Top 5 Strategies to Effective Public Speaking

I was never a huge fan of public speaking. I was always very nervous and had this overwhelming feeling the audience was judging my every word. I now know how to overcome my fears and deliver a memorable presentation.

I have summarized for you the top 5 strategies I use to make sure every presentation is a showstopper.

Realize 90% of Nervousness Doesn’t Even Show

The audience usually can’t see the telltale symptoms of nervousness. The butterflies, the shaky hands or the sweaty palms. The key is for you to not focus on them either. You need to focus on the audience. When you do this two things will happen: 1) they will like you more, and 2) much of the nervousness that you feel will go away.

Don’t Avoid Eye-Contact.

When we are nervous, it is a natural reaction to want to hide. When you are standing in front of a group of people where do you hide? You can’t. So you will tend to look down or look away from your audience. If we can’t see them they can’t see us, right? Wrong.

The other trick people try is to look over the tops of their heads. The idea here is that by looking a peoples foreheads, they will think you are looking at them. Wrong again.

You need to look directly into people’s eyes with kindness. Create a rapport with the audience through your visual contact. If anyone smiles when you look at him or her, smile back. This will make you, and the audience, feel more at ease and will make your presentation more genuine.

Identify three people in the audience whom you want to speak to: One on your left, one in front of you and one on your right. Deliver your speech to these three people. Look at each one for about 4-5 seconds and “switch target” to the next person. Don’t maintain eye contact for too long. This will create an uncomfortable situation. You don’t want to creep people out.

By using this technique, it will give the impression to the entire audience that you are making eye contact, because you are sweeping the room with your glances.

Don’t Apologize.

Never start a presentation with an apology. By starting a presentation with an apology for your nervousness or for having a cold, you are drawing attention to something the audience may not have noticed. You are also announcing to the audience, “the presentation you are about to receive is less than you deserve, but please don’t blame me.”

Avoid Rushing Monotone Voice.

A fast paced monotone speech is a sure-fire way to make your audience feel unimportant. It will also cause them to lose focus and become bored. How many lectures did you sit through in school listening to a monotone professor drone on about whatever subject he was teaching? How much of those lectures did you actually remember?

You don’t want to subject your audience to this same torture and you want them to remember what you talked about.
You can easily avoid monotone messages. Before saying a word think about the value of your message. Think about the aspects that create passionate feelings. Think about speaking clearly with compassion. Smile. Tell yourself a joke. Take a huge confidence breath.
Use eye-contact, positively say “you,” and flow with the message. If you do, you’ll hear, “I felt like you were speaking specifically to me.” That’s one of the best compliments you can get. And it proves that you’re speaking TO not AT the audience.

Limit your talk to a few key points.

Narrow down your topic to either one key point for a short talk, or three key points for a longer talk (a talk longer than 30-minutes). Ask yourself, “If my audience only remembered one thing from my talk, what would be the most important thing for them to remember?” The more points your presentation has, the less focus the audience will have on each individual point. Once you have your key points, then create your PowerPoint slides.

If you remember these five key points, you will be sure to knock-em dead

Unapologetic Public Speaking – Speaking With Confidence!

In the romantic movie, “Love Story”, a phrase about love was introduced that went, “Love means never having to say your sorry”. And while anyone who is married knows how untrue that is, we could easily adapt that concept to the world of public speaking.

As a public speaker confidence is key. That means if you’re doing your job right, there will never be a desire or a need to say your sorry to your audience.

The psychological principle behind this rule is solid and it’s not based just in ego. This rule is not created to make you out to be some super-hero who never makes a mistake. The foundation for this rule is that you have absolutely nothing to appologize for if your audience and your message is matched up with perfection. That doesn’t mean you’ll always get this perfect. With time and developing a skill of reading the audience, you’ll be speaking with more confidence than ever.

When a speaker gets up before a group, there are the assumptions that the crowd has about you. And they want to know that these things are true so they know they will be made to feel comfortable during your presentation. The core of those assumptions are….

. You are confident.
. You know what you are talking about.
. That you like them, are passionate about your subject matter and are genuinely happy to be there.
. You are comfortable in the public speaking role and
. They want to like you.

These assumptions are strongly ingrained into the psychology of a crowd and you can relate to them as you have listened to a speaker.

If that speaker is at ease, relates to the crowd in a confident easy going way and is not easily “thrown” by the little things that happen during a talk, then you relax and in doing so, you are more open to what the speaker has to say.

Learning to react to issues that come up or to handle objections or perceived errors or weaknesses in your script is just part of becoming confident as a speaker. When you do have to adjust, lose your place or respond to a question that points to a flaw in your presentation, the real issue that is on trial here is not the problem or even how you answer. It is whether you can handle that problem with grace and poise and move on that makes the difference.

If you become flustered or violate that assumption that you are confident and you know what you are doing up there, you create insecurity in the audience.

And that is the last thing they want to experience. An audience is a captive population and they know that. So they want to like you and be able to trust you to be their captain and safely guide them through to the other side, even if the trip is a bit bumpy along the way.

This is why an apology for a problem, a weakness in your material is a big mistake during a presentation. Think about how uncomfortable you feel when someone is speaking before you and are apologizing for their talk.

If you come across challenges or problem questions it’s much better to approach it head on and say something like “Great point! Let me find that out for you and get back to you personally.” Handling a challenge in this manner allows you to maintain an air of confidence and portray a leadership that invokes greater confidence in you as the speaker.

Remember that they are there to hear you and are actively waiting for you to take the lead. Lead with confidence and never apologize – that attitude will never stear you wrong!

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