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One of the scariest things many of us face in our jobs is getting up in front of a crowd.  This situation may occur as part of presenting to our team, the management, or at a conference.  There are benefits of presentations that outweigh the related stress and fear.  Therefore, it is time to look at this black storm cloud and find the silver lining.

A Focus On The Details

Most of us stress the details for a presentation more than many other situations.  Activities that demand detailed knowledge, including interviews and certification tests, force us to learn.  However,  there tends to be more structure to that knowledge in those cases than when we are presenting on an idea.  We will end up with a firm plan and story for our presentation.  However, we do not start with those constraints.  Therefore, we are pushed to not only learn a topic but also to find the bits that are interesting to our audience.  That is a task that requires more than knowledge.  It requires understanding.

Repetition Leads To Mastery

The process of crafting a presentation involves a lot of repetition and editing.  These repeated reviews of the content and the source material will solidify the knowledge in our minds.  We can not help learning the things that we repeatedly do.  That is what practice is all about.  Thus, we end up practicing the topic as we work to create an exciting presentation.

Found In Translation

One of the undervalued benefits of presentations is our need to talk to a more general audience than usual.  It is one thing for us to learn a fact and understand it.  When we attempt to teach that fact to others, it forces us to use a language they understand.  That is a barrier to a lot of communication.  We have words and phrases that we translate in a way that differs from other roles, groups, professions, and even individuals.

Episode Challenge: What will you choose as the topic of your next presentation?  When will you perform it?

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