Presentation Skills That Will Take You to the Top (Collection), 2/e

53. Presentation Advice from Musicians and Athletes: The Value of Effortlessness

Three famous musicians and two athletes share a performance quality that any presenter would do well to emulate. The musicians are jazz pianist Art Tatum, violinist Jascha Heifetz, and dancer Fred Astaire; the two athletes are baseball great Joe DiMaggio and any good trapeze artist. All of them are celebrated for performing their specialties with supreme effortlessness—or, in the idiom of trapeze artists, without a net. The lesson for presenters is to stand up in front of a mission-critical audience and appear supremely confident in describing their businesses. But this is far easier said than done because presenters, unlike musicians and athletes, are not performers. ...