Archive for March, 2010
The Five Musts For Effective Public Speaking
The 5 Immutable Laws of Public Speaking
- Be Clear On The Message – Often times, a speaker will focus on what to say to impress the audience instead of the message that he/she wishes to share. When the message is of value and of benefit to the audience, you will make an impact. There are so many techniques that you can learn on presenting. Just do a simple search on the Internet and you will be able to download tons of materials on techniques but the real power is in the message. What is it that you want to share? How will your message and content add value to the audience?
There is always a message behind a presentation. When the message has meaning, is relevant to the audience, adds value, touches the heart, is sincere and comes from a place of contribution, you will influence your audience and your presentation will not only be memorable but highly effective.
- Trust Your Knowledge and Expertise – If you are asked to speak on a topic, obviously you must be an expert on the topic. If you are not, then you better become an expert fast or decline to speak. You must also be completely assured on the fact that you know your subject inside out and given any other opportunity, (when not in front of a group or large audience) you speak very eloquently, knowledgably and convincingly on the topic. So the key is to transfer this to the stage.
You know your subject inside out, trust that you know your content and do not let intimidation of who’s in the audience or what people may think to distract you from your expertise.
- Do Not Compete With A PowerPoint Presentation – I’ve seen enough of presentations that were devastated by the ghastly modern tool we call “PowerPoint” that I now encourage ALL the participants who go through my training to let it go completely, if possible.
Among the many downsides of using PowerPoint, 95% of the time there will be a technical error which interrupts the flow of your presentation and makes for a very awkward opening. If you must use a PowerPoint, if it is required within corporate guidelines and you must use it to show graphs, etc, then use it wisely.
Make PowerPoint YOUR TOOL and not the other way around. Turn it off when you are speaking and only turn it on to show the graphs or images. As a speaker, you will be lost when competing with a screen that shows text that you read while positioned to the side, and often in the dark!
- Drink Water and Breathe! – Incredibly simple and people often underestimate the importance of hydration and breathing for a presentation. It’s amazing how people will eat a big lunch or have alcohol before a presentation. Sometimes when I am presenting, I may go the entire day without food and just drink water for energy. Food, especially starchy food, can weigh your body down and affect your energy levels.
I am not suggesting you fast but rather, eat light meals the day before a presentation and avoid caffeine. Breathing and drinking water sends energy to the brain and will keep you fresh and alert for your presentation.
- Preparation, Preparation, Preparation – Practicing, rehearsing, preparing until you master your presentation will do wonders for your confidence. A lot of my clients often leave it to the final hour and then I get a panic call a few days before because they have not prepared and need some last minute coaching. It’s not a pleasant feeling – that panicky feeling in the pit of the stomach just before a presentation.
To avoid this, all you need to do is to prepare. Set a schedule when you will prepare the content, fine-tune it, rehearse, and rehearse again, and rehearse again in front of a mirror and then rehearse again in front of a trial audience. You get the picture? It takes a lot of practice to master the skill. Make the time and you will never be left with the panicky feeling again.
For more resources on public speaking, simply go http://www.publicspeakinghk.com.
Cecilia Yeung specializes in sales development, communication & presentation skills, leadership training and customized facilitation processes. She is based in Hong Kong and has worked extensively in 12 countries across Asia Pacific.
Master These Public Speaking Skills To Succeed
These are two of the most critical techniques to learn when speaking in public. Relaxation and Confidence can make all the difference in a good speech to a great speech.
Follow these tips to improve your public speaking skills:
Relax…
You can use all the tips and techniques outlined in any speech guide and still make a lousy speech if you don’t relax. All speech books TELL you to relax. But will you really relax? The true test of whether you can advance in your public speaking abilities is the level of relaxation you can induce before, during and after a public speaking event. Ask yourself, “How can I relax? Will I relax?”
You will, you have to if you want to succeed. So what do you relax about, and how? First, you have to dispel any notion you have about the importance of your speech. In truth, during the course of your life, speakers will deliver more than one billion speeches.
It is very unlikely your speech will have such a great impact that it will change the world forever. And, if your speech did have that kind of impact, chances are you already know how to relax.
Now, various books will offer you suggestions about how to relax. They may say, “Pretend the audience is naked.” I don’t know about you, but that is likely to make me MORE nervous. You may find you are now too distracted to relax. What if your mother were in the audience? So how DO you relax?
Forget about your speech. Do your homework, practice and then tuck it away. People who relax do what they have to do to prepare a speech, and then forget about it until the time comes to speak. You should do the same.
Do something fun. Go for a bike ride. Sing a goofy song. Jump on a trampoline. Think of what you plan to do AFTER your speech. In fact, you should plan something extravagant and rewarding, something you will look forward to following your grand delivery.
And remember, in the grand scheme of things, your speech will not likely shatter the earth. Some people find simply speaking out, saying, “Boy am I nervous,” helps them relax. If you do that, write it down, say it out loud, then say, “I am glad I got that over with. I feel great now.”
Good chance you WILL feel better. Don’t focus on what will go wrong, focus on what you know will go right, and what you plan to have for dinner later that night. In the end your speech making ability will improve tenfold.
Feel Confident…
Do you smell that? It smells funky. What is it? You can’t quite place it, but you know that smell. It is familiar, you’ve smelt it before. What is it? Oh yes, it is fear… You can smell fear a mile away. If you walk up to the center stage and lack confidence, before you utter a single word your entire audience will feel your fear.
This will resonate throughout the auditorium like a clap of thunder. What happens next is like a chain reaction. Your audience begins to squirm. They feel uncomfortable. They worry about what you plan to say. They fidget even more. This may cause you to fidget. All of this will detract from the moment at hand, and likely impact your speech in a negative way.
What do you do about it? Pretend you are confident. Strut your stuff, put a little hop in your walk, and a little kick in your stance. Make sure when you approach your audience, you stand up tall and SMILE. The very act of smiling will undoubtedly cause a chain reaction in your audience.
As you smile, others will soon follow. This will fill the room with positive energy, energy you can absorb, energy that will allow you to feel more powerful and more confident.
You also have to remember that YOU are the one delivering the speech. So, no matter what you talk about, you are in charge. You are the expert. You have the power. People are looking to you for information or advice, or possibly just a good joke. Live in the moment.
As long as you have the power, you should feel confident. Remember that. And when in doubt, fake it. It always works.
Bradney Davis is a entrepreneur and frequent public speaker. Sharpen Your Public Speaking Skills Even Further http://www.speakingpowersecrets.com/
The Easy Way To Beat Public Speaking Anxiety
Overcoming public speaking anxiety is not an easy task. Your knees shake, your hands sweat, and your heart pumps even faster than you can count; but if you have the determination to succeed on stage, overcoming public speaking anxiety is a breeze.
There are a lot of reasons why your fear is triggered when you speak in public. These are some of the reasons why overcoming public speaking anxiety can be challenging at first:
? You feel that you may commit errors in grammar or provide invalid information along the way. ? You feel the people around you are judging you wrongly. ? You feel insecure about the topic of discussion. ? You feel the audience doesn’t like you as their speaker. ? You feel the audience doesn’t understand your point.
Treat your audience as a friend by giving them the benefit of the doubt about how they feel and think about you. Instead of feeling like they don’t like you, assume that they do and you’ve taken the important first step to overcoming public speaking anxiety.
Keep your audience awake by being provocative. Ask some questions and maintain eye contact for a couple of seconds to as many people as you can inside the room. Change your voice tone when there’s a need to emphasize things.
The center stage is not the most comfortable place in the world, and public speaking has been known to top the list of fears for most people. Your body reacts to the pressure you’re going through while in front of your audience.
Don’t worry because the feeling is absolutely normal. When all that adrenalin reacts to how you feel, overcoming public speaking anxiety can become easy. You may model other successful public speakers but remember to put your own unique style in your speech delivery.
Michael Lee has prepared a FREE anxiety-busting and panic-fighting course that reveals secrets on effectively treating panic disorders and anxiety at http://www.20daypersuasion.com/panic-secret.htm
Top Speakers Give Their Top Public Speaking Tips
My latest obsession is public speaking. I don’t know what hit me, but I’m finding myself making excuses to speak in front of people. As with photographing people, I started, because I was afraid of it, and I had over come that fear by just doing it (repeatedly), until I fell in love with the act and couldn’t stop. Public speaking is similar. I’ve extracted out some useful tips from “Podium Tactics From 28 Public-Speaking Pros“. These are general tips from the speakers. I will cover specific techniques in a later blog post.
- “..putting aside a lack of confidence and delivering a message more important than your feelings and sensitivity. It’s about recognizing that your presentation is meant to help someone.”, George Foreman
- “The single most important thing you can do is put yourself in other people’s heads and hearts. I think about what they truly need, not what I want to talk about. Whatever size the group, whether five or 5,000 people, you have to at least try to imagine what each of those individuals are there for.”, Tony Robbins, motivational speaker and life coach
- “If you believe in something, you can talk about it. … When I talk to people, I have one thing on my mind: How can I help that person?…”, Jack LaLanne, 92-year-old fitness guru
- “John F. Kennedy said ‘You should not open your mouth unless you hope to change the world.’ While that’s a bit grandiose for me, you shouldn’t give a public speech unless you want to make something happen.”, Tom Peters, communications consultant
- “minimize data. We have a ‘three’ rule: Don’t tell them more than three things. I speak at nursery schools; … I force myself to do that because it really forces me to get down and think [about] the basic message and how can I communicate it as simply as possible.”, Allen Hershkowitz, Ph.D
- “Slow down, especially at the beginning of a speech.You’ll get the audience’s attention by pausing.”, Bob Kerrey
- “Don’t be afraid to work ‘off book’ (without a written speech). …On a little scrap of paper, I wrote down key words that I knew would spark stories or themes that could get the ball rolling. … If you have enthusiasm and excitement, if you show your humanity up there, that’s when the audience starts to warm up.”, Richard LaGravenese
- “Engage the lowest common denominator, someone with a negative attitude or who can’t concentrate. If I can engage that person, everyone else with fall like a domino.”, Erin Gruwell
- “I’m trying to speak to each person individually. Eye contact is critical. I move from west to east, making contact with people for a second or two. If there’s someone who seems disengaged, I’ll keep coming back in hopes of reaching them.”, Rev. Kieran Harrington
- “The night before a speech, I go over my notes right before I go to sleep. …elps your brain absorb the material.”, Sally Koslow
- “For years, I presented like other people presented, and it was like wearing clothes that didn’t fit. It was much more helpful to do things my own way.”, Tom Yorton, president of The Second City.
- “If you are the type that gets frightened or intimidated by speaking to large groups, it doesn’t hurt to speak to a couple people in the audience before you start your speech.”, Kate White, editor in chief of Cosmopolitan
- “Use a [Microsoft] PowerPoint presentation as a support rather than as a document. All too often, the presenter tries to cram the whole story into the slides, and winds up with just a massive data-dump of graphics that neither tell nor assist the story…. one, two or three words with an image. It captures the essence of the story while the newsreader gives the details.”, Jerry Weissman, founder of Power Presentations
- “Have a unifying theme tethered to a powerful, inspirational story that will be sufficiently moving to be remembered long after the lights are dimmed and the microphone turned off.”, Ken Starr, former White House independent counsel
- “Compliment the audience. Every invitation to speak is a compliment and an honor to you”, Dr. Robert H. Schuller
- “Make a point using a funny and familiar everyday observation. …At this point, I’ve got the audience nodding and laughing-and the pressure is off. Now I can begin to teach them all the clever, low-key approaches they can take to establish that initial credibility with consumers.”, John Palumbo
- “No matter how serious the presentation is, you can’t take yourself too seriously. Self-deprecation is always part of my speech. It helps the audience know we’re all in the same boat”, Marty Markowitz
- “Say the same things over in different ways, especially when you are trying to sell something. …It will make an imprint that people will remember.”, Judge Maria Lopez
- “I just try to get people to relax right off the top. You want your audience to settle in, …It doesn’t have to be funny necessarily, but something to snap people out of whatever doldrums they might be into.”, Steve Levy
Tina is passionate about Personal Development and Spiritual Growth. She runs multiple businesses and has learned how to do so without any Stress. Visit her website at Think Simple. Be Decisive for her secrets to Productivity, Motivation, Creativity and Happiness.
Causes of Public Speaking Phobia and Anxiety
tudies show that public speaking phobia, and most phobias, develop in middle or late childhood stage. It usually starts from an unpleasant experience like being humiliated in front of the class; this unpleasant experience gets stored in the child’s memory and is brought up when faced with similar situations. Children who have been exposed to people with public speaking phobia, like their parents or friends, learn the phobia by hearing them. Research also shows that genetics also play an important role in developing phobias. Phobias are mostly likely to occur in identical twins, than in fraternal twins.
Luckily, there are many ways to treat Phobia. * PERSONAL MOTIVATION. There are many self-help books that can help you overcome your public speaking phobia. Your desire to overcome your fear is the most important factor of treatment. * PROFESSIONAL TREATMENT. If self-treatment does not work for you, you can seek help from a professional. *Other kinds of treatment include, Counseling, Hypnosis and Medication. This method is used if the sufferer has other mental conditions that are affected by the phobia. Using medication alone cannot cure the phobia.
Cause of Public Speaking Anxiety
Even the most experienced speaker gets anxious when speaking in public. However, this fear can be controlled so that you can put your fear to your advantage. People are afraid of rejection by their audience. Thus, many are terrified of speaking in public for fear of being criticized by the crowd for how they look or how they deliver their speech. On the contrary, audiences are very understanding about the speaker’s problem with stage fright. You become more nervous when your fear of the audience increases.
Some strategies that can help you overcome your fear of the audience. Choose a topic that you like and you are familiar with. The more comfortable you are about your chosen topic, the more confident you are in facing your audience. Concentrate on your topic. Focus on your topic and not on yourself. When you start to think of your subject matter and not yourself, your fear of speaking will likely decrease, Trust in your capability of delivering your speech. Showing that you are in charge decreases your fear and increases your confidence in facing the situation, Bridge the gap between your audience and yourself. Analyze carefully to establish rapport.
There are two ways to win over your fear of failure, Picture yourself succeeding. If you think that you will stutter in front of many people, chances are you will stutter. But if you visualize yourself delivering your speech well, then, you will, Face your fear. You cannot overcome your fear unless you show it and admit that you are afraid of it. Take time to write your speech. Review it and rewrite if necessary. If you are confident with your speech, the less terrified you will be about speaking in public. Practice and ask for suggestions on how you can improve your speech. Ask a friend of relative to act as your audience. Once you have delivered your topic, ask for their feedback.
zhafran public speaking and motivation please visit www.motivationnews.com
Talk To Your Public Speaking Audience
One of the secrets for becoming a dynamic public speaker is to make eye contact with your audience. While there are some courses on presentation skills or public speaking that teach you to stare at an object on the wall in order to eliminate your nervousness, I couldn’t disagree more.
Forget trying to eliminate your nervousness. However, nervousness affects you – be it that extra spurt of adrenaline (also known as the rush), your heart beating faster, those knots in your stomach – let it work for you, not against you. All great performers, great actors, great athletes, and great public speakers experience nervousness. If you think they don’t, then you are wrong. Their nervousness is one of the characteristics which helps make them great. The answer lies in learning how to control the nervousness, not eliminate it.
I teach what I refer to as the 5 characteristics of a dynamic public speaker and each one of those characteristics helps you control your nervousness as well. Making eye contact with your audience is one of those characteristics and it is invaluable because once you are able to look into the eyes of your listeners, you are then taking the first step in being conversational with your audience. Many people are under the mistaken belief that when they stand at the lectern, on the podium or at the boardroom table, they should be someone other than who they are. That is wrong. The person you are in your office or in your home, in a social situation or a business setting, is the person that should be giving that speech or that presentation. Don’t try to be someone you’re not. First and foremost, be yourself
What you will also discover when you make eye contact is that you have smilers. Every audience has its smilers. So the next step is to focus on those smilers: they make you feel good, they bolster your confidence. And, because they are smiling, you will think they are in agreement with you, again, bolstering your confidence, another means for you to take control of that nervousness. The smilers will be located throughout your audience so when you zero in on the person smiling on your left for example, everyone in that area will think you are looking them.
Remember too, that if you will have people on your left, in the center, and to your right. Do not focus just on one section. Move your gaze from the left to the center and to the right. Recently I heard a speaker who did move his head from one side to the other; however, his gaze was so very brief that I realized he wasn’t making eye contact with anyone. It was quite disconcerting because I knew that he was just spitting out words – he was not communicating.
Next you must prepare for your sleepers. Just as every audience has its smilers, so too, every audience has a sleeper or two. Sleepers may tell you that they listen with their eyes closed. That is fine. But truly you may have someone sound asleep. My very first paid speaking engagement was to a group of professional secretaries. A woman in the front row, a retired secretary who probably got out once a month for this meeting, fell soundly asleep within the first 10 minutes of my presentation. I was aghast, thinking I must have been terribly boring. (She was snoring to boot!) The moment I finished, however, a woman in the back of the room stood and asked me if I would agree to be their guest speaker at their yearly conference. That’s when I realized an occasional sleeper is okay! If, on the other hand, your entire audience is asleep, I suggest you change jobs!
Public speaking is a marvelous means of communicating with others. You may be giving a persuasive presentation, you may be talking about a harrowing experience, you may be there as the after-dinner entertainment. Whatever your reason to stand and speak in front of others, remember that when you learn to talk TO your audience and not AT them, you are then acknowledging that audience. By acknowledging them, you become more personal, more intimate, treating them just as if you were having a conversation in your living room. That is one of the secrets to become a dynamic public speaker.
Nancy Daniels is a voice specialist, public speaking expert, and president of Voice Dynamic. Working privately and corporately, she launched Voicing It! in April of 2006, the first video training course on voice improvement. You can watch a clip from her DVD on her website, ‘before’ & ‘after’ takes of her clients, and a 16-minute video in which Nancy describes what voice training can do for you at http://www.voicedynamic.com/products.htm
How To Use Public Speaking To Promote Your Business
If you’re a savvy marketer, you’ve got all kinds of clever ways to get the word out about your business. You might have a blog or a customer newsletter, take out paid ads in newspapers and magazines, or submit press releases when you have news. You might donate products or services to charity, use free directories, have a page on MySpace, or offer free consultations.
There are myriad free and low-cost ways to promote your business. Have you considered public speaking? Public speaking includes not just giving speeches, but also attending mixers, networking events and referrals groups.
Public speaking is a free and easy way to promote your business. Here are some ways to make it work for you.
Pointer 1: Make friends and build relationships through networking
Attending networking events can be nerve-wracking, especially when you don’t know a single person in the room. You see people standing around in groups and you wonder, “How am I ever going to break in?”
Networking is about making connections and building relationships, not about throwing your business card at anyone who will take it. How you present yourself at these events (and any time you talk about your business) is how people will remember you and your business. Make an effort to get to know people and find out how you can be a resource to them in ways that might or might not include your business.
When you enter the room, look for the host. She can point out people for you to meet or introduce you to someone you don’t know. This is the host’s job, so take advantage of it.
A good way to be indispensable at a networking event is to act like you are the host. When you see someone standing alone or looking uncomfortable, take the opportunity to introduce yourself and strike up a conversation. Put others’ comfort before your own and you will be making friends in no time. Show confidence on the outside, even if you don’t feel it inside. Put out your hand and introduce yourself to people. It gets easier the more you do it, and others will appreciate that you took the initiative!
Keep moving. If you talk to only one person all evening, you’re not meeting anyone else! To exit a conversation, say that you’re going to get another drink, or find the restroom, or that you see someone you need to talk to. Or just say “Excuse me,” and walk away. It’s not always comfortable finding a way to leave a conversation, but it’s not at all rude.
After the event, stay in touch with the people you’ve met. Send an e-mail or make a call to say you enjoyed meeting them. When you come across information you think they’d be interested in, send it along. Cultivate those relationships; you never know how or when they might bear fruit.
Pointer 2: Offer your services as a speaker
Companies all over your town are looking for speakers. Some companies offer brown bag lunch educational sessions, some need to train specific departments on your subject matter, and some are having retreats or all-staff meetings where seminar speakers are needed. How can you tap into this abundance of speaking opportunities?
Contact businesses, nonprofits, and associations in your community by e-mail, or call to get information about their needs. Provide them with professional marketing materials if they ask; at minimum, have a website they can refer to for more information. Tell them about your expertise and most significantly, how you can help them. Talk benefits, not features: what will be the benefits to their company of having you as a speaker?
Once you have secured the speaking engagement, do your research. Ask the organizer for information about your audience. What do they already know about your topic? Are they beginners or advanced? How will your presentation help them in their jobs? How many people will be there? Collect questions in advance from the group so you can be prepared to address those needs.
When you practice your presentation, you will most likely finish faster than when you speak to the group; make sure to take this into account and build in a time cushion. Audiences love being let out early, but hate being let out late!
Your presentation need cover no more than three main points. It’s okay not to share every single thing you know about your topic. After all, you’d like to leave the audience wanting more – more information about how you can help them!
Be approachable and friendly; greet people before your talk and stick around afterward to chat.
Most importantly – give them relevant, practical information that they can use right away. No one likes to give up an hour of work time for a speaker who tells them nothing new and nothing they can use.
Pointer 3: Promote your business by not promoting it
There’s a trick to promoting your business by public speaking, and it has a lot to do with not talking about your business.
When you’re at a networking event, show more interest in others than in yourself. Your goal is to build relationships, which doesn’t happen if you talk incessantly about yourself. And it will never happen if, while talking to one person, you spend your time looking around for someone better.
What can you offer others that’s not about you but is truly about helping them succeed? How can you be listening for what they need instead of waiting to talk about yourself?
It’s especially important to limit your promotion when giving a presentation. If you sound like your talk is one long commercial, you will not be asked back, and you will not gain new clients. Say what you do and the name of your company. It’s even okay to throw in some examples that involve clients, but be very careful not to cross the line into advertising.
Be a resource to people. Teach them something new. Leave them wanting more. And make sure to bring your marketing materials and business cards so they can find you later.
Use public speaking like any other marketing tool – it’s fun, easy, and free, and the connections you’ll make are priceless.
Lisa Braithwaite works with individuals to uncover their challenges and build their strengths in presenting themselves confidently as speakers. Find your voice with public speaking coaching! Sign up for my newsletter and find out about my e-course and free consultation by visiting http://www.coachlisab.com.
Public Speaking Tip – How To Avoid The 3 Most Common Audience Complaints
If you want to improve your public speaking skills, you must avoid the top speaking mistakes that cause audiences to consistently complain. These are the top 4 audience complaints when listening to a speaker or presenter:
1. Boring, Monotone Voice
Nothing is worse than being trapped in your seat listening to a monotone speaker drone on and on. Even if you have great information to share with your audience, they will tune you out if you have a boring voice.
How do you combat a boring voice? The best way to avoid a monotone voice is to be passionate about your topic. Passionate presenters are never monotone or boring. You should also experiment with changing your volume and your pitch while you speak. Throw in dramatic pauses at key points in your speech to heighten the audience’s interest.
2. Can’t Hear/Understand The Speaker
Another frequent audience complaint is not being able to hear or understand the speaker. The simple solution to this complaint is to test your sound system before your speech and to project your voice louder than what you think is necessary.
While talking loudly is necessary, it is not enough. When people get nervous (as most people do before delivering a speech), they have a tendency to talk faster. Many audiences can hear a speaker just fine, but can’t understand him because he’s zipping through his speech at a blistering pace! In your own speeches, be sure to talk slowly and enunciate your words fully.
3. Not Enough Eye Contact
Audiences want to feel a connection to the speaker while listening to a presentation. The easiest way to connect with your audience is to make eye contact with them. When you lock eyes with a member of the audience, that audience member will instantly pay more attention to your speech and feel a greater connection with you.
When shifting your gaze around the room, a good rule of thumb I tell my clients is to pretend you’re making eye contact with a stranger walking down the street. Making eye contact for a few seconds is friendly, but making eye contact for a few minutes is creepy. Make eye contact with a member of the audience for a few seconds, and then shift your gaze to someone else and repeat the process again.
Although these mistakes are easy to correct, it is shocking how many speakers make them again and again. If you want to improve your speaking skills, the first step is to avoid having your audience complain about you!
And now I would like to offer you my free report on how to overcome your fear of public speaking, “The 5 Secrets Of Fearless Speakers.” You can download it by going to http://www.SuccessfulCommunication.com
On Public Speaking: Making Utter Terror Look Good
When it comes to performing, some people make the astoundingly difficult look easy. Olympic skaters seemingly float through a triple lutz. Roger Federer barely breaks a sweat defending his number one world ranking. Helen Mirren seems to actually become her characters. And so it is with any great public speaker. While most of us freeze at the sight of an audience looking back at us, great speakers seem to have no notion of the miracle that is their self-assured wit. Their calm bearing, though, is more often the product of careful preparation and an understanding of certain tricks of the speaking trade.
Dan Fogelberg, a popular balladeer of the 1980s, liked to introduce the performance of one of his hits by saying, “This is the only song you’ll ever hear with the word exhumed in the lyrics.” The crowd laughed, then moments later they were swooning to a romantic love song. Fogelberg’s little comment strategically accomplished several things: he reminded the audience he didn’t take himself too seriously; he combined lightness with meaning; and even more cleverly, he delivered a subtle instruction to listen closely. Great speakers do this all the time, from the way they set up their presentation to how they manage audience emotions and perceptions.
Here, then are a few tricks of the public speaking trade that will help you make it look easy, too, even when it isn’t:
- Indulge in light self-deprecation. There are times when it’s perfectly okay to admit that you’re nervous, it lets the audience know they are important to you. Just never allow this to water down a sense of self-assurance and confidence. – Use a witty preamble. Spend a quick moment talking about how you spilled your coffee on your tie that morning as you wrote your speech. Make them smile before you amaze them with your passion and eloquence.
- Clarify your main point early. Rather than asking your audience to perceive what you really mean, just tell them quickly and use the rest of your time to convince them that you’re right.
- Use bulleted notes. Never write-out your speech. It’ll be too tempting to constantly glance down so you can stick to the script, and the moment you start reading to an audience is the moment you brand yourself a nervous amateur. Eye contact should be with them, not your notes.
Effective public speaking is always a marriage of substance and style. Great presenters understand that the line between them is thin, and where audiences are concerned, it is also transparent.
Harrison Monarth is a New York Times bestselling author and speaker, and is the President of GuruMaker – School of Professional Speaking, a communications consulting firm that coaches Fortune 500 executives, political candidates and entrepreneurs in the art of influence, presentation and message development. To purchase your copy of Harrison’s recent book The Confident Speaker, go to http://www.theconfidentspeaker.com
Public Speaking: Get Rid Of Your Anxiety And Nervousness Once And For All
While having to speak in public, some people are experiencing anxiety and/or nervousness. Their hands are shaking. They can barely say anything.
Have you been undergoing the same situation?
No need to worry, you’re not alone. There are many out there who feel the same way about public speaking. However, it is best to try your best to get used to speaking in public. A successful person is sometimes asked to do it.
So, if you plan to be one, get rid of your anxiety and nervousness.
Try these tips below:
• Prepare yourself
This one is for those who are given the chance to get prepared. If you do, then use the best out of it. Check out what you are expected to talk about. Gather all the information you might need. This helps build your confidence.
• Get a drink
It is a calming action you can do before getting on the stage. If possible, and if you are about to talk for a long period of time, make sure you have at least a glass of water next to you. Yet, don’t drink too much for it might cause you to make water in the middle of the speech.
• Take a very deep breath
Breathing deeply can help you feel a little bit calmer. The oxygen can also help your brain work at its best. You can do it once or again and again, until you feel very calm.
• You are the star!
Keep that in mind. Remember that every star is confident and sure about themselves. So are you. Boost your confidence by acting like a star!
If someone asks you to speak in public, never say no. You need to practice. Practice makes perfect. If you keep rehearsing, soon, you will be the best public speaker ever.
David W Richards has a very big interest on writing and public speaking. He also enjoys creating websites such as Purpose Loan, Multifamily Loan, and Mortgage Prospect.