As part of Careers Month for professional development at NBCUniversal ANZ, Annie Ding, Aspen Morgan, Ella Esposito Doolan and their colleagues participated in AFTRS’ Presentation Skills training on campus.
Hailing from NBCUniversal ANZ’s sales and marketing departments, Annie, Aspen and Ella are frequently presenting in their roles, whether that’s internally, taking teams through campaigns or externally, working with NBCUniversal ANZ’s partners. With differing approaches to presenting before the course, the three professionals were looking to align on some best practices as well as build their confidence in public speaking.
Aspen:
“I work across multiple departments including sales, marketing and PR, so 99% of my presentations are internal and ad hoc. It was important for me to hear about the universal feelings of anxiety towards presentations and the elements and tricks to combat that feeling.”
Annie:
“I do internal presentations to senior management for approvals and ideas, as well as with my team taking them through campaigns, and the workshop has definitely helped raise awareness of the nuances of presenting that I’m now really conscious of.”
Stepping inside AFTRS for the day, the participants were met by tutors Jess Campanaro and Melissa Femia. The two industry experts have a wealth of experience in radio, media and presenting, and shared their insights and anecdotes around presenting and connections with the industry.
Unanimously, Annie, Aspen and Ella were struck by the filming element of the course; presenting a short piece to camera with the opportunity to rewatch and critique their own performance after.
“Definitely the filming struck me!” said Annie. “Walking into the room and seeing the setup with the camera and the lights, it was a little daunting,” added Aspen. “But it was nice to conquer that minor fear.” Ella also mentioned, “Knowing it was coming up was helpful, in hindsight, getting to work towards it during the day.”
Reflecting on the course, there were a few common elements the three participants took away. With a strong focus on understanding your audience, preparing and structuring the content to relate to and captivate who you’re presenting to were shared takeaways from the training.
Annie:
“My key takeaway was storytelling and knowing what you want to get out of who is in the room. Talking in headlines, saying exactly what you need, all of these elements have changed my perspective of how I present to an audience. I also took away some ideas from Jess on how to start your presentation and introduce yourself.”
Aspen:
“Two elements stood out for me: people resonate with storytelling much more than cold, hard facts. And it was great to look at elements for online presenting as well, such as how to set up your camera, looking at the camera while you speak, and how to have a presence in a small space.”
Ella:
“For me, it came back to having a formula in case there’s no time to thoroughly prepare for a presentation. It doesn’t matter whether I’m presenting internally or externally, I have a formula and structure I can rely on.”
Armed with confidence and a suite of new skills in their professional toolkits, Annie, Aspen and Ella are ready to tackle their next presentations and would recommend the training for those needing a boost for work, ahead of an interview, or just to refine their public speaking.
Ella:
“You can always improve your public speaking and presentations; there isn’t a ceiling on how well you can present. No matter where you’re at in your journey, you can always improve and having that recording and reviewing it in that way, is something you don’t get to do on your own.”
Aspen:
“Coming to a reputable institution like AFTRS for this course, I trusted that we were going to get a lot out of it. All of the knowledge I have of AFTRS and the previous short films I worked on, I was excited about the workshop and the experience exceeded my expectations.”
To learn more about Presentation Skills and our Customised Training courses, head over to AFTRS for Business.
