Janner on Presentation

Positional Checklist

Better Business Guides.
Janner on Presentation.
Positional Checklist.

• Should you sit or stand? Sitting is more informal and relaxed; standing more dominant. Much depends on the size and position of the audience; whether or not they can see you if seated; and your style.
• If you stand, should you move in front of the table, so as to remove the physical and atmospheric barrier between your audience and yourself? Moving up to the audience, if necessary detaching the microphone and taking it with you, is a highly professional and useful technique creates significant link up with the audience.
• If you are to stand for a protracted period, why not use a bar stool, draughtsman’s chair or other high perch? This is especially useful for those who, like myself, need at least occasional rests for unhappy backs.
• There is no presentational or other reason why you should not work partly standing, partly seated – if this is a possibility, you may need a chair or bar stool or perhaps you can simply perch on the table’s edge.
• If you use visual aids, have you access to them? To trip... fall off the back or the front of the stage... or knock down the easel – is a spectacular, non-recommended, but remarkably common phenomenon.
• Where and what is amplification? Can you make provision in advance for a neck-mike, portable mike (perhaps a radio mike?) or other system which will give you freedom of movement? Otherwise, is your table or standing mike convenient to your preferred position and to your own height?
• Will you require a rostrum, or standing or table lectern for your notes or speech?
• If you sit or perch on the table, test it carefully – preferably beforehand. If it collapses under your weight or rolls away on castors, your presentation and your dignity will disappear at the same catastrophic moment.
• If you sit on a chair, stool or table in front of your audience, keep your legs together or crossed. You are not an advertisement for men’s swimming trunks or women’s underwear
• You should never start your presentation until you have fully come to your feet – or until you have taken complete control of your audience, even if seated. Equally, do not sit down until you have finished talking and have nodded towards or given a slight bow to your audience. Indicate the same competence at the end of your presentation as your self-control showed at its start.
• To relax while seating, try to get a “carver” or chair with arms. Put it at an angle to the table, so that informality comes naturally.
• If your presentation is of any length, move around. You can keep a high stool to one side and a chair at the other; you can perch at the edge of the table removing the physical barrier.
• Never turn your back on your audience. If you have to move across the room, whether to reach a visual aid or to speak to a member of your audience or for whatever reason, keep your body facing your audience, or at least sideways. Even when you are writing on a flip chart, try to work sideways on to your audience.
• Above all: make sure that you stand or sit upright... that you do not hunch forward or flop back into or onto a chair; or slouch, hands in pockets, on your platform.
• Straighten your tie, adjust your dress and brush the dandruff from your shoulders before you are called upon to speak. Once the eyes of your audience are upon you, these gestures are as undignified as the (equally common) scratching of the back, twiddling or clicking of the ball pen or unconscious cleaning of the left ear.


• Get yourself into position – sitting or standing – and then wait until you have control of your audience, before you start speaking. If necessary and appropriate, tap on the table or on the side of a glass, with a coin or pencil. Wait until the chairman calls for and obtains orders. Far too many presenters actually begin their “Ladies and gentlemen” while actually in the process of rising to their feet.
• If you are nervous, write down your first words-even “Ladies and gentlemen” – and always write any names that you may need to quote.
• Be generous with your time in providing initial explanations – especially of jargon or concepts that may be unfamiliar, if only to a few of your audience. If you lose them at the start, your message will be lost forever.
• Open your mouth and pronounce your words. Slovenly enunciation is like careless dress – discourteous and unacceptable.
• Say what you are going to say; say it; then say what you have said. Repetition is especially necessary where you have complicated message to put over or a complex subject to teach.