5 Steps To Improve How You Present Yourself

Posted on December 06, 2018 by Veronica Mesuraca, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

Have you found yourself at the awkward moment when someone is asking you “what do you do?” or you are introducing yourself and you either mumbled something quickly to move on in the conversation, or it took you 3 minutes that felt like 3 hours to say who you are and what you do?

If this is you, please know you are not alone. Nonetheless, it’s still a pity because you don’t want to miss potential opportunities.

I know… How do you effectively summarize who you are and what you do, let alone including how and why, in a few lines, in a way that is clear, confident and concise? Well, it takes some work and some practice, but you can totally do it!

Below, I share 5 actionable steps that you can take to improve how you present yourself so you can make a great first impression, grow your network, attract your ideal clients or land that job opportunity you really want.

Step 1. Plan it

Think about what it is that you really want to say about who you are and what you do, how it is that you want to come across in your presentation, and also what kind of outcome you would ideally like to create from that presentation. This step will help you become more intentional about how you present yourself.

Step 2. Write it

Thinking about how you want to present yourself and what you would like to get out of it is great, but it’s not enough. You need to write it down. To really articulate what you want to say, don’t limit your writing to some quick notes and keywords, write in sentences. Your presentation shouldn’t be more than 2-3 lines and you should be able to read it in 30 seconds or less. You can also write different versions of it because the way you want to present yourself at a party might be very different from the way you want to present yourself at a business meeting.

Step 3. Practise it

This is a step that people often skip but it’s crucial because it helps you become more comfortable and confident with how you present yourself. Take some time to say your presentation out loud and notice whether it sounds like you and it’s on point, or you still need to work on it. If you want to take this step to the next level, record yourself. If you record yourself on camera, you will also be able to check if your body language is aligned with how you want to come across in your presentation. Remember that a big percentage of how our communication is perceived by people around us is formed by our body language, including our facial expressions, and our tone of voice.

Step 4. Test it

Now it’s time to test your presentation starting in a context where you feel relatively comfortable, such as a friend’s party. This is a great opportunity to observe how you feel when you present yourself as well as how people react to it. Are they asking you more questions because they are curious about what you do and want to know more about it, or are they looking for clarification because what you said is not really clear to them? This way you will be able to take note of what you still need to improve.

Step 5. Improve it

The idea behind this final step is to use all notes and observations gathered in previous steps, especially in step 4, to improve your presentation. It might be about changing some words or rephrasing a part of your presentation that is still not clear and specific enough, or it could be about making it even more catchy by changing the sequence of your sentences to immediately grab people’s attention.

The way you present yourself today might be very different from the way you will want to present yourself in the future, so these are steps that you will always to able to go back to and reutilise at any point in your career and life, in which you will want to improve how you present.

Are you ready to step up and present yourself like a pro?