I would give serious consideration to taking an Improv Comedy class. If you can't, I'd like to share the concept of "Yes, and--"
Invariably something will go wrong during one of your presentations.
A slide will look funny.
There will be a weird noise from outside.
An audience member will say something strange.
The idea behind "Yes,and-ing" in improv is basically you treat every single thing as if it were planned and part of what you were doing, rather than negating it or ignoring it, which is dishonest and creates a disconnect.
I've given three presentations in my life (all this year) and each time something went wrong I ran with it and the audience responded very positively. My slide about "Internal Leaks" was missing the first two letters. Second time public speaking. Crap.
Instead of negating ("Oh this was supposed to say Internal"), I Yes-And'ed.
"Up next, a very important problem, Ternal Leaks." And I then verbally chopped off the first two letters of the next slides (verbally), my name, my company name, and closed with "Anks, I hope you enjoyed it."
(Yes, it's a little corny, but it breaks the wall between audience and speaker. I find, in life, if you make someone really laugh, even if it's just once, everything else works out.)
Invariably something will go wrong during one of your presentations.
A slide will look funny. There will be a weird noise from outside. An audience member will say something strange.
The idea behind "Yes,and-ing" in improv is basically you treat every single thing as if it were planned and part of what you were doing, rather than negating it or ignoring it, which is dishonest and creates a disconnect.
I've given three presentations in my life (all this year) and each time something went wrong I ran with it and the audience responded very positively. My slide about "Internal Leaks" was missing the first two letters. Second time public speaking. Crap.
Instead of negating ("Oh this was supposed to say Internal"), I Yes-And'ed.
"Up next, a very important problem, Ternal Leaks." And I then verbally chopped off the first two letters of the next slides (verbally), my name, my company name, and closed with "Anks, I hope you enjoyed it."
(Yes, it's a little corny, but it breaks the wall between audience and speaker. I find, in life, if you make someone really laugh, even if it's just once, everything else works out.)