Thanks for joining me on The Presenter’s Toolkit. If you find public speaking challenging or scary, you’ve come to the right place: this course will give you the tools to present your ideas confidently in front of an audience, and a model for structuring a compelling, persuasive presentation.

Before you start putting your presentation together, it’s important to decide what the purpose of your presentation is: what are you hoping to achieve by the end?

Good preparation is key to a great presentation. Taking the time to prepare your performance will make you feel more confident, and it can help you create a more persuasive environment for your audience.

The best way to create an entertaining, convincing presentation is to really understand your audience. This exercise will help you step into your audience’s shoes to understand their needs, concerns and drivers.

In this chapter we’ll look at anchoring, a useful tool for accessing a particular state (eg. feeling calm or confident) in yourself, or in your audience.

It’s really important to have a structure to your presentation, whether you’re speaking in front of a big crowd for an hour, or having an important conversation with someone face-to-face. This chapter will give you a useful way to structure your presentation to ensure you carry your audience along with you.

Now that you’ve planned your presentation, it’s time to deliver it. In this chapter we’ll look at a range of techniques to help you communicate your ideas effectively in a way that keeps your audience engaged.

Understanding the way other see the world around them can be helpful in building rapport: if your audience is visual (for example a group of designers), using visual metaphors and aids will help you ‘speak their language’. In this chapter, we’ll look at how to work out how to use this to your advantage when presenting.

Visual aids can be a really useful tool for engaging your audience. In this chapter we’ll look at how to use visual aids to capture your audience’s attention.

Humans love stories: they’re a great way to keep a presentation interesting and to convey your message to your audience in an engaging and persuasive way. Here’s how to use metaphor and stories to take your presentation to the next level.

The Charisma Pattern is a technique that has been modelled on really successful, charismatic presenters: people who are great at keeping an audience’s attention and delivering a memorable performance. In this chapter we’ll look at the Charisma Pattern and how to make it work for you.

In this video, I’ll introduce you to the Satir Categories and how you can use them to get great results when you’re presenting. We’ll look at different styles of presenting, and how you can adopt these different styles throughout your presentation to get your audience on board.

A strong introduction is essential for catching your audience’s attention right from the beginning. Here’s how to structure and deliver a great introduction that will ensure your audience keep listening.

Now that you’ve learned how to become a great presenter, you might like to learn how to manage stress – especially if the idea of delivering a presentation makes you feel anxious. Try our short Toolkit course, The Stress Management Toolkit, to learn how to keep stress and anxiety at bay.

If you’d like to go more in-depth and learn to change your behaviour to get the most out of your life, or work towards big personal or professional goals, have a look at the NLP Business Practitioner course. The Business Practitioner is a group course that runs over 10 two-hour sessions, and will help you understand the way you and others think and behave, so you can get the most out of every interaction.

Thanks for joining me on the Resilience Toolkit. We’ll start with an outline of the topics covered in this course, and answer the question ‘what is resilience?’.

Find your starting point: fill out this interactive PDF to find out your resilience score.

What makes some people more resilient than others? Can resilience be learned? (Yes!). We’ll look at the behaviours and beliefs that make resilient people so good at handling change, and how you can make them work for you.

Now that you know the beliefs and behaviours that will make you more resilient, we’ll look at useful ways of implementing these changes and making them stick.

Now that you’ve learned how to become more resilient, you’ll be much better at handling unexpected changes and challenges when they come along. If you’d like to learn more on this topic to improve your overall wellbeing, try our Time Management Toolkit or our Stress Management Toolkit.

If you’d like to go more in-depth and learn to change your behaviour to get the most out of your life, or work towards big personal or professional goals, have a look at the NLP Business Practitioner course. The Business Practitioner is a group course that runs over 10 two-hour sessions, and will help you understand the way you and others think and behave, so you can get the most out of every interaction.

Thanks for signing up for the Stress Management Toolkit. We’ll start by reframing your idea of stress, and looking at why stress can actually be a good thing.

Next, we’ll explore what stress really is – once you’ve got a better understanding of stress, you’ll be able to manage it more effectively.

Now for the really useful part: in this chapter we’ll look at some tools and techniques to help you manage stress.

Download the Relaxation Audio file here: a 14-minute audio track to help you relax and unwind. Find somewhere quiet to sit comfortably while you listen.

Important: avoid listening to this while driving or operating machinery.

Use this 3-minute mindfulness check-in to centre yourself at the start of your work day, or at the end. If your mind is racing or you’re feeling overwhelmed or stressed, this will help to bring you back to a state of calm.

Thanks for joining me on the Time Management Toolkit. In the introduction, we’ll cover what you’re going to learn on the course: how to prioritise your time, how to delegate, learning to say no to commitments you don’t have time for, dealing with distractions and procrastination, and tools to help you focus and make the most of the time you’ve got.

Download your time log here to get started keeping track of your time. Try to make a note of every activity you carry out over the course of a day, and how long it takes you.

Are you ‘through time’ or ‘in time’? In this chapter, we’ll look at the way you perceive time and how you can use this to help you manage it.

Do you know the difference between urgent and important tasks? We’ll look at an exercise designed to help you work out which tasks are important, which are urgent, and which are urgent and important.

Now that we’ve categorised the tasks on your list, we’ll look at how to prioritise, so you’ve got a workable to-do list that ensures the most important tasks are at the top.

Learning to delegate is essential for good time management. Download my Delegation Process worksheet for advice on delegating, an example of the delegation process and space for you to fill out your own.

Download the course notes for the Time Management Toolkit here: you can use these to review the concepts we covered in the course, and refer back to them if you need to refresh your memory. Download them as a PDF and read them on your mobile or tablet, or print them out and make notes.