When you think about it, the end goal of most presentations is to convince, whether that means convincing your audience to agree with your point of view, or convincing them to take the action you want them to take. Professional presenters with vast amounts of public speaking experience are usually great story tellers. In order for your presentations to come across convincingly to your audiences, they require the focus, logic and sequence of any engaging story.

You might or might not be aware of falling victim to some or all of the common mistakes that initially trip up novice presenters. Most of these learners’ mistakes relate directly back to the ethos of story telling in presentations – or lack of it. When preparing for forthcoming presentations, or looking back retrospectively at old ones, you might give yourself a confidence boost by answering a few hypothetical questions honestly.

Are you prepared to offer appropriate answers to the broad range of questions that might be posed by your audience?

If not, might your inability to appropriately answer audience questions be due to a lack of flow in your presentation?

Are your slides truly sequentially ordered?

Are you sometimes guilty of randomly leaping from one aspect of your subject matter to another without any logical connection between the two?

Do you put yourself in danger of leaving gaping holes in your presentations by trying to sound too clever, for example, by presenting answers and conclusions that lack supporting evidence?

Do you try too hard to amplify your knowledge of your subject matter by including information that is indirectly related but not directly relevant to your presentations?

Searching questions indeed and you might be wondering how they relate to the harnessing of your story telling skills to enhance your public speaking effectiveness. They do, as they are all about focus, logic and sequence:-

Focus – keep to the point. Identify information that seem interesting and smart, but realistically bears little relevance to the core messages you aim to send. Once you have identified these curve balls, eradicate them, even if you desperately want to include them because you think they sound good.

Logic – tempting as it is to provide answers and conclusions first, followed by rhyme and reason afterwards, it is illogical. Notice how the stories contained in your presentations flow so much more smoothly when you simply reverse the order of certain slides. Questions first, arguments and evidence in the middle, answers and solutions last but not least.

Sequence – stories lacking in sequential orderliness are confusing, often to the degree that they might initially capture attention, but ultimately fail to retain it. It is impossible for you to over check that your presentations are sequentially correct. When going to the time and trouble that preparation for successful presentations demands, it is a crying shame if your subject matter is right, but the sequence in which you present it is erratic and disjointed.

Your ability to recognise the mistakes you are prone to making, coupled with your willingness to improve your public speaking performances, equates to half your battle being won. So sit tight with a copy of your presentation in front of you and see how you can make instantaneously dramatic differences.

The process of becoming your best self is a journey towards wholeness. Only when we are whole do we move through life with ease, purpose and success. I believe there are five steps towards wholeness.

1. Accept Responsibility for Your Life.
2. Focus on the Elements. [Another way to say this is "Work through your Barriers"].
3. Complete the Past.
4. Plan for the Future.
5. Live in the Present.

While most of us see the value in working towards wholeness, sometimes we get stuck in accepting, or practicing, an individual step.

As if wholeness was not enough, here are the top 3 reasons for Live in the Present:

1. You get to be 100% present and live consciously. All you really have is the moment. The more consciously you live your life, the easier it is to grow and develop and focus on becoming your best self. Being capable of living in the present means that there is very little old stuff dragging you down. In turn, this allows us to put more energy into dealing with our daily life, making it flow more efficiently.
2. Staying present allows for appropriate responses to your life.. When you live “in” the moment, you respond appropriately and consciously to everything that comes your way. There is no guilt from the past or fear of the future coloring your responses. There are no unresolved buttons pushed which create inappropriate or misplaced responses. It’s a very healthy place to be!
3. You save on therapy and counseling fees. When you think about the reasons we go for therapy or counseling, the majority of those reasons stem from our guilt or anger from the past and our fears for the future. We very seldom focus on ‘current’ history, except in how it relates to our guilt or fear, our past or future. The beauty of living in the present is that you get to feel what you feel when you feel it. Acknowledging our legitimate feelings at the time allows you to express them and move on. That’s the same as saying no therapy or counseling needed!

It was coming up to the birthday of my eldest son a few weeks ago. As a parent it gets harder and harder each year, as the children get more street wise, to find a present that is both acceptable to a teenage boy as well as enabling you as a loving parent to keep the coolness that every parent tries to hang on to.

After many weeks of trying to pre-empt what he would like as a gift imagine our surprise when he approached me one morning asking for a hooded bathrobe with his initials on it, just like he’d seen a pop star or other wearing some MTV programme or other. Where on earth was I going to find a hooded monogrammed kids bathrobe.

When I was a child my birthday present were usually pretty basic things, a new football or a book or something of that ilk, nothing too taxing for my parents, I don’t think they were too bothered about trying to keep any kind of coolness going, my amusement of wondering what my parents would say if I’d have asked them for a hooded kids monogrammed bathrobe did nothing to ease my worries as to where I was going to start looking.

In the back of my mind I couldn’t help but think what my son was hoping for with hooded kid’s monogrammed bathrobe; was he hoping to emulate his gangster rap heroes with his newly acquired fashion item or was he looking to achieve the appearance of a junior mafia don?

These thoughts were more of a puzzle than a concern though and would just pop into my head at random times through out the day, maybe as diversionary tactics by my brain to detract from the main issue, where would I get my hooded kids monogrammed bathrobe from?

Obviously I didn’t want to disappoint my kid so I thought I’d better take a bit of time to research what options were available to me as far as hooded kids monogrammed bathrobe go.

After much research I discovered that there was indeed quite a demand for hooded kids bathrobes, generally the ones available are of a lightweight soft cotton weave bathrobe which are used by many of the finest tropical hotels but I didn’t think that this is quite what my kid had in mind, he wanted a rough and tough looking hooded kids monogrammed bathrobe that had attitude, not something straight out of Fantasy Island.

Imagine my amazement when on my travels around the country I was thumbing through a local newspaper only to see an advertisement for a Turkish company that were in town for one week only selling bathrobes of the very finest quality in all shapes and sizes, I had to make contact with them while I could.

I found a contact number and after much confusion finely described what it exactly was that I needed, a hooded kid’s monogrammed bathrobe, and when I wanted it for.

I chose a blue bathrobe, terry interior cotton outside with gold piping and with a plush feel to it. I gave them my kid’s initials and the order was placed.

The order for the hooded kid’s monogrammed bathrobe was e mailed directly to the Turkish bathrobe manufacturers [http://designer-bathrobes.com/The_News/Latest_News/Turkish_Bathrobes] and within 3 weeks a parcel arrived on my doorstep, a week earlier than quoted.

The bathrobe was magnificent, my son’s face was a real picture on his birthday, I was the coolest Dad in town and everything was perfect.

I have to say I love the hooded kids bathrobe so much I’ve ordered myself one.

Like father like son.