hurdle I would have to overcome would be public speaking. Of course, I was intimidated by the thought of speaking in front of people I did not know. The first time I spoke in front of a group of twenty-five people, I wasn’t very loud and the people at the back of the room couldn’t hear me. I was also worried about forgetting my lines.
After presenting for about a month, my throat hurt and I discovered the roof of my mouth had a soft palette that I hadn’t known existed until that point in my life. I thought that I had grown something in my mouth!
Fast forward a decade and I was presenting in front of groups of fifty to two hundred people. My confidence had grown since my early presentation days. Despite having so much experience, I still got nervous the day before a presentation, but I am a lot more confident. The trick is to practice what I’m going to say in my head before the actual presentation. Although I refer to notes, I try to remember what I’m going to say as if I don’t have notes. Then I picture myself speaking to the audience and calm myself down (because I still feel nervous sometimes).
I feel a lot more confident about speaking in front of a large group now than when I started.
One day, I would like to speak at a Ted Talk. This would involve speaking in front of a group of thousands. As confident as I am in speaking, I don’t think I have the time or energy to practice a speech that is eighteen minutes long until the words are flawless. I think I will get tired of repeating the speech many times as I practice it. Also, I’m not sure what topic I would be so passionate about that I would spend months practicing the same words over and over until I know them in my sleep.
So, a big risk that I’d like to take but haven’t been able to is making a speech in front of thousands of people.
Daily writing prompt
What’s the biggest risk you’d like to take — but haven’t been able to?
When I was a little girl, I dreamed of marrying a wealthy business owner, and when I got older, I dreamed of becoming a successful business owner, but teachers and family had other plans for me. Instead, they wanted me to attend university and have a career as a doctor or dentist. Helping people and changing lives appealed to me, but being around sick people or staring at teeth all day did not. So when I finally decided to step out of the box and become an entrepreneur, I discovered all my years of schooling weren’t enough to fulfill my dream.
Employee vs Entrepreneur
School taught me how to be an excellent employee. I went from obeying the teacher to obeying the boss, from taking six classes a day to working set hours. I performed according to expectations and job requirements, and challenged myself to leave my comfort zone when it meant a pay raise or getting fired. Having a job and a career were great — I really enjoyed my writing career after graduating from university. However, it didn’t bring me any closer to fulfilling my dream.
Now that I have my own business, I’ve realized that there are entrepreneurship skills that school doesn’t teach you that are relevant no matter what career you choose for yourself. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs, including Richard Branson and Henry Ford, were not known for having a shining academic performance.
Students who are well behaved, complete their homework, and perform well on tests are praised by their teachers. Students like Branson who struggled with dyslexia, disliked schoolwork, or didn’t fit the “good student” stereotype were told they needed to change. A friend who failed in school (because it didn’t challenge him) now owns two flourishing side businesses.
Perhaps, in addition to the current school curriculum, children should be taught entrepreneurship from an early age. Entrepreneur wannabees would benefit from these skills, but students seeking careers would benefit also.
Leadership and Communication
Two of the most important entrepreneurship skills are leadership and communication. Children who lead by example and communicate effectively are known for their charisma and optimism. Peers are drawn to their ability to make decisions and define objectives, such as making teams and establishing rules for a game. They can convince others why building a sandcastle would be a fun activity.
These leaders will listen to your problems, empathize with you, and offer advice if needed. A popular girl in my third grade embodied these qualities. She always smiled, and when you spoke to her, she listened like you were the only other person in the world.
I have never heard anyone say that they admire their bossy supervisor. But I’ve heard how much people admire leaders who get their hands dirty and treat their coworkers as equals. That’s like the child who makes the extra effort to make the new student feel welcome and encourages classmates to do the same.
An example of how leadership can inspire others is acclaimed speaker and author Adora Svitak. She advocated kids to take action about academic and environmental concerns and has also spoken for causes such as feminism and literacy. Her Ted talk “What Adults Can Learn From Kids” has received more than 4 million views and established her as a prodigy by the age of 12.
The Ability to Sell Yourself
Not everyone likes to sell or become a salesperson, but everyone should learn how to sell to succeed in life. Before the age of 18, children have done various jobs, from opening a lemonade stand to having a paper route, mowing lawns, and babysitting. These jobs teach you about tracking sales and developing your sales skills.
Moziah Bridges was 11 when he started to sell his bow tie creations on Etsy. He learned to sew from his grandmother. He’s made more than $600,000 in sales and continues to grow his business with a seven-figure deal with the NBA to make bow ties for 30 professional basketball teams.
Evan of EvanTube reviews toys and covers topics that interest other kids his age through video recordings. He makes more than one million per year with his band, and he’s not even ten years old.
Having the ability to sell can start at a young age and be just as valuable when you’re an adult. If you can convince someone you have what it takes to do a job, you will ace a job interview. Likewise, by showing someone that you have the personality and qualities that he or she is looking for, you will do well on a first date.
Finding Opportunities
Teaching children about entrepreneurship includes teaching them about weathering financial difficulties. If they need money to buy a new outfit or video game, they will speak with neighbours, friends, and family members to make some cash by shovelling snow, painting a fence, or selling a toy collection they no longer want.
We can also teach children to see opportunities instead of problems. For example, they may be seeing only the problem if they have only $100 in allowance money and the toy they want to buy is $130.
The creator of Nay Games, 14-year old Robert Nay, learned how to code through research at the public library. He programmed “Bubble Ball,” which received more than one million downloads. Nay Games now has games to help students with spelling and physics-based puzzles. Nay saw an opportunity and followed through with it.
Learning Problem Solving
Children who learn entrepreneurship also learn problem-solving. They find solutions to their problems by tackling situations head-on.
In the case of Cory Nieves, a six-year-old boy became a business owner after he decided he was tired of taking the bus to school. He wanted to buy a car because it was too cold outside. He sold hot cocoa and later branched out to selling lemonade and cookies to achieve his dream and save up for college. In 2014, when he was ten years old, he was making sales of a thousand cookies a weekend.
Busy vs Productive
Time management is a valuable skill when you own your own business. You learn to be productive, instead of just busy. Children who are adept at time management are efficient at accomplishing more in less time. Instead of finishing a homework assignment in two hours with plenty of breaks, they can finish in one hour with time for other tasks.
Business mentor and coach Cameron Herold has spoken in favour of having parents and teachers encourage kids to be entrepreneurs. At a Ted Talk in Edmonton, Alberta, he speaks about how he was bored and failing in school because teachers did not identify entrepreneurial traits as worth encouraging.
For example, at the age of seven, he was able to sell coat hangers at a higher price than originally expected, but negotiation was not a skill that he was taught.
Stories of successful kid entrepreneurs echo a similar theme to Herold’s story: they didn’t pay attention in school but became thriving business owners. As young teenagers, they were told to set aside their business ventures until they were older, but they continued to pursue their dream until they reached their goal or surpassed it.
My earliest brush with entrepreneurship was the day we brought belongings we no longer wanted and placed them on our desks at school. We walked around the class and looked for things to barter for using our items. A classmate had a pair of three-inch tall glass boots I liked. I asked her what she wanted from my desk in exchange. Sadly, what she wanted was only worth one boot — she didn’t like the other items I had. To this day, I only have one glass boot in my display case, a reminder of my early attempts at commerce.
Key Takeaways
Encourage children to pursue entrepreneurship. They will have more skills to succeed as adults, whether they choose to have a job or own a business. One lesson that successful kid entrepreneurs have taught us is that we should never limit what we want to accomplish.
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What are presentation skills and what can they do to advance your career? These skills are more than just your ability to speak – they can influence the direction of your career, regardless of what job you have. If your speaking skills need some polishing up, you’ll find plenty of resources online to improve your skills. To narrow your search, I’ve found you three resources that teach some powerful presentation skills that you should not miss.
1 Guide to Improving Presentation Skills
The first resource which I recommend is the “How to Improve Your Presentation Skills” guide. If you’re new to creating presentations, or you’re working on strengthening your presentation skills, you will get a firm overview of the entire process.
The guide describes presentations as a two-part process starting with preparation. In this first stage, you research the audience you will be speaking to. Next, structure your presentation into three parts: the opening, body, and closing. Finally, the last step is practice. There is no shortcutting a polished presentation. You must practice it several times until it flows naturally.
What’s effective is how each stage isn’t just a description of the process. You’ll find words of wisdom from experts such as David Parnell, who wrote a book about the psychology of effective communication. Public speaking coach Lisa Braithwaite advises us to avoid memorizing our speech. Instead, practice in front of people you know or join a local toastmasters club. These tips add value to the article.
One suggestion in the article that is particularly valuable is to videotape yourself. That may cause you even more stress, but this recommendation is one of the best. It allows you to see yourself from your audience’s perspective and find how you can improve on your speaking skills.
The second part of the presentation process is the delivery. I like how the guide sets up this part of the article as well. In point form, it provides succinct and effective tips on keeping your audience engaged, speaking the language of your audience, and avoiding filler words such as “um” and “uh.”
A brief numbered list reminds you of the best body language that will make you look confident when giving a presentation, from sustaining eye contact with your listeners, to hand movements and use of props.
These days, many presentations make use of PowerPoint slides. The guide only briefly highlights some of the differences between a good and a bad PowerPoint presentation.
Answering questions is the final part of a presentation and can be intimidating for those who fear being asked something they cannot answer. The guide briefly covers how to tackle questions from the audience and how to end your presentation in a way that keeps them focused on your key message. For more information, you’ll find a useful list of resources on communication skills at the end of the guide.
My verdict on this article: very handy for summarizing all the key points for making a presentation. The references to communication experts are useful and are a great starting point if you want to do more research on communication psychology and techniques.
My next resource takes a different approach to learning presentation skills.
2 Giving Killer Presentations Ted Talk Style
At first, I wasn’t certain about including this article as a resource for learning how to give presentations because of the focus on story telling. However, story telling is a highly captivating way to deliver your message to your audience.
The article “How to Give a Killer Presentation” begins with a narrative about Richard Turere and how his interest in electronics led to installing a system of lights that deterred lions from attacking a village. It was his compelling story that made him a candidate for giving a TED talk.
Ted talks are speeches, or presentations, about an idea that is worthy of sharing with a wider audience. A range of people from various backgrounds in politics, science, academics, and music have given TED talks.
According to the article, the content of a TED talk can become “mesmerizing” with the right amount of coaching. Developing your presentation is divided into four stages, starting with framing your story. Anyone can tell a story, but if your story isn’t relevant to your audience… you’ll see your talk fail.
This first part is vital to your presentation because you don’t want to fail to capture your audience’s attention. The article compares a good talk to a detective story. To frame your story well, there must be purpose and there must be a progression. I like how the article provides examples of good and bad framing using the personal experience of the author.
The second part of the presentation is the delivery. With the level of technology we have today, it’s possible to read your entire speech off a teleprompter, but the experts recommend memorizing your talk word for word.
It will take time to remember each word, and of course, you don’t want to stare off into space mid speech when you forget your lines either. The article assures you that yes, some scary situations may happen, but if you practice a lot, your speech will become natural to you.
The next point the article teaches you is how to develop a stage presence. Making eye contact, keeping your body movements minimal and purposeful, and learning to deal with your nervousness are vital to developing a stage presence.
Next, plan your multimedia. Surprisingly, the article suggests that PowerPoints are not necessary, although some presenters use them. Instead, the author recommends using video clips and slide images. This way, you won’t be tempted to read off of bullet points.
Finally, the author says preparation from months in advance is key to a successful TED talks presentation. It is clear that a stellar presentation requires a lot of effort, but the reward will be a tremendous sense of achievement when your talk goes as anticipated.
One of the best elements of this article are the video clips of TED talks from actual TED talk presenters. Checking out some, or even all of these videos, is highly recommended.
The final article in this collection takes the approach of learning presentation skills as a skill that can move your career forward.
3. Developing Presentation Skills for Workplace Success
“Important Presentation Skills for Workplace Success” teaches presentation skills as an important part of your success at work. Each section lists all of the skills that you will develop at each stage of working on your presentation. You can use these lists as a checklist for your own professional development.
To start, the article defines what presentation skills are and why they are a job requirement. Then it breaks down the phases of a presentation: preparation, delivery, and follow up. Much of the content is typical for any article on presentations. However, I like the focus on skill sets. Conducting research, using body language, and creating digital slides are all considered as skills.
Next, you learn about the types of presentations, such as analytical thinking and organization. You’re not just giving your audience a bunch of content. You evaluate and restructure it first. And when organizing your presentation, you need to prioritize and schedule activities such as your practice sessions.
Nonverbal and verbal communication are equally important when developing your presentation skills. Nonverbal communication involves using effective body language. Verbal communication includes public speaking, a skill that evokes nightmares for many people.
Those who can deliver a speech to a group of strangers definitely have an advantage over those who are more comfortable speaking one-on-one. Also, the ability to handle difficult questions from a large audience is also a strong skill to master.
The biggest surprise in this article was a list of additional skills that you don’t usually associate with giving presentations. For instance, writing skills, coaching, and sales. As a follow up, I would read more about how these skills relate to giving presentations.
In general, having all these presentation-related skills in a list format makes it easy to review all the items at a glance and include the most relevant skills in your resume.
Summary
Effective presentation skills will give you an advantage at the workplace. You’ll feel more confident presenting at meetings, giving talks at conferences, or giving elevator pitches at networking events. These three resources for learning presentation skills take different approaches on teaching you presentation skills. But they are all worth a quick read if you’re looking to brush up on your speaking skills.
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