Effective Presentation Skills Tips episode 2 is the second part of a series of podcasts aimed at helping people to be more effective when presenting in front of an audience.
Sue and Chris talk about some of the pitfalls in presentations, including managing stress, redundancy, communication problems and telling an audience what they already know.
Presenting information clearly and effectively is one of the key soft skills, if not the most important soft skill for life, and especially in business.
Getting your message or opinion across is essential, and, today, presentation skills are required in almost every field of professional life.
If you are a manager, a technician, an engineer, a student, business owner or whatever, you may very well be asked to make a presentation at some point.
This can be something that not all of us relish.
This series of podcasts are meant to help you avoid some of the common mistakes that some presenters make, so that you can get your message across effectively and engage with your audience..
Everything that Sue and Chris talk about is about common sense skills that can be applied by anyone in a presentation, there are no miracle answers, just pragmatic tips that actually work.
After all, there is no point being the best student, manager, technician or engineer in your organisation if you cannot communicate what you do and what you want others to do.
Excessive workplace stress causes a staggering 120,000 deaths and results in nearly €200 billion in health care costs each year.
This represents 5% to 8% of national health care spending, derived primarily from high demands at work (€50 billion) and work-family conflict (€25 billion).
These are some of the harmful health effects from excessive stress:
Reduced ability to cope with future stress and increased anxiety and chronic depression;
The onset of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD);
Reduced immune system functioning;
Increased inflammation and depression.
High on-the-job demands and insufficient resources contribute to stress.
In addition, an effort-rewards imbalance with perceptions of high effort and low compensation or recognition can also contribute to workplace stress.
Goals perceived as exceedingly difficult or unclear, rather than achievable challenges, are also factors in excessive stress, anger, and anxiety.
Try this survey to find out if you are at risk or are working in a stressful environment at work.
Is my workplace a stressful place?
Micro managers, annoying co-workers and unrealistic objectives - just three things known that make people stressed at work. It doesn't matter whether you're based in an office or a warehouse, being unable to cope with the pressures at work can make your life unbearable. Not only does it take its toll on you emotionally, it can leave you at higher risk of a range of physical illnesses. Stress in the workplace can lead to :
• Anxiety and chronic tension • Agitation and fits of panic • Aggression and short temper • Mood swings and disorientation • Negative self-talk • Sleeping difficulties and constant fatigue • Lack of energy • Eating more (or less), drinking more (or less) • Pessimism and despondency • Lack of motivation • Gradual withdrawal from society and friends
Take this test to evaluate if your workplace is causing you stress*.
* This Content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this or any other Website)
The workplace is a very demanding, quick-paced and increasingly uncertain place in which we operate on a day-to-day basis, but does it always have to be a stressful place?.
Pressure to meet deadlines, deliverables and working with difficult people, among other factors, puts modern employees under unreasonable amounts of stress.
In fact, being constantly stressed out is so universal that many people have accepted it as unpleasant, but a way of life – it has become the norm.
While a certain amount of stress is acceptable and can actually be beneficial for you—keeping you alert and focused, helping you cope well with challenges—beyond a certain acceptable limit, stress is nothing but bad for you, if it is not channelled and managed.
Not only does it affect your mental stability but also your health, relationships, productivity at work, and overall quality of life.
People are different, so we all react differently to the same set of circumstances; something that one person may find stressful, another may regard as only mildly challenging or even normal.
How you tolerate and respond to stress depends not only on the particularities of your situation but also on what type of person you are; your natural inclinations, beliefs and behaviors.
In this podcast we look at some of the ways that workplace stress impacts people and we look at :
Stress Awareness Month happens each April. It’s important to learn some strategies for coping with this particular issue. Stress awareness Month, which always happens in April, has now been going for 19 years and things just don’t appear to be getting better. Stress can be debilitating, and it can cause and/or aggravate health problems. Stress is a normal part of human existence — nobody is immune to it — it’s important to arm ourselves with knowledge so that we recognise when stress rears its ugly head. (Amazingly, we don’t always notice it’s happening to us.)
In this series of podcasts we will be looking at various themes concerning stress :
The statistics of stress
Workplace stress
Signs of a stressful workplace
Stress and Covid 19
Managing & coping strategies to combat stress
Measure your workplace stress
Evaluate your stress levels.
STRESS AWARENESS MONTH IS IMPORTANT
It reminds us to pay attention to our health – According to the official website, “Stress Awareness Month is a national, cooperative effort to inform people about the dangers of stress, successful coping strategies, and harmful misconceptions about stress that are prevalent in our society.”
It’s going strong – Stress Awareness Month has been an ongoing campaign of awareness and education since 1992 – 19 years already.
Because we’re all feeling it – A recent survey found that about two-thirds of workers report engaging in behavior such as drinking or crying regularly in order to deal with stress.
In a previous podcast Effective Presentation Skills we talked about warming up before doing a presentation or speaking in public.
But what does “warming up” actually involve ?
In this podcast Chris explains the importance of breathing and focus in order to reduce stress, and Sue gives some diction exercises which help with articulation and problem sounds for different nationalities.
These exercise are not intended to make you worry about a perfect English (British) accent but they are aimed at helping you move your mouth in certain ways to help you get the best pronunciation you can.
Remember that as a non-native English speaker having an accent is quite normal but when speaking in a professional situation always try to speak clearly with a good beginning and a crisp ending to words. In more informal settings you don’t need to be so particular.
Here are the exercises:
1.Blue blood, black blood. Black bug, blue bug.
2. Down the deep damp dark dank den,
3. Four furious friends fought for the phone,
4. Hotdog, Hamburger
In Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire hurricanes hardly ever happen,
5. Kiss her quick, kiss her quicker, kiss her quickest.
6. You know New York, You need New York, You know you need unique New York.
