Let's Talk about Cake !

Growing up in Indonesia, I wasn’t aware of how important public speaking was. Let’s just say, schools in Asia encourage excellence in theory more than practical. You may not be good at talking or presenting, but if you were exceptionally smart, you’ll be alright. But as soon as I moved to Perth ten years ago, my whole perspectives changed. I was amazed at how many presentations I had to do during my school years. Unlike the other kids who were able to do it simply effortlessly, I was completely nervous and not fully depending on my notes was incredibly difficult. But as time went by and more opportunities came, I am more confident in my presentation skills but there is still room for improvement.

My mum once told me that “you may be good at what you do, but if you are not good at talking and can’t do presentations, the ones that can, will get the job”. And it’s so true. I have met so many people who aren’t very good at speaking and they end up struggling to find a job. Now, some people may think that only a few people in a business should have good presentation skills. But that’s simply not the case. In whatever department you’re in, in whatever job you do, you need to have good presentation skills.

At my internship, I was lucky enough to be invited to a presentation rehearsal for potential investors. Each department, whether it’d be the CFO or the CEO had to be part of this presentation, and I must say they were great. During the rehearsal, they had someone from the Public Relations department giving comments and critiques. It was incredibly insightful and I learnt so much.

You may already know these, but here are three tips for speech presentations that I took out from the rehearsal:

1. ·         Use props – they used toys to represent their target consumers
2. ·         Don’t swap presenters too early – maintain consistency
3. ·         It is considered to be more polite to introduce the people you came with first, than to introduce yourself first

On another note, you may be wondering, what’s up with ‘the cake’ in the title? Well, I have learnt that when it’s someone’s birthday in the office, it’s worth celebrating, even if you don’t know them well. It’s simply because of the amount of food that they always bring. To have a break from work and stuff yourself with cake and other goodness, it just makes your day that much greater. Recently, we had two people who had their birthdays on the same day. You can imagine the amount of food that was in the office. It was probably the best day of the week.

Birthday cake at Secure2Go office

Until next time!

-          Heidi Jiang