Focus on Employees
You can't spell "Presentation" without "Pain"...
But You Can Make Presentations Relatively Pain-free
by Christine Hogue, King County HRD Communications Manager
During a recent poll, 50 percent of Americans said they experience some degree of shyness. The poll didn’t specifically ask about public speaking, but if it had, I’d guess that a much higher percentage would have said they hated making presentations. I speak from experience. I’ve been known to faint dead away when forced to talk in front of a good-sized group of people.
We’ll talk about shyness in a later article, so for now, we’ll focus on tips to help you become more comfortable in giving presentations. With these tips, you may not jump for joy when asked to make a presentation, but hopefully you’ll have the confidence to gracefully accept the challenge.
After you have prepared your presentation, make sure you practice it. Go through the speech six or seven times until you really feel comfortable with the material. The more familiar you are with the material, the less likely you’ll be to read the speech verbatim from your notes.
Tip 1: The two Ps
You’ve heard the phrase “location, location, location.” Successful presenters have two similar sayings: “preparation, preparation, preparation” and “practice, practice, practice.”
To prepare, make sure you understand why you have been asked to make a presentation. Are you providing information, teaching a process or skill, selling an idea, or solving a problem? It sounds deceptively simple, but this is the key to tailoring your presentation. Once you’ve identified why you will be speaking, you can determine the key information you need to share with the audience – and the best way to deliver that information. Read more
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Welcome to My Career
My Career is an online guide to career resources here at King County. The site is designed to provide county employees and their families with the tools, resources, and opportunities to successfully manage and grow their careers.
We’ll explore a variety of career and job topics, and introduce you to your fellow employees. Let us know about employees who play unique roles in the county. Who knows, you may soon see yourself featured here. We’ll also highlight current job openings to let you know what’s available.
Getting to know …
Doug Rice
Hi, I’m Doug Rice, program manager for Natural Yard Care (NYC) Neighborhoods.
I partner with local cities to train whole neighborhoods in NYC techniques. NYC is a packaging mechanism for most of the environmental behavior changes DNRP would like folks to implement in their daily lives. Yard care often has the biggest effect on the environment of anything we do. I use the new science of “Social Marketing” to reach these folks by offering incentives, reducing the barriers to change, and by making them experts on how to do it better, cheaper and more safely for children, pets and the environment.
When I returned to school at 39, ready to get out of marketing, graphics and advertising, my personal mission plan was “to help people and/or the environment”. I posted it on my refrigerator. I thought I was going to study psychology but instead, became a landscape architect.
In my job at the county, I am able to combine my marketing skills with those of landscape architecture and now I help both people and the environment through Natural Yard Care. I’m living my dream. Read more.