Clearly communicating your thoughts to others in presentations and meetings is vital for your career success. However, many people know they are not engaging or putting their best foot forward when speaking, so they want to learn how to improve presentation skills.
A lot of people think that because they are an expert or specialist in their field, then that makes them an expert at presenting on the topic. That is not necessarily true! In this episode, you will learn more about the essentials of presentation skills.
Our host and CEO Porschia, alongside our guest, David Doerrier, will share their insight on the significance of public speaking and presentations in your career.
David Doerrier is a Presentation Empowerment Coach, speaker, and trainer with over 25 years of experience. He is known for his ability to simplify complex concepts and deliver actionable insights that empower individuals to take their communication skills to the next level.
What you’ll learn:
- Why presentation skills are important, even if you are an expert in your field
- The fundamentals of presentation skills
- Tips on how to improve presentation skills
- The biggest mistakes executives and professionals make with their presentations
- Importance of audience engagement and adult learning theory
“Talking and telling ain’t training or selling.” ~ David Doerrier
“The better the speaking skills, the more credible the person is…” ~ David Doerrier
As a thank you for listening to this episode of the Career 101 Podcast, we are sharing our FREE master class – Career 911: Solving the Top 5 Challenges Executives and Professionals Have! It’s a training based on solving the common problems our clients have experienced to reach their goals. You can get access to the master class here!
Episode Transcript
Porschia: [00:00:00] Today we are talking about Presentation Skills 101, how to improve presentation skills with David Dorier. David D. Dorier is a dynamic professional speaker, trainer, and coach with over 25 years of experience in training and development, leadership, With a passion for helping individuals and organizations achieve their full potential, David brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to [00:01:00] his presentations.
David’s engaging style and unique ability to connect with his audience have made him a sought after speaker at industry conferences, corporate events, and educational institutions across the country. He is known for his ability to simplify complex concepts and deliver actionable insights that empower individuals to take their communication skills to the next level.
Hi David, how are you today?
David: Alright, how are you Portia? So good to see you and thank you so much for inviting me to be a part of your Podcast. I’ve been following you for quite some time and this is definitely a treat. All right.
Porschia: , I am excited to have you with us, David to discuss presentation skills 101, how to improve presentation skills.
But first we want to know a little more about you. So tell me about seven year old David.
David: Ah, seven year old David. , seven year old [00:02:00] David was on Long Island, New York, growing up on the south shore of Long Island, just across the bay from Fire Island. And really, I was having a great time. I can smell the seawater today, going out on the boat with my father, clamming.
Eating the clams right there off the boat after you dig them up out of the South Shore Bay and so seven year old David was finding himself, was exploring was with friends and doing it all on Long Island. Very
Porschia: cool. So what did you want to be when you grew
David: up, David? That’s another great question.
Thinking back on it. , the thing that I remember the most was I had a fascination with radio. I would go to sleep with a little transistor radio underneath my pillow. The two radio stations that I listened to the most was WBAB on Long Island [00:03:00] and WNEW, which I The old WNEW AOR radio station album oriented rock that came out of New York City and just fascinated with radio and was dreaming of someday.
Finally making it into radio. And I was very fortunate because I did eventually get into radio and was and had a career in it for 12 years. Wow.
Porschia: Wow. So tell us about some highlights or pivotal moments in your career before you started your business.
David: , I think the most pivotal moment was when I joined the Air Force.
It was after high school, I graduated in 75, went into the Air Force, and still remember that first day like it was yesterday of being yelled at and doing, going through all these different routines that many others that have been through boot camp and whatever service you went to. But that was a very pivotal moment in my life.
I, [00:04:00] my career was in air transportation, working around aircraft, loading cargo passengers, baggage, weight and balance of the aircraft and got to see parts of the world that people only dream of. We’ve just recently had Guam was in the news because of a typhoon that went through Guam, but I spent three different tours on Guam for about a total of 10 years.
So it’s like a. Like home for me, got to see different parts of Europe, other parts of Asia, many parts of the States. So definitely the air force. And then that’s where I also started my career in training and development was with the air force as well. Oh, wow.
Porschia: Yeah. Traveling with military and all of that.
I hear there’s so many great experiences to that. So what. Would you say was your biggest career challenge before starting your business?
David: . So I guess it would be when I was [00:05:00] I did 10 years active duty and then 18 years in the reserves just giving a kind of setting the stage here.
I I got off active duty to pursue the fame and fortune in radio broadcasting, found some of the fame, but none of the fortune. Fortunately, after 12 years my first sergeant in the reserves said there was an opportunity to be a trainer. Here in Dobbins Air Force Base in Marietta, Georgia. So I, to answer your question, the challenging thing was, yes, I had radio broadcasting under my belt.
I did a lot of community theater, but now I was learning the craft of training, writing training, delivering training. I was a subject matter expert because I’ve worked in this career field for 10 years active duty. And and now at that point in the reserves, maybe five or six years. So I guess The challenge was.
It wasn’t just talking to my audience and [00:06:00] hoping it stuck. I had to learn how to engage the audience. How to write where it was for manuals and quick reference cards and things like that. This was in the mid 90s, so this was before the internet. This was before online training. Everything was being delivered face to face.
So that was the big challenge, and I still have that challenge today. Of of finding new ways to engage my audience.
Porschia: Yeah. Yeah. That training background sounds like it’s been so helpful for you and your whole background actually sounds very interesting. I want to know what motivated you to start a business about presentation skills and public speaking.
David: , great question. Well, my. My career in training and development was 30 years, full time, started in the military and then with a number of different civilian organizations, Lockheed, with McKesson, [00:07:00] Aaron’s Rental Furniture, and a few others, and while I was in those organizations, not only was I designing training as an instructional designer.
I was also facilitating training, software, soft skills, and then eventually I was training trainers to train people that were transitioning from software development or project management jobs into training, or, and then working with Customer service folks to help them be better communicators, working with the upper echelon in the organization to be better speakers.
I’ve also been a member of Toastmasters on and off for 30 years as well. And I found That was something that I really loved doing was working with people one on one and in groups and challenging them and helping them to be better presenters, understanding the fundamentals, the foundational skills of [00:08:00] speaking and facilitating and engaging an audience because talking and telling is Ain’t training or selling.
And what I found is many times people would and I don’t want to fault them because people just don’t know that, that when they get up in front of an audience, many of them just vomit information and it just doesn’t stick. So, I found that I loved doing that. I got great feedback from it.
People loved my classes. I had this business as a side hustle for five years, coaching people on the side. I left corporate last year. And it’s, I just knew it was time for me to go out on my own. And this is my passion, helping people be better communicators.
Porschia: Yeah, that is so exciting, David. And I want to stay along those lines with where you were going.
Why do you think presentation skills are so important?
David: That’s another great question. I think when it comes down to it, let’s use that business [00:09:00] owner, for example, a business owner who has and I’ll challenge your audience to think about when you’re observing someone who is speaking and they’re very proficient.
They have great body language. They’re not using a lot of ums and ahs, then they come across a certain way to their audience. They’re perceived as being professional. They’re perceived as being knowledgeable. They’re perceived as being someone who you want to do business with versus the opposite. Of that business owner, or that speaker, and it’s all ums and ahs and oohs and ahs and they have their back I was looking at LinkedIn today, and my post was about PowerPoint, and people were commenting saying they can’t, and I’m using my back here, that people are using, they’re reading it right off the PowerPoint word for word and it’s all about credibility.
The [00:10:00] better your speaking skills, the more credible the individual is going to be, and the more opportunities if you’re in corporate. If you have a corporate job, when it comes to being promoted, if there are two people with equal skills, equal credentials, but one is a better speaker, presenter, communicator, the chances of that person being promoted over the other is much higher.
Yeah,
Porschia: I definitely agree. So in your opinion, David, what are the fundamentals of presentation
David: skills? Well, there are a number of things that fall into the foundational skills, but what I’m going to talk about now are the top three. I’ve had an opportunity to evaluate a lot of people over my six, seven years in this Business.
, even longer than that. But especially when it came to evaluating people speaking at networking events when I [00:11:00] would secretly be in the back of the room and I would take notes of that person giving a network presentation. And then at the end, I’d say I took some notes. Would you like to hear what I have to say?
And there were always these three things that always came up. Number one. Is no, your audience can’t tell you how many times a business owner gets up in front of that networking event and is talking to us as if we all are experts in their field. So know your audience and be able to craft your message for that audience.
And many people say, Oh, it’s too, my, what I do is too complicated. It’s impossible. Well, you need to call me because I can help you. Craft that message for any audience. So know your audience. Number two is incorporate stories. We love to hear stories. [00:12:00] Now there’s a couple of caveats to these stories. Number one, they need to be short.
They can’t be long. They can’t be drawn out, but they have to have three elements to these stories. Now we’re talking about in a business situation, those stories have to have three elements. Number one, what was the problem? that your client was facing. Number two, what was the solution that you provided?
And number three, what was the outcome after that business owner applied that solution? So know your audience, incorporate stories, and the number three, conclusion. I can’t tell you how many times people are speaking and they get to the end and they say, that’s it. And they just walk off the stage.
There needs to be some sort of conclusion. Now, there’s many different ways that you can conclude it, but some of the simplest ways is to have a short review. So today we looked at three things. We looked at the three important things with a presentation. [00:13:00] One, we looked at, you need to know your audience.
And talk a little bit about why that’s important to incorporate stories and three have a conclusion Also part of your conclusion could be some sort of a takeaway or a challenge to your audience as well So those are the top three
Porschia: Wow, I love that. Know your audience, incorporate stories, and have a conclusion.
And I also think, David, in some great presentations, I’ve seen in that conclusion, sometimes people have a story,, or a case study to wrap the whole thing up as well. Great. So many executives and professionals believe that they should improve their presentation skills.
From your perspective, what are some of the best ways to improve presentation skills?
David: One of the best ways is practice. There’s no way around it. It’s like learning how to ride a bicycle. You can’t learn how to ride a bicycle by just reading [00:14:00] about it. You got to get on that bicycle and you’ve got to practice.
There are going to be some times you’re going to fall off. That bicycle. You’re going to, you’re going to make some mistakes when you’re giving those presentations. So you’ve got to find as many opportunities as you can to practice the craft of speaking. What I find is many subject matter experts feel that because they’re already an expert in their field, that automatically makes them an expert speaker or an expert trainer, but that necessarily is not true.
So what is the best way? Number one is. Is find is to learn about the craft. There are a zillion books out there on how to be a better presenter. There are a zillion schools. There’s only one coach. That’s like me, David Dorier present your way to success. com. I had to throw that in there and a Toastmasters is a great place [00:15:00] to practice the craft of speaking.
Right.
Porschia: Great. So you talk a lot about adult learning theory and why it’s vital for presenters to understand. For those who don’t know, David, what is adult learning theory?
David: Oh, great question. This is a whole podcast by itself. But in a nutshell, the adult learning theory, number one, it comes from training.
And it’s designed to to give the trainer. To give the instructional designer ways to engage the audience processes to engage the audience. My first exposure to it was when I. Put together a manual to train trainers to train and had in there the adult learning theory. It comes from a gentleman by the name of Malcolm Knowles.
He is the father of adult learning and I took his [00:16:00] five processes and I’ve created my own eight Processes were very similar, but it’s all, it all has the same objective. It’s all about engaging the audience. Because the more you can engage your audience, the more your message is gonna stick.
Because it’s, the more you can get them thinking, you can get them interacting, it’s gonna make that message stick. So in a nutshell, the adult learning theory. Number one is at the core of my training, and I call it the principles of engagement, and it’s at the core of my training, but it’s designed to give people some easy processes that they can apply to the writing of their speeches, to the writing of their workshop, to the writing of their training, and then those same processes can be used when they’re on the stage connecting to their audience.
Porschia: [00:17:00] I love that, David. And so on the lines of audience engagement, what if someone is presenting and they think that they’ve written their presentation well, and they’re just not getting engagement from it, and they’re live. What are some things that they could do to increase audience engagement?
David: Such a great question there. Well, let’s use the virtual as an example? First of all, so in the [00:18:00] virtual world, one of the easiest, simplest ways to create engagement is to look directly into the camera. When you’re talking to your audience many times, and there are times that you have to look away because I’ve got three screens here and I might have data or something on one of these other screens, but if you’re during your opening during your conclusion.
Asking questions, answering a question, telling a story, all of those are examples of times that the facilitator should be looking directly into that camera. Now, it takes practice because Everybody that I bring that up to this day. Well, and I can’t see everybody. Everybody’s over here somewhere because what facilitators are doing, they see all the faces on this other screen over here and they’re talking to the faces.
But we on the receiving end you’re not talking to me. You’re talking over there [00:19:00] somewhere. So number one, look directly into the camera. Now, other things that you can do to engage your audience would be Open with a question. Get people to respond. Something simple, right off the bat. For example, where is everybody calling in from today?
And, if your audience is all over the United States or geographically separated, Or you could say, what did you have for breakfast this morning? Something stupid. It doesn’t have to be very complicated, but getting people to now interact through the chat, have polls, try to use the whiteboard, use rhetorical questions, and ask questions.
Now, let me, there’s a giant asterisk here about asking questions. And that is, there is a right way to ask a question, and there is a wrong way to ask questions. The right way to ask questions is making sure [00:20:00] and I’m pausing here because I’m waiting for the audience to come up with the answer themselves.
The correct way to ask a question is an opened ended question. So for example, If I was to ask a question, Portia, what were, what was one of the three things that I said were most important when speaking to your audience? What were one of those three things? Instead of asking, what questions do you have?
Are there any questions? I can bet that your audience Is if I said, how many times have you heard someone ask a question when the presenter said, are there any questions? How many times Portia have you heard? People answer ask a question when are there any questions and
Porschia: Yeah, you’re right. And when people say that, even the people with questions usually have to stop and think about it [00:21:00] for a while.
And then there’s that 30 second to 1 minute delay when someone’s like, oh, yes, but I have a question.
David: And you brought up another point here. I’m glad you brought that up again about questions. Two things. Staying in the virtual world. One is you’ve got to give your audience time to respond. It frustrates me when I hear someone say, even if they say, are there any questions?
And then almost immediately, they just go on to the next thing. So you’ve not given anybody any opportunity to ask a question. The other thing is that if you’re asking a question in the zoom world, you’re asking a question and you want people to respond through the chat, there’s a little bit of a delay, so you’ve got to be aware of that.
And what I’ve seen happen is people will get they’ll ask the question and they’re thinking that immediately there’s going to be responses in that chat. And there aren’t and they’ll say, Oh, well, I guess there’s no responses and they move on to the next thing and then [00:22:00] all of a sudden all the responses start coming in.
So you’ve got to be aware there’s a delay on those responses coming in chat. And if you ask a question, you’ve got to give 5 to 7, 8 seconds. To for your audience to respond.
Porschia: Yeah. So along those lines, David, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you’ve seen executives and professionals make with their presentation skills?
David: Number one is not getting good feedback. Even professionals, even people who have had the opportunity of having their presentation recorded, they will say, I’m never going to watch it. I’m never going to look at it. There’s no way that I can look at myself. I agree. It is not easy in the beginning to look at yourself.
I’ve had. The opportunity because I was in radio and I listened to myself [00:23:00] every day, I recorded myself and had my air checks. It wasn’t easy to listen to my voice in the beginning. I still have a hard time watching myself on video, but that is the best way to evaluate your performance is to view the video.
Now, if you can view that video with a professional Who can also give you feedback. I would recommend that. So that would be one mistake. I guess the other is just relying on their old habits. Not trying to spice it up a little bit, not trying to come out of their shell or to be vulnerable and to admit, hey, maybe there are some different ways that I can engage, do a better job of engaging my audience.
I said it earlier, subject matter experts feel that they’re already an expert at presenting because they’re an expert in their field. And that’s not necessarily true.
Porschia: [00:24:00] Absolutely. I think Most of us have probably had that experience where we were listening to a subject matter expert and could not follow the presentation to your point.
And like you mentioned, I’m one of those where it’s hard to watch myself and listen to myself, having a podcast, I’m forced to listen to myself and watch myself a bit more, but it is tough. So David, tell us about your company, present your way to success.
David: Present your way to success.
I’m working with subject matter experts that all want the same thing. They all want to be able to do a better job of engaging their audience. They come to me because they have a fear of speaking in public. They come to me because they need to, they need help in writing their speech or their workshop.
They come to me because they need to rewrite. Their workshop, they also come to me when they have very complex. Information and I help them take [00:25:00] that complex information and massage it in a way that is now easily digestible by their audience and they also come to me if they want to improve their stage presence.
So it’s subject matter experts and also trainers that come to me that want to do a better job of connecting to their audience. All right. So
Porschia: we will be providing a link to your website and your other social channels in our show notes so that people can find you online. But what is the best way for someone to get in touch with you?
David: Through my website, presentyourwaytosuccess. com. And I have a number of links on there that you can connect to me. And if you connect with me or reach out to me through any one of those links, I’m offering a free 30 minutes, no obligation, no selling opportunity to. Have a coaching call [00:26:00] with me to talk through anything you want to talk about your website, training you want to create, not your website, your presentation, your speech.
If you’re doing a Toastmasters speech and you want some help with that, just go to my website and also LinkedIn. Look for me, David Dorier, and I’m the only. David Dorier. You’ll find my brother and sister on there, but not another David. If you do, let me know because it’s a very rare name. And I post every day, Monday through Friday, I’m posting tips and tricks on all types of things related to presentation skills.
That’s great.
Porschia: That’s all sounds very valuable, David. Now we want to know, what is your definition of career success?
David: To me it’s just feeling satisfied that I have done A good job. I’ve been able to bring all of my talents, my resources, and I’ve been able to help my [00:27:00] clients move forward.
It always brings me a lot of joy to hear back from my clients and hear them say, Wow, I tried those things that we talked about. I applied those things that we talked about. It made a difference before I was scared to death to get up on stage. Yeah. Being nervous is normal. So so but there are ways that you can work through that.
So taking someone who was scared to death to go up on stage, and now they’ve been able to do it. They’ve been able to work through it. They’ve applied what we’ve what I trained them to do. And to be able to hear that and receive those out accolades from my clients. That to me is business success.
I
Porschia: love it. Last question that I like to ask all of our guests. How do you think executives or professionals can get a positive edge in their career?
David: Well, there it is. Public speaking. Being [00:28:00] able to engage their audience. What I’m envisioning in my head is that CEO or That president of an organization standing up on a stage in front of their 300 3000 employees and being able to engage them in a way that motivates that audience to or challenges that audience for them to be motivated to go back to their jobs, do what they need to do and to make that company successful because that president, that CEO, that person at the top of the food chain has such a responsibility to motivate their employees.
Whereas if you had that person at the top of the food chain well, I think what we need to do, I don’t know, shuffling their Feet being nervous, hands in their pocket, being a ping pong ball up on the stage, not really saying anything, just blabbering a bunch of information. People are [00:29:00] gonna walk away.
Well, what the heck did he just say? You know that right there? That motivator, that person is the catalyst. And the way that they convey that information is through their presentation, their verbal delivery, their body language, vocal variety, eye contact. If it’s there, it’s magic.
Porschia: Wow, David, you’ve shared a lot of tips with us today, and I’m sure our listeners can use it to be more confident with their presentation skills.
We appreciate you being with us. Thank you.
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