How am I Supposed to Present If I’ve Never Been Taught to?

Posted by Belinda Huckle  |  On May 21, 2024  |  In Presentation Training, Tips & Advice

How am I supposed to present if I've never been taught to?

At some point in your career, presenting will become a part (often quite a significant part) of your role. And it can happen at any time, whether you are:

  • A graduate needing to present a project update to your boss
  • A manager needing to present a new company policy to your team
  • A technical expert (SME) needing to present a business case to your Senior Leadership Team
  • A newly appointed leader needing to present a recommendation to the Board
  • A new sales exec needing to present a proposal to a client.

If you think about these occasions above, being able to present confidently and effectively is a career-critical skill for almost every role, at some point.

When we reach that stage in our careers where presenting becomes part of our role, how many of us can say we’ve received the training, feedback, and coaching necessary to do it professionally and successfully? Based on the feedback we receive, far too few!

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Presenting is a skill that needs to be learned. Just like swimming, or driving a car, or playing an instrument. In your career, are you expected to be an accountant without learning how? Or a marketer without the skills, or an engineer without the knowledge? We wouldn’t expect anyone in life, or in business, to perform any of these skills with confidence and competence without training or coaching. So why do we assume anyone can present without being taught the skills and techniques to do it?

What’s more, the result of not getting the right training, feedback and coaching to learn how to present with confidence and impact can be potentially damaging. For the individual, poor presenting skills can erode confidence, cause anxiety and stress, and even damage reputations amongst both internal and external stakeholders. For organisations, it can lead to poor communication up, down and across the business. It can mean ineffective and inefficient meetings – wasting people’s time, and resulting in poor decision making. Plus, of course, poor presenters and bad presentations can mean organisations miss sales opportunities. All these negatively impact the bottom line. When you think about it like this, learning how to present is not just career-critical. They are business-critical too.

Presentation Success - Audience clapping

So how do you know if you, or people within your business, would benefit from specialist business presenting skill training? Well, we have a handy assessment tool that can certainly help. Plus some very useful information for L&D and HR professionals and 10 reasons why secondnature are the UK business presentation skills experts. Once you’ve checked these out, then please simply get in touch, and we can have a quick chat about your/your people needs.

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If you’re looking to build the presentation skills of your team through personalised training or coaching that is tailored to your business, we can help.

For nearly 20 years we have been the Business Presentation Skills Experts, training & coaching thousands of people in an A-Z of global blue-chip organisations – check out what they say about our programmes.

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Belinda Huckle

Written By Belinda Huckle

Co-Founder & Managing Director

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Belinda is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of SecondNature International. With a determination to drive a paradigm shift in the delivery of presentation skills training both In-Person and Online, she is a strong advocate of a more personal and sustainable presentation skills training methodology.

Belinda believes that people don’t have to change who they are to be the presenter they want to be. So she developed a coaching approach that harnesses people’s unique personality to build their own authentic presentation style and personal brand.

She has helped to transform the presentation skills of people around the world in an A-Z of organisations including Amazon, BBC, Brother, BT, CocaCola, DHL, EE, ESRI, IpsosMORI, Heineken, MARS Inc., Moody’s, Moonpig, Nationwide, Pfizer, Publicis Groupe, Roche, Savills, Triumph and Walmart – to name just a few.

A total commitment to quality, service, your people and you.