The Key to Getting More of What You Want from Your Business Presentations

In the present financial climate, when all seems to be doom and gloom, it may seem inevitable to dwell on mistakes, failures and the negative aspects of life. And as long as we continue to so, then that is what we will get.  The process of what you choose to focus on,  and what you don’t focus on,  determines what you experience in your life and what you don’t experience.

 When you think about what it is that you want to    achieve in your next presentation how do you phrase it?

Do you describe what you want or do you describe what you don’t want?

Because it has a considerable affect on what actually happens.

Now you may have heard this before….. don’t think of a huge piece of chocolate cake smothered in cream.

What happens? You think of a huge piece of chocolate cake smothered in cream! Now some people will say, “no I didn’t “ but the thing is, at best it is a two part process. Your unconscious brain cannot process negatives directly. What happens is that at some level you have to process the words and consider a huge piece of chocolate cake before you can not think of it.

So what? Well if you are thinking about not getting annoyed with someone what are you actually focussing on? That’s right, getting annoyed! And that’s exactly what happens.

When you are saying to yourself “ I hope I don’t mess up in this meeting” or ” I hope I don’t forget what I’m going to say in the presentation”  your unconscious is focusing on messing up and that’s what you will do!

because we get what we expect not what we want.

So if you expect to  be nervous and mess up in a business presentation that’s what you will get. Consciously you might want something different but unconsciously your body language and your tonality will convey what you expect. You may have heard that only 7% of communication is through the words that we use, and there is a great deal of debate about whether or not that is true, but we do know that we convey and receive a great deal of information unconsciously. This means that we actually get more of what we don’t want by thinking about it.

So the key to getting less of what you don’t want is to change the way you think.

 And here is a way that I use with my clients to help them to start to do that……

I ask them to consider three recent presentation situations – it could be a meeting, a networking event or a formal boardroom type presentation- where you got what you didn’t want.

Then taking each in turn answer these questions:

What were you honestly expecting to happen in each case?

How did you know that was going to happen?

What were you saying to yourself just prior to each situation?

What did you feel in each situation?

Then I get them to think about three similar possible situations that may arise in the future and ask them to

Focus on what you want to happen. Be specific. Make this your expectation.

What are you saying to yourself when you know you will get what you expect?

What does it feel like?

 How does it affect the outcome?

because changing your expectations will change the results you get.

You can choose to have positive or negative expectations.

You may want to think about which will serve you better in terms of the results you want to get because you can’t think about what you don’t want to think about without thinking about it. Think about it!

Until next time,

with best wishes for your success,

Cath:)