19Giving a Presentation

“There is no such thing on earth as an
uninteresting subject; the only thing that
can exist is an uninterested person.”

— G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936)

PRESENTING YOURSELF

More and more, students are required to give short presentations either to their fellow pupils or to their lecturer. Occasionally they may be one of a team of presenters, each making his or her own specialised contribution to an overall subject for discussion.

For may of us, speaking in public can be a daunting, if not harrowing, experience. Our fears usually centre on the following issues:

•Vulnerability

Many students hate the thought of being the focus of attention or being “put on the spot” lest, by saying the wrong things, they lay themselves open to criticism and ridicule.

•Memory loss

The nightmare scenario is a long, pregnant silence as you fall into a chasm of amnesia, exacerbated by the intense, quizzical glare of your expectant audience.

•Fear of failure

Any images of failure you harbour in the lead-up to the presentation can give rise to stress, stage fright, nervousness and anxiety, worsening any lack of confidence.

Take comfort, at least, from the fact that all the best speakers have at some point shared these fears and anxieties. Multimillionaire film director Steven Spielberg says that, next to insects, his greatest fear is speaking in public. Once, during a conference he was giving to students of American law, he suddenly forgot how to speak English, his mother tongue! So he tried to think in French. The experience, which lasted a minute or two, was, he says, terrifying. The panic that gripped him literally rendered him speechless.

There is no such thing as a natural speaker. So-called “natural speakers” only appear so because they have worked hard at their trade and have learnt from their mistakes over a period of time. If you are inexperienced at speaking, just remember that not only will the audience be on your side, but they too will have to give presentations; so they will be sharing the same anxieties and will appreciate the difficulties that you’re up against.

In the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. The aim of this chapter is not only to help you deliver a speech entirely from memory, but also to help dispel any of those fears of the unknown and replace them with confidence-building, positive thoughts. Giving a speech can and should, believe it or not, be an enjoyable, fulfilling experience.

PLANNING YOUR PRESENTATION

One of the best ways to prepare your presentation is by first drawing out all your ideas in the form of a Mind Map, as described in detail in chapter three. Get all your thoughts out in the open initially by chucking them down on a single sheet of paper. Identify the core idea of your speech and place it in the centre of the paper in the form of a symbolic image. If I were planning a speech on memory, for example, my central image would be an elephant. I would then allow a quick release of associated thoughts and ideas to flood out and emanate from this image without worrying about priority, sequence or sentence structure at this stage. The branches would include “mnemonics”, “number systems”, “demonstrations”, “history of”, and so on.

By laying out a speech in this fashion you are providing yourself with an effective overview of the subject, which helps you to clearly identify the key areas and points that are worthy of discussion.

Apart from your own thoughts, ideas and knowledge on the topic, more information can be added to your Mind Map from other sources, such as books, interviews or videos. It’s important to gather as much information as you can before imposing an order on your presentation. If you commit yourself to a specific order straight away, you run the danger of continually backtracking, which will prolong the planning of your speech unnecessarily and may result in an imbalance of contents.

Let’s suppose you are part of a small group of four students, each of whom is giving a talk on the success of women in art. You have chosen artist Angelica Kauffmann as the subject of your speech, which you are expected to deliver as interestingly and effectively as possible.

The following is a brief account of the artist’s life. As a useful exercise, prepare a short talk from this by creating your own Mind Map. Lift the salient facts from the text and place them as key words and symbols along the various branches that spread out from the central image.

Angelica Kauffmann

Angelica Kauffmann was born to a Catholic family in Switzerland in 1741. She was a prolific artist eagerly sought after for her portrait-painting by a large international clientele. Her father, Johann Joseph Kauffmann, a painter in his own right, was a great source of encouragement and taught her the basic techniques of drawing and painting. A precocious child, she became an accomplished artist by the age of thirteen and showed skills in music too, then a more normal pursuit for young women.

After her mother died, Kauffmann turned professional at the age of sixteen and travelled with her father to Florence, an important centre for the study of painting and sculpture. One of her many successes was, at the age of twenty, to be made a member of the Academy of Design in Florence – a rare achievement for a woman in those days.

In 1763 she moved to Italy, where the ruins of ancient Rome provided a bountiful source of architectural and sculptural models, which she studied keenly. Although she became very famous in Italy, she did not find much work in the form of commissions from Italians and they did not pay very well. She was, however, popular with British visitors, which influenced her decision to move to London in 1766. Her fluent English soon helped her to establish herself through many of her aristocratic contacts. Two years later she was one of only two women to become a founder member of the Royal Academy of Art. She also helped to establish a school of history painting in England.

Kauffmann’s success was accelerated and assured by her large portrait of the Duchess of Brunswick, which was very well received. She wrote to her father saying how excited she was about the subsequent visit by the Princess of Wales (the Duchess’s mother) to her studio, an honour that no other artist had ever received.

Sir Joshua Reynolds became a close friend of hers and helped to establish her reputation. In the eighteenth century, women were usually restricted to still-life painting and were not allowed to attend life classes at the Royal Academy that involved nude male models. However, Kauffmann’s time in Italy had already equipped her with a wide knowledge of ancient sculpture and understanding of human anatomy. This was to influence her paintings, which portrayed mythological gods and goddesses. Her style can be described as Neoclassical, with portraits of female sitters among her finest works.

Kauffmann became one of the most successful women artists, both critically and financially, in the history of art – an exceptional achievement for a woman living in the eighteenth century.

She retired to Rome in the 1780s with her husband Antonio Zucchi, and died there in 1807.

When you have completed your Mind Map, compare it with mine (on page 34) to see if there are any similarities. Although the written account contains some 450 words, most of the information on the Map can be read and understood at a glance. The written representation, besides being rather repetitive and looking unappetising and somewhat intimidating, leaves you with no feel for the relative importance of the facts of Kauffmann’s life. The Mind Map, on the other hand, has made the whole thing more palatable by providing you with an instant overview, showing you that there really wasn’t that much to take in and learn after all. Notice, too, how all the facts have been efficiently sorted and connected to four main branches or groups, allowing you to reel off the various biographical details without having to search through numerous lines of text.

Organising the running order

Once you have collated all the information and can “see” the extent of your speech, you are ready to apply some form of order to it. All you have to do is to number the key words as you run through the speech in your head. I suggest you pencil in the numbers initially in case you decide to change the running order or add more information later on.

You may wish to kick off your presentation by saying, “Angelica Kauffmann was one of the most important women in the history of art. Her most notable successes were … She was born in Switzerland in 1741 …”. You would remember this opener by putting the number 1 next to the branch word “success”, and the number 2 by the key word “born”, and so on. The Map can be used as a sort of script for the entire speech, with the key words providing mental triggers and the numbers guiding you through the order of your points.

Remember that a good speech has a beginning, middle and end. The Mind Map will provide the body of the presentation, but it’s worthwhile spending time to prepare separately a colourful introduction and conclusion. Afterwards it’s usual to invite questions from the audience.

Try practising your speech by talking to an imaginary audience and, if you can bear to, make a recording of your own voice so that you can judge the delivery for yourself. The more you become accustomed to the sound of your own voice over several dummy runs, the easier and smoother it will be on the day.

Don’t try to memorise your speech word for word – you’ll alienate your audience or even send them off to sleep. It is the spontaneity of your own thoughts and interpretations that people want to hear, and the key words will keep you on track.

Look, no notes!

Being a memory man, I am expected to give talks entirely from memory without the luxury of even a Mind Map. But achieving this is a lot easier than people think. If you are at the stage where all your key points are numbered, you are only one step away from total recall. All you do is translate the key points of your speech into associative key images and place these at various stages along a familiar route, using the journey method.

In chapter ten, I showed you how to memorise a Shakespeare soliloquy by reducing each line to one or more key images, and then depositing them at significant stages along a favourite walk or at various points on a golf course. The principle for memorising a presentation works in the same way, except, if anything, it’s a lot easier: you won’t have the added pressure of having to remember your lines word for word. You are, after all, supposed to be giving your own account, not somebody else’s.

If you find the prospect of having to give a presentation a bit depressing, cheer yourself up by choosing a location which you associate with happy memories as your backdrop – a favourite holiday spot, such as a seaside resort, for instance. Once you have decided on a suitable location, start weaving your way mentally around the various houses, restaurants, beach huts, and cliff tops, counting off a number of stops along the way. The number of stages on your journey will depend on the number of key points you require to deliver the whole speech. This can vary according to the type of material and amount of detail contained in your speech, as well as your knowledge of the subject matter. To give you an idea, I would normally require a route consisting of about fifty stages to deliver a one-hour talk.

Now let’s run through the first few lines of the account of Angelica Kauffmann using a holiday location in Rock, north Cornwall. Remember, these are my images and my associations, and they took very little time to generate, as will your own. For me to describe the images in words and ask you to visualise what I’m expressing takes a little longer, so don’t be put off by what appears to be a long-winded process. In fact, the method is quite quick.

After briefly introducing myself and the subject of my talk, this is how I would remember the facts in order:

•Stage I:

Angelica Kauffmann was born to a Catholic family in Switzerland in 1741.

The first stage of my journey is the grave of the late English poet Sir John Betjeman. I said you should choose a place that evokes happy memories, and this one does for me. This is a beautiful spot overlooking the Atlantic and set in the grounds of an old church with a characteristic bent spire.

My key complex image is of David Attenborough carrying a baby with a rosary round its neck. Behind, I can see tall, snowcapped mountain peaks.

The baby indicates Kauffmann’s birth. David Attenborough (DA = 41) gives me the year 1741. The rosary symbolises Catholicism. The snowy mountains I associate with Switzerland.

•Stage 2:

She was a prolific artist eagerly sought for her portrait painting by a large international clientele.

The second stop on my route is at one of the clifftops at Rock. Here, I imagine a long line of people of mixed races eagerly queuing to have their portraits painted by an artist sitting next to a stack of spare canvases.

The complex image speaks for itself, except perhaps for the spare canvases: these are there to remind me of Kauffmann’s highly productive, prolific nature.

•Stage 3:

Her father, Johann Joseph Kauffmann, a painter in his own right, was a great source of encouragement and taught her the basic techniques of drawing and painting.

The third stage is down on the beach, where I see a friend of mine, Jojo, standing by a blackboard holding a paintbrush in one hand and a pencil in the other.

Jojo triggers the father’s name and the blackboard is the symbol for teaching.

•Stage 4:

A precocious child, she became an accomplished artist by the age of thirteen and showed skills in music too, then a more normal pursuit for young women.

My next stop is a beach bar known as the Last Resort. Inside I visualise American gangster Al Capone juggling a piano with a paintbox in front of an audience.

Al Capone (AC = 13) gives me Kauffmann’s age. The piano reminds me of her musical skills. Juggling the piano with the paintbox provides me with a pointer to Kauffmann’s precocious talent.

If you know your subject reasonably well, you won’t need to use so many key images. If you were already familiar with the details of Kauffmann’s early life, for example, then a single key image of a baby would be sufficient to remind you to talk about her childhood.

Once you have laid all the key points of the speech along your mental route, you can start practising your delivery with the aim of dispensing with notes. After a few trial runs, you should know the contents of your speech backwards and forwards.

ADVANTAGES

Memorising your presentation doesn’t take long. It will not only fix the material in your head for possible future exam use, but it will also make your presentation go really well – for the following reasons:

•Eye contact

Have you noticed that when politicians speak from a podium these days they seem able to maintain unbroken eye contact with their audience? What is more, they are able to keep this up for long periods without the apparent use of any written notes.

This is not because politicians’ memories are any better these days, but simply because they have an invisible autocue. This consists of two transparent sheets placed strategically in front of the speaker. Words, which the audience cannot see, are electronically produced on each sheet, one at a time. As a result the speaker’s head does not move from left to right as he or she is reading the words, giving a false impression of direct eye contact – a classic way of capturing an audience’s attention. When I give a talk from memory, the mental journey acts as my own invisible autocue. Only this one is the ultimate idiot board: it can’t be detected by anyone. I appear to be looking directly into people’s eyes as I read off images from my own mind’s eye.

Eye contact is important because it:

1puts you in closer contact with your audience

2accentuates what you are saying

3makes your audience feel involved

4puts you in full control as you can see everything going on around you

5will make what you have to say more convincing

6leaves your audience thinking you know your subject well (even if you don’t think so yourself!)

•Smoother delivery

The mental journey helps you deliver your words more smoothly because as you can see the key points ahead of you in the form of images, you will have time to prepare yourself for the next point.

The trick is to look at the key image at a stage, talk about its contents and, as you near the end of a sentence, move on in your mind to the next stage to get a quick sneak preview of what it holds in store. The result is that you’ll always keep one step ahead, allowing yourself enough leeway to smooth over any gaps between key points.

In the unlikely event of your forgetting the actual key image at a particular stage, there are two alternatives. First, the fact that you can’t remember it probably indicates that its contents aren’t that critical to the speech anyway, in which case just skip to the next stage. Second, it’s always comforting to have a backup. So keep a separate written list of the key points on a piece of paper – not that you’ll ever need to refer to it on the day!

•Confidence

Knowing that you are able to stand up in front of a crowd of people and deliver a speech entirely from memory is a great confidence-booster. If you know the journey well and the images on it are easily recalled, there’s no danger of your drying up or losing the running order. Without the fear of forgetting, there’s no pressure; it’s easy.

•Now where was I?

One big advantage of using this method is that if at any time you get distracted in some way, there’s no danger of losing your place because you’ll always remember, from your internal geography, where you left off. Often someone will ask me a question which will force me to deviate from the order of my presentation, or an unconnected idea may pop into my head that I may then expand on. When I’ve exhausted this particular unplanned avenue of thought, the journey will get me back on track because all I have to do is recall where I was last standing on my mental walk.

This is particularly useful if you’re one of those people who, like me, has a runaway imagination or is easily sidetracked. It’s like driving along a road and deciding to turn off because an interesting sight has caught your attention. It’s easy enough to find your way back to the road once your curiosity has been satisfied. Your presentation is a journey with a starting point, stops along the way and a final destination. That is why this method works so well.

VISUAL AIDS

Whether you use flip charts, transparencies, slides or photographs, visual aids can greatly enhance a presentation. Because you are adding another dimension – sight as well as sound – it’s not surprising that the right visual aid can increase one’s memory of a speech by as much as 90 per cent. As well as adding wider cortical appeal by engaging your audience’s right brains as well as their left, visual aids help to drive home your message by providing graphic or illustrative proof of what you’re saying.

Moreover, if you find that the glare of “all eyes on you” is a little overwhelming, then a visual diversion will provide you with at least some temporary relief. It will also help to maintain the attention of your audience by adding colour and contrast, can save you a lot of time, and sometimes speaks more accurately than words ever can.

Finally, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t use visual aids as memory aids themselves. If you were talking about Angelica Kauffmann you would, no doubt, have acquired reproductions of her work. You could use objects appearing in her paintings as triggers for key points of discussion.

Next time you have to give a speech, try using a mental journey to memorise it. And if you apply the DOMINIC System you’ll be able to rattle off facts, figures, dates and statistics, which will greatly impress your lecturers and fellow students.