You may love or hate President Obama, but you have to admit that his presentation skills are outstanding in every way, which is not bad for an obscure state lawmaker. I spend my life presenting whether it be to customers, employees or my children (they may be 24 and 25 years old but it still takes a good amount of thought, preparation and rehearsal to get agreement!). It's pretty much a daily occurrence for me, but still I know that if I was judged as a school report, it would say, "could do better", Alistair needs to  "try harder".

Last Friday I sent myself off on a one day refresher "masterclass in presentation skills" course facilitated by “Speak First”. I do recommend them highly despite a very difficult and awkward day that exposed my weaknesses. Speak First are experts at helping you with public speaking. I quickly realized that I had heard much of it before and had forgotten most of it. I had got myself into the habit of assuming that a bit of content with good detail, a fine graphical set of slides and a bit of personality would do the trick….product sold.

My weaknesses and highly developed bad habits were soon exposed on video. I had forgotten the importance of body language, delivery, gaining empathy and being authentic (as Obama is). My laziness had become apparent with respect to proper preparation, eliciting the state of the audience and using the power of story telling. I haven’t been using the language of leaders such as contrast, repetition and rhetoric.

Over the years I have seen numerous folk from my colleagues to industry leaders, good promising people, me included, fail abysmally to get their message across or win that deal, because they failed to prepare properly and rehearse. In these difficult times, it's time to retrain. Presentation skills in Acentic’s business is the most important skill and I for one need to get better. It got Obama to the White House.