By Liz Radzick of Manifest Consulting

You know you’ve done it before: What you think will be the right portion size of dry spaghetti for two ends up filling three containers of leftovers. That weekend vacation to Montreal? You didn’t really need to pack five pairs of pants. And that presentation you gave to the team last week – that was a Baconator portion of data served up in what was only meant to be a 10 minute update.

Many people make the mistake of putting too much in their pasta pots, suitcases, and in their presentations: data, visuals, bullets, long-winded explanations. And usually it’s not until after the water has boiled, we are unpacking our luggage back at home, and the group we were talking to is glazed-over that we realize: that was just TOO MUCH.

So here’s a way to Simple-Size your presentation and make it fit the amount of time you have to talk.

Assume you have 20 min to speak.

Now assume that the meeting is running late and you only have 15 min.  This is the norm so better to plan for it.

Allocate 2 min at the beginning and 2 min at the end for your intro/agenda and closing statements.

You now have11 minutes. Divide 11 by the number of topic areas you want to discuss. For example, if you have 3 topic areas you can talk for just less than 4 min per topic. Or you can give one topic more time and expand another. But you only have 11 min to work with. Remember this.

Now you are ready to determine what you can realistically cover in the time allocated. What do you fundamentally want your audience to know/understand/believe or feel? Keep asking this question over and over as you pull you slides together. Ask yourself if you REALLY need to read all the safety steps on how to run the photocopier to your audience, or whether that could be relayed in a handout or email.

Finally, if this is an interactive presentation and you will be allowing questions, shrink down the amount of data you will present even more to allow for this. Surprising how little ground you can cover in a “20 min presentation” isn’t it?

You have now Simple-Sized your presentation. And let me know if you need some extra sun block…for some reason I have 6 bottles of it in my suitcase.

By Liz Radzick of Manifest Consulting

Superbowl Sunday was over two weeks ago and although I’m not a sports fan, I know for certain what happened before the kick-off took place: Both teams warmed-up in order to play their best game.

I believe that giving a presentation is no different from a sporting event because it’s a physical event. You don’t just communicate with your mouth – you use your whole body and presence. So what can you do to warm-up before a presentation?

Stretch and Bend. To avoid muscle stiffness and locked knees it’s a good idea to do some side bends, calf stretches…anything that you might do before other sports to get the blood flowing. I often start at the top of the body with neck rolls and shoulder circles and arm stretches. Your gestures will be much more relaxed and you will feel more comfortable gesturing with your arms away from your body than if you are tight in the pecs and upper body.

Face Off.  Nothing like a blank, expressionless face at the front of the room delivering good news on the 4^th quarter sales results to inspire the troops. Facial relaxation exercises are important because sitting in front of a computer all day doesn’t encourage eyebrow, mouth and cheek movement. Say “Bee-Boh” slowly over and over while exaggerating your facial movements –make a wide smile on “Bee” and a long fish face on “Boh.” Do not do this in front of your audience.

Untie Your Tongue. My favorite tongue exercises are as follows: Count from 1-10, recite the days of the week and the months of the year while holding the following positions: biting the tip of your tongue so that only the back of your tongue can move, placing your tongue over your lower teeth and behind your lower lip as if you had a poppyseed stuck in your teeth, and hanging your tongue out of your mouth like Gene Simmons from KISS. (Have I just dated myself?) Doing these exercises will help relax and limber up your tongue so that if you have an early morning conference call you won’t sound slushy.

Just Breathe. Take in 3 or 4 slow breaths while sitting in crash position in a chair. You’ll feel your belt dig into your stomach. You’ll feel your ribs expand. Now sit up slowly and take 3 breaths while sitting up. This should calm you down.

Now get out there and win!