How to Be an Efficient Presenter: 6 soft skills You Must Have

6 Soft Skills to become an Effective Presenter

Soft skills refer to the personality traits, interpersonal skills, and behavior you use to interact with other people. These abilities are crucial if you want to become an efficient presenter — someone who can be trusted to make any event lively, productive, and remarkable.

Luckily, these valuable assets can be learned and developed.

Encouraging everyone to participate, communicating effectively, and working collaboratively to make the gathering successful are examples of soft skills essential to events. By knowing what soft skills are and how to develop these, you can become a professional presenter who is sought after by both new and established organizations worldwide.

Here is a list of soft skills you must possess to become an efficient MC or presenter.

1. Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence refers to your ability to control and understand your emotions while identifying and empathizing with the emotions of other people. This is crucial when remaining calm is significant, and if you need to understand the opinion of both the audience and the speakers.

You must have a sense of ease – and this must be expressed in your face, words, and body language and gestures. Be comfortable in your own skin, and allow pauses instead of rushing. You must develop a sense of calm commitment that will draw the crowd in without shattering.

To show a sense of calm and ease, you should have a sparkle in your eyes, significant pauses when speaking, and a gesture that emphasizes your point.

2. Creativity

Being creative refers to thinking outside the box and finding innovative solutions to solve any problem that can arise before, during, and after events.

For instance, you should keep an open mind whenever you are confronted with bizarre ideas instead of ignoring or shutting them down. It is also helpful to use creative techniques like provocations, mind maps, and role-playing.

3. Critical thinking

Critical thinking is knowing how to analyze information and give reasons effectively. When hosting events, this will involve the process of taking problems or information and understanding them to develop solutions or extract value.

To become an excellent critical thinker, you need to know more than what the audience does. The participants must perceive you as someone who can translate the details into their level of understanding. This can only materialize if you are familiar with the subject matter, so you need to prepare and practice your presentations.

Start with a concise and compelling message. Tell a story instead of presenting just a list of bullet points. Every part of your presentation must move the message forward. The ending should then wrap the whole thing up in an organized way and go back to the message mentioned initially.

4. Communication

You need to speak to the audience politely and clearly, and at the same time, listen to what they have to say. Effective communication involves verbal and written skills that are tied to active listening.

The best way to develop your communication skills is to build your confidence by turning your nervousness into power. Fine-tune your delivery skills and work on your mental focus. If you are in command of your thoughts, you can speak fluently and confidently, and fillers or hesitations can be avoided in your speech.

Moreover, know how to connect with the audience. You can do this by thinking about them and relating your content to them. You can also move closer to them, make eye contact, and engage them in the discussion. Most importantly, don’t waste their time with irrelevant presentations. 

5. Flexibility

Being flexible means embracing challenges and changes with a resourceful, positive attitude. Unexpected problems can arise during presentations, but this should not discourage you from doing what you do best. Instead, quickly find a solution and make it look like it is a part of the event whenever possible.

The world is constantly changing, so you must be resilient in response to these deviations and view them as opportunities instead of hindrances. Be persistent and resourceful to overcome any challenge that may arise during the event.

6. Teamwork

Teamwork or collaboration refers to your ability to work effectively with everyone involved in the presentation or event. It requires and encompasses other soft skills, including flexibility, communication, and emotional intelligence.

For events that include several speakers, working collaboratively with them as the event MC is crucial in ensuring that everything will run smoothly. You must know the structure of the program and inform the speakers of their order. Give emphasis about how long they must be on stage so as not to disrupt the timetable. Inform them about any signal indicating that they only have a few minutes left to wrap up their speech.

The ability to think critically, resolve issues, and interact effectively is vital to navigating through events and presentations successfully. Luckily, you can develop these soft skills through experience and leadership and management training, and you can nurture them with proper focus, structure, and repetition.

AUTHOR BIO

Hisham Wyne is an internationally recognised MC, broadcaster, presenter and moderator who helps the world’s best-known brands create memorable occasions. He regularly hosts conferences, panel sessions, gala dinners and award ceremonies for some of the world’s best brands. With 150+ events under his belt, Hisham is the professional speaker that brands and agencies turn to when wanting to interview, engage and entertain government VVIPs and Hollywood celebrities.

How to break into the Technology sector if you are not a born techie

These days many people would like to work in the tech industry. According to CNBC, most of them would like to do it because of the salaries. 

In the future of work, most professions will be oriented to the tech industry. So, most people who currently don’t have a career in this sector are concerned about the future. They believe in the end we’ll all be replaced by robots.

Regardless of the reason you may have, learning a new skill will definitely open new doors for your career. Yet, if you have spent years working on a certain career it may be challenging for you to switch to the tech industry. 

If this is your situation, we have a couple of tips to help you switch careers if you’re not a born techie.

Find a related skill to your current career

Before you jump right into an unknown career, it would be good if you could find a related profession to your current career. This way, rather than starting from scratch in a completely new career, you’ll already have some background. If you feel familiar with the new skill you’re trying to learn, the transition from one career to another will not be that challenging.

There are many tech equivalents you can find in your current career. If you’re working in the retail industry, you can work as a project manager or product manager. Another example of this is when artists migrate from traditional art to graphic design. 

If you’re in the financial industry there’s also a perfect tech equivalent for you. Data science is a discipline that’s very related to statistics and numbers, so you’d be very familiar with that profession.

Up-skilling

If you are happy with your current career but you wouldn’t like to stay behind the tech trends, you could also try out something called up-skilling. Up-skilling consists of learning new skills that add value to your current profession without leaving your job. 

In fact, up-skilling is a vital part of workforce training. This is an excellent way to break into tech and if you don’t want to spend too many years on a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, you can always try to take a short-term course to level up your skills.

Get certification

Once you’ve decided which career path you’d like to take, it’s time to get certified. There are many ways to break into tech. 

According to a recent survey, most developers learn new skills through self-learning, so if you don’t feel like taking formal education, you can always try that. However, if you’d actually want to get certified, you have two options: taking a bachelor’s degree or taking a coding bootcamp.

When you already have a built-up career in a certain industry, it’s very challenging to start all over in a different profession. So, it would be hard to study a five-year college degree. That’s why coding bootcamps have become a popular option. You can learn a new skill in a matter of 12 months with an up-to-date education.

Build your own project

After getting certified, you need to start getting some experience. It might not be that easy to find a job at first because you have zero experience in the field. 

However, there’s a great way to start getting experience. You can create your own project based on your knowledge. This way, even though you don’t have the experience, you’ll have something to show to your possible clients.

Increase your online presence

When you land into the tech industry, the only way to get visibility is by having an online presence. Therefore, if you don’t have a LinkedIn account or a website, you might not be able to impress recruiters. So try to create some visibility by optimizing your profiles and even developing your own website.

This is especially important if you’re building a career in digital marketing or web development. The way you manage your site and your social media will be a reflection of your skills. So, if you’d like to impress recruiters, this would be a good way to do it.

And even if you’re not a web developer yourself or a digital marketer, you still need to build an online presence. Regardless of your career, getting visibility online is surely a plus to your CV. 

Internship

Many people who have a career background usually don’t feel comfortable when having to start all over, so an internship is not an option for them. However, volunteering for an internship could be one of the best things you’ll do for your career. 

You’ll meet a lot of interesting people in the industry who could help you succeed in your profession.  Look at it as if doing networking and get paid for doing so, while you also put in practice.

Start Gig Working

Gig working is very popular these days. It consists of doing short-term projects for certain clients. You won’t be part of the company, but you’ll be doing short projects for them. Although this is not a stable work dynamic, it is a good way to gain experience.

Conclusion

Starting a career from scratch isn’t easy, especially if you already have a career background. But it has become almost imperative to reskill ourselves with technology. 

So, if you want to break into the tech industry even if you’re not a techie, you should start by finding a profession that makes you feel comfortable. It’s also important to get certified and start getting experience by creating your own projects.

Thanks for Reading.

Guest Blog by : Artur Myster [ https://Careerkarma.co ]

3 Principles that make Prime Leaders in Pandemic Era!

Leadership Skills in times of Pandemic

he leader has to be adaptable. He must change according to the environment and challenges of the time.
We all know that COVID-19 pandemic has brought about a paradigm change in our world. More so in our workplace needs, and habits.

The three most important attributes or qualities that a leader must focus on can be explained by 3 letters: B C I. What do these represent?

  1. Letter B stands for Beliefs and values
  2. C stands for Creating line leaders
  3. I stands for Influencing

Now let me elaborate each of these three.

  1. Beliefs & Values

It necessary for the leader to infuse beliefs & values among the team members more than ever before. When people come to the office, they are working in an environment which ensures that focus is on work. However, when they work from home that is not possible. At home, distractions disturb them in spite of their effort against it. Therefore, cordial polite reminders of the leader’s Belief and the work-values will play a pivotal role in improving productivity.People who are not used to working from home have to be continuously motivated to maintain focus. So relying on beliefs and values help people maintaining focus when they work from home.

2. Create Line leaders

Secondly, it’s necessary for the leader to infuse leadership qualities among the team members. It means that the leader has to inspire team members to be more responsible and accountable. They should get full credit for what they do and there should be some kind of competitive spirit among team members in order that they can see themselves as stars. In other words it means that the leader is creating leaders; that the focus is not on exercising authority but only on creating more leaders. Since all are working from home each participant needs to think that he/she must take up leadership role himself or herself. This is the only way the productivity can be achieved in spite of the distractions of home working.

3. Influence instead of Instruction

Thirdly, it is necessary for the leader to influence his team members more than ever, rather than instructing them or advising them. Instruction or advice is okay when you are face to face. It’s okay when you are physically available to be monitored. However working from home does not allow face-to-face meetings. It gives a kind of weird independence to the person who works from home. Policing by the leader is never recommended but in the current scenario it is not even possible. So its necessary to inspire the team members to influence them to work with their own motivation. Your leadership is measured on a scale which has different parameters now. Understanding this the leader must become expert in influencing his team members to work to live up, to their own expectations.

Without doubt, in the new normal of Pandemic era, new principles of infusing beliefs, inspiring your people to emerge as mini leaders and relying on influencing more than instructing need to be adopted.

Fear of Failure

Fear of failure acts as a handicap to many of us. So it is necessary to understand this fear.

When we allow something to stop us from carrying out our work…work that can take us forward to achieve our goals; we need to recognise it as our fear of failure.

I am Satish Kakri and I will talk about this malady by explaining five facts of this Fear.

  1. Definition
  2. Symptoms
  3. Causes
  4. Ill effects
  5. Remedy through The Bhagavad Gita

Definition:
Fear of failure is known as ‘atychiphobia’. Like many other phobias it’s an aspect of personality which always stands in the way of our progress. This hinders our growth by lowering our confidence, erodes our will power and attacks our discipline. It may be a part of another mood disorder like anxiety, worry, eating more, etc.
Therefore it is necessary to understand and ensure that atychiphobia is eradicated from our personality.

Symptoms:
You tend to become physically fatigued and mentally drained.
Lose all initiative to do anything new. Laziness becomes your habit. The situation does not allow you to think creatively. Personal initiative goes missing. You don’t want to work on anything that requires application of mind or physical hard work. Habit of procrastination ruins your daily routine.

Causes:
There are many causes for the fear of failure. Conspicuous among them are unsupportive parents. They keep on repeating to the child that ‘you are good for nothing’. Bullies in the school or society also contribute to heighten the fear.
Our education system in India is also responsible for adding to the fear of failure in the minds of students. They are judged only on the basis of their scores in the final exams. No life skills are taught. It is not a part of curriculum.
In fact the system creates graduates without any practical knowledge about how to deal with life and its problems. Social prejudices form yet another cause to contribute to the malady.

Ill Effects:
As a result of this fear of failure, the person suffers a lot. One remains always tired & fatigued. The individual starts worrying on even small things. Chronic overthinking badly affects the health of the person. Emotional intelligence goes for a toss. The ability to face difficult situations or difficult people goes down the drain. The person starts thinking life is a burden and not worth living.

How to remove the Fear of Failure and the role of the Bhagavad Gita?

The Bhagavad Gita gives the best solution. The core message of Gita is that everyone must perform his/her duty without attachment. No doubt attachment is the main culprit for our fear of failure. Our attachment to the desired results and uncertainty associated with it aggravates the fear.
In chapter 1 Arjun expresses to Lord Krishna that he doesn’t want to fight the battle with his own relatives because war will result in killing his own people on both the sides. Killing one’s elders respected people teachers even grandfathers and other revered people will only result in total disaster of the families.
Further, he says that he doesn’t not know who will win. Thus Arjun is deeply attached to the results and totally ignores his duty to fight the righteous war.

Lord Krishna explains to Arjuna that one has to perform one’s duty without any attachment. The moment you are not attached to the result, fear of failure vanishes. As there is nothing to loose, there won’t be any fear. Attachment is the root cause of all sufferings.

According to the psychologists there are a number of steps that need to be taken to remove the fear of failure. These are like understanding situation, finding alternatives, strengthening will power, controlling emotions, understanding dangers of life etc. Bhagavad Gita addresses all these issues.

How?
Two major lessons of Gita are:
That one must perform one’s duty without attachment, without fear or remorse. They should not be afraid of even death. Soul in immortal. It never dies. Soul just changes body.

Gita seeks to empower you to overcome the biggest human fear- the fear of death itself. In such a case, no other lesser fear including the Fear of Failure will stop you from working your way up.. to reach your target. Without the Fear of failure you wholeheartedly work and achieve your goal!

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