Art Of Great Speaking

Confidence does play a big part in effective public speaking and that is why I have posted on this many times in the past. Being thoroughly prepared and well practiced contribute greatly to developing self confidence to being able to present confidently.

 Further to these 2 areas, are 3 factors that support confidence in yourself and in your ability to deliver your speech effectively;-

1.       Appearance. When you are dressed for the occasion you feel better about yourself. And this is the same in public speaking.  Usually if you are smartly dressed and neatly groomed you will be appropriately dressed. You, not only feel better and your audience will appreciate you more. This contributes to your sense of well-being and confidence.

2.       Well rested. Tiredness can make cowards of us all. It takes away our resolve and reduces our energy levels. We can come across ill prepared and not caring when too tired. So getting enough sleep and being relaxed increases our courage and helps us to be calm. We appear more in control and confident to our audience.

3.       Fitness. When we are fit and healthy we generally feel better about ourselves and look better also. It also helps us to handle stressful situations.  The better we feel about ourselves and the easier we can handle stress the more we can speak with ease and confidence to groups of people.

These factors do not replace preparation and practice in developing self confidence but will help in improving how we feel about ourselves and make it easier to speak up with confidence in public speaking or presenting.

A resource that I have found useful in improving my health and fitness is called Truth About Abs. It covers many aspects of health and fitness.  Click here to find out more information on Truth About Abs.

I am looking for some resources to recommend on relaxation and appearance but have not yet found any I like enough.     In the meantime check out Truth About Abs and let me know what you think. 

In business, there’s no time to lose. Grab the audience’s attention and make sure that you retain it.

The key question is – what is the purpose of your presentation? What do you want to achieve?

Do you want to inform, persuade, inspire, entertain?

Make the context crystal clear. Spend a long time considering your subject and gathering appropriate material that will punch your key messages home. How long will you be speaking for? What is your place on the speaking programme? Do you have to tie in with someone else’s contribution? The auditorium and number of guests present can have a big impact on you and your speech. Find out who’ll be there? Could they have an impact on your speaking career?

What visual aids equipment will be there? (or do you want to be there)? Know how to use it properly – and carry spares! Ensure that you know the requirments of the auditorium. Agree them up front with the organizers.

Get the sequence of your talk right. Would an agenda help? You will need a logical and ‘signposted’ structure with a definite conclusion (do not leave it in the air!). Have a strong opening with impact, something that the audience will remember long after. Similarly, the ending should be memorable. Research shows that your audience will probably remember the beginning and the ending if they are delivered convincingly.

Establish your audience’s level of knowledge by research before the event. The army has an interesting saying: ‘Good reconnaissance is never wasted.’ Ensure you adapt your presentation to their level of knowledge and interest.

Check for rapport with your audience. Are they nodding with agreement. Win them over. Smile, talk of ‘we/us’, and never talk down or patronize your audience.

Keep them awake. It’s better without a written script (unless you have to). Aim for variety of voice – word pictures can be highlighted within a long talk – visual aids, maybe (with pie charts rather than tables) or break it up with a 2-man act.

If you have any briefing materials, distribute them before the event. Or tell them at the start if they’ll get notes at the end. Be prepared for questions. Note and remember who asked the question. With Q&A sessions, always repeat the question.

If you don’t know the answer – never flannel – it will show!

There are three keys to success: preparation – preparation – preparation.

Explore all three in great detail and you will probably succeed in your assignment.

There is no substitution for preparation. Plan your structure. Don’t waste people’s time – get into it. Time is money – deliver your messages confidently http://www.collegeofpublicspeaking.co.uk

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Greg_Frost

The preparation of your material not only must be thorough, but also must be personal, because to discuss a subject effectively at a management meeting or to present it to a group convincingly and speak with confidence it is important to project your own self into your talk.

Nobody likes to listen to a ghost-written address read with the zest of a secretary reviewing last month’s minutes; such an impersonal speaker wastes his listeners’ as well as his own time.

Ghost-writing is practiced by public characters that either have little or nothing to say—or who do not know how to express their own ideas. These people simply hire better informed or more articulate characters to provide them with language and also ideas.

When a ghost-written composition appears in print or is passed off as oratory, the public is deceived into believing that it is an authentic discourse which originated in the mind of its putative author who, in fact, is nothing more than a literary microphone or megaphone.

Many individuals are full of good words—so they become ghost-writers—but a good speech requires not only superb language but also a thorough knowledge of the subject. The subject may be foreign to the ghost-writer, and to cover any deficiency he may resort to pious platitudes, but fancy phrases are no substitute for lack of knowledge of the sub¬ject. That knowledge a speaker must possess personally in order to present his ideas interestingly and convincingly.

An audience wants a speaker to speak with confidence, conviction and sincerity.  Perfect English is not required for effective public speaking or presentations. The audience want the presenters to know their topic and deliver a speech that is worth while to them.

Ghost-written speeches do have their place, but to enable the presenter to speak with confidence they must have input into the writing so that it reflects their knowledge and personality. In this way they will develop into a confident public speaker.

Being able to speak with confidence is a highly respected skill, but it is usually the opposite to this that people focus on when they asked to speak – they look for what could go wrong, not how to make it go right. Outlined here is a method that can help all speaker to speak with confidence and deliver a more effective speech.
When a person agrees to give a speech, his first problem is to determine how to go about preparing and delivering the speech. Although each speech situation is different in many respects from every other speech situation, the over-all task is the same: to give a speech that is worth while in purpose, acceptable to the audience, and to some degree skillful. The way in which a speaker goes about accomplishing this task, like the task itself, is nearly the same in all speech situations. This way of going about one’s task is best described as method. Intelligence, it is said, is knowing what can be done in a given situation. Wisdom is knowing how to go about it. Wisdom is the prac¬tical aspect of knowledge. In this respect, the practical aspect of speech training is the method used to prepare and deliver a speech.
If a person is faced with a problem which he does not know how to solve and if leaving this problem unsolved leads to dire consequences, the person will usually have a sinking feeling and become panicky. This is exactly what may happen to us when we are asked to give a speech. If we do not know how to go about preparing or delivering an acceptable speech, we anticipate embarrassment and loss of prestige. In another situation, in which we know how to go about solving our problem, our fear subsides and we lose ourselves in the process of solving the problem. The more sure we are that our solution will work, the less we are afraid. So when we are asked to give a speech, if we are sure we know how to go about preparing and delivering one, our fear will subside and we can lose ourselves in the preparation of our remarks. Good preparation will allow us to   speak with confidence and often with pleasure.