Do you like speaking in public? It's the last thing most of us want do. So I was surprised to read how Al Gore, an experienced public speaker, reached out to Nancy Duarte to improve his public-speaking skills. Here are a few tips for the next time you have to give a presentation.

The Science of Great Presentations

Nancy Duarte knows how to make killer presentations. She founded Duarte Design, Inc., a firm that helps everyone from Google to Al Gore master public speaking. You can read her book slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations here. In an interview with Guy Kawasaki, she explained how to avoid the most common presentation pitfalls and how she helps her clients

How to Improve Your Presentations

When it comes to public-speaking, research shows that:

1. You can always improve. If an accomplished US Senator can swallow his pride and sign up for lessons, then why not you?
2. It’s a number’s game. The more you practice, the better you get. This is one of the few things in life that’s guaranteed. Practice makes perfect. Is there anything you practiced (anything?) and became worse as a result?
3. Success in one area generates more success in others. The saying, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer” applies here. If you become more successful in one area—any area—your development is echoed in other areas. Oddly enough, if you stop making efforts, instead of standing still, you slide backwards.

7 Steps to Captivating an Audience

Guy Kawasaki lists the key points:

1. Tailor you content to your audience.
2. Develop ideas first & your slides second. Use the PC when you have the idea ready.
3. Use non-digital sources for inspiration, such as objects, nature and hand sketches.
4. Make slides that the Audience can recall— not to help you remember the script.
5. Rehearse the presentation. Ask for feedback. How will the audience connect to the materials?
6. Refine, refine, refine.
7. Rehearse until you’ve NAILED it!

How Al Gore Got His Groove Back

Nancy Duarte says that they helped Al Gore with the visual story by “re-tapping into his passion and shaking the political persona was all his own work.”

Note — the success of his presentation style is that he had ‘internalized all the key messages’.

Gore delivered the presentation over 1,000 times so he was comfortable with the content and didn’t over rely on his slides.

How do you prepare for presentations? What’s the best tip you have on overcoming stage fright?