Most of us have been in a situation of delivering a training or coaching session and not being sure how well the audience embraced the content or the delivery. There are a few reasons why that can happen and the one that I will focus on in this article is the importance of how you deliver your training; this all boils down to one thing - presentation skills.

So why would you want to polish your presentation skills when training?

It's not just about the content of the training that's important, it's how you deliver it. When your audience are captivated by you as a presenter, they are more likely to listen to you, embrace your content, learn more easily, remember the session. And it's also important for your audience to have fun too. People learn better when they are laughing along the way. Have you ever been in a training session where the content was interesting but the trainer was boring and monotone? Most of us have at some point.

 

Now when I use the term 'presenter', I don't necessarily mean a Chris Tarrant or an Anthony Robbins-type guru on a platform stage and an audience of thousands. When we are speaking to people, we are in fact, presenting. We present when in a conference room through using a PowerPoint presentation, we present during meetings, we present in a session with a client and even in social situations. We are presenting whether we are speaking to one person or to an audience of thousands.

I'm going to talk about the most important aspects of what it takes to train and coach at a presenter level.

Before you even start a training or coaching session, you always have to begin with the end in mind. What message do you wish to impart to your audience? What goals do you have for the end of training? What do you want to achieve out of this training? What do you want the audience to get out of it? What action do you want them to take?

In NLP terms, we call this 'Knowing your outcome' – always begin with an end in mind. Once you know your outcome, then it's easier to sketch together the training sequence. The next step during a training is to get into the 'mindzone' of a trainer.

Once you've established outcomes for your training, it's vital to access a powerful state of mind when training and presenting. In NLP terms, this is known as the 'trainer state' (otherwise known as 'peripheral vision').

So why would you want to tap into this trainer state?

When a trainer adopts that state of mind, no negative thoughts or feelings can enter into consciousness. The result? A powerful, charismatic and confident presenter that will empower the audience. The trainer state is a mind zone whereby your awareness and observational skills are drastically increased. You will begin to notice minute by minute changes in your audience and begin to understand what's going on underneath. The trainer state enables the presenter to get to grips with whether your audience is listening, understanding, learning and enjoying your content. Therefore you will get better results.

 

So what next? Once you've got yourself into the trainer state, you have to build rapport with your audience. Why? Because if the trainer doesn't take the time to establish rapport, the audience's receptivity will plummet.

So why would a trainer or coach want to be in rapport with their delegates or clients?

When there is rapport between people, the communication channels are open. How useful would it be as a trainer or coach to have such strong rapport with your audience that they welcome and accept your content and delivery and they achieved fantastic results because they really warmed to you as a trainer, and were totally focused on what you had to say?

Think about how fantastic it would be if you were in a meeting with prospective clients who really wanted to purchase your services because of the favourable impression you created? Rapport is the basis of all communication. When there is no rapport there is no communication. In NLP terms, rapport is referred to as the process of 'matching and mirroring'. We match and mirror various elements of what the person is doing in front of us, such as their postures, gestures, blinking and breathing rate. This process of consciously building rapport is incredibly powerful, and with NLP rapport building techniques you can actually learn to do this. Some people do this naturally and its also a learned skill. Rapport is essential for win-win situations and for successful business dealings that yield top results. So before you next deliver a training, think about how you are being received by the audience. The first stage is awareness.