Art Of Great Speaking

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

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.

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

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

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.