Successful oral presentations are not just about meticulous slide preparation, important as that is, they're also about doing a good ‘head-job’ on yourself. You don't want to wake up in a cold sweat the night before your talk.

Remember when you took your driving test or sat your final examinations? Sure, you needed to be alert and motivated; but, if your mental pendulum happened to swing too far in that direction, you may have ended up too ‘charged-up’ to be effective. You may have missed things and made mistakes in your eagerness to impress. Similarly, if you practised your deep-breathing exercises a little excessively, you may have faced the challenge with an attitude of ‘it doesn't really matter, anyway’. I suspect most of us end up in the unhappy no-man's-land between these two extremes. We enter the arena neither motivated nor relaxed: we just get in a bit of a flap. The real trick is to find both states of mind within you and use them simultaneously. I know, I know, this is an unusual concept for us ‘fight or flight’ creatures – to stand our ground and keep our cool, but with some careful preparation it can easily be achieved, at least for a short time. Long enough to present an award-winning talk at any rate.

Here's a six-point checklist to make your presentation an enjoyable experience for both you and your audience!