Creating a presentation can feel daunting. How do you start? What do you include? Why is it important?  

I’ve been in this business a long time. I know you can choose from several formats to develop your presentation. So I asked myself, what could I share that would give you something new, and easy to recall and follow? Here’s what I came up with: 

Use your body as the template for your speech! It’s the best-kept secret! Aha!

Here’s how that goes:

  1. Start with your head. Your mental capabilities. What idea do you want your audience to walk away with? What’s important about that idea? What is the data or research you need to include? Get clear about this from your point of view, and from what you understand to be the needs and desires of your audience.
  2. Move to your heart. How do you want your audience to feel? Curious? Elated? Tender? What would help them feel that? Stories. Well-developed stories in which you share the point you’d like to make with all the details of a specific experience to engage their emotions. This helps them remember your point and empathize with your character. 
  3. Bring in your arms. Wrap yourself and your audience in a big hug! Maybe not physically, although you could ask them to give themselves a hug as you give yourself a hug. The thing is, ignite that oxytocin – that love chemical – that also could ignite deeper emotional experience.
  4. Move to your gut. What is the aha moment you want them to experience? Use techniques to support your audience to connect with that learning – an activity where they too can experience it. 
  5. Move to a closed-eyes whole-body scan. What are they feeling now, in their body? What sensations – touch, taste, hear, smell, see? 
  6. Move to your legs and feet. What is their first step? What is the action they need to take to activate their learning?
  7. Close your presentation by coming full circle and anchoring your idea. Inspire your audience with a story or powerful quote to drive it home!

The next time you need to prepare a presentation, consider how this body template can support you and let me know!