How to Get Ahead with Public Speaking
Hopefully, these notes will help you regardless of what level you are in your speaking career– high school or college students, teachers, professors, business people, etc. Everyone should be able to take something away from this piece.
So, let’s begin…
First of all, you need to know your audience.
You can’t always choose your audience, so you need to be flexible and able to work with what you have. Always keep in mind the group you are talking to. Take into account age, sex, race, interests (if you know them), and why they are there listening to you. In just about every speaking situation, the audience is there for a common reason. Find that reason, and you have something to build on.
If you have the fortunate option of choosing your audience, pick a group that reflects what you are talking about. For example, if you are talking about a new type of marketing pitch or tactic, include an audience of small business owners. That would serve you better than making the same speech to a high school class.
Tailor your jokes, references, and examples to the group you’re talking to. This may be a bit hard to do on the fly, but nine times out of ten, you’ll know ahead of time who the group is you’re speaking to, therefore you’ll be able to gague what interests they have, a ballpark age range, and what topics they can relate to.
If possible, avoid speaking to a group that you are totally out of sync with. For example, don’t offer to talk to a group that is focusing on a topic you know nothing about. In most school situations, you are safe from this problem, but once in the professional world, you may be asked to speak to various community groups with different interests that you’re not familiar with. This rule also applies to talking to groups that focus on a topic you don’t like. Most of the time, no matter how hard you try, some personal belief or opinion will make its way into your speech, either as a joke, example, or comment. If you’re talking to a pro-life group, for example, and you are pro-choice, it may not be a very good fit.
Also, take into account the gender of your audience. This is important for several reasons: 1) you may be more comfortable talking to one sex than the other, 2) you don’t want to make a sexist reference and risk offending people in your audience.
A few tips about men vs. women in public speaking situations:
-Women tend to laugh more than men. Take note of this if you are including jokes or anecdotes in your speech.
-Many people find all-male groups to be the most intimidating to talk to.
-It is very hard to get a laugh during a business meeting where the CEO or President is present, unless s/he is the first to laugh.
-Overall, audiences that are half male, half female are the best to talk to, because you have a good balance in reactions to humor and interest.
Next, you need to captivate your audience’s attention.
Start your speech with a great attention-getter–something that will catch the audience’s attention, make them laugh, or engage them in some way, shape, or form. This is especially important when speaking to a classroom full of students, or classmates. On days when everyone is hearing speeches all day long, it’s hard to keep everyone awake, let alone stand out. Therefore, your first mission should be to wake the group up, and get everyone interested in what you have to say.
Some good ways to do this include:
-Change the volume and pace of your voice, use inflection when you are speaking
-Show a visual (poster, powerpoint, etc.)
-Use a prop to make a point, or add a visual. However, DO NOT pass the prop around the room for all to look at until AFTER the speech is done. Doing this will actually work against you, and cause people to be distracted from what you are saying.
-Move around the room. Don’t just wander, though. Make a point to know where your parameters are in your speaking area, and stay within those. Also, only move when you are making a point…there’s very few things that are more distracting than an idly wandering speaker.
-Tell a one-liner. Usually these are more effective than long-winded jokes, and catch people’s attention very well.
-Tell a story. Make sure the story makes a point, and that point is exactly what you are trying to say to accentuate your speech. Don’t be too long-winded in the story, you only need it to make your point, and serve as an attention-getting device.
During the course of your speech, try to use one of these devices every 2-4 minutes throughout your speech in order to keep the attention of the audience, otherwise they WILL get bored, and miss the point of what you are saying.
Also, if you choose to use powerpoint to emphasize what you are talking about, DON’T just read what you’ve posted on each slide. That will bore the audience, and in the long run, they won’t pay much attention to you or your slides. Use them as enhancements to what you are saying. Sometimes pictures and diagrams are much more useful to fill the slide than words anyway.
Learn the ‘Public Speaking Rule of 3’
Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Tell them. Tell them what you told them.
Right now, this may sound VERY redundant, but in oral presentations, it is perhaps the most effective rule you can apply.
Here is an example:
Assume your topic is “The Importance of Communication”
1. First make your point by saying, Accurate and clear communication is an important part of our everyday lives.
2. Then illustrate your point. In this case use a humorous two-liner. It’s like the student pilot who was asked over the radio to state his altitude and location. He said, ‘I’m five feet nine and I’m in the left seat.’
3. Then restate your point in a slightly different manner by saying, You can see how what we may think is clear communication could be interpreted incorrectly especially when people are under pressure.
Now that you know how to lay out your speech, let’s think about what to remember when actually GIVING your speech.
Stand still. Fidgety speakers are hard to pay attention to, because the audience’s eyes will be drawn to your movement more than what you are saying. I know I said before that movement is good, but keep in mind that there is good movement and there is bad movement. Bad movement includes fidgeting, flipping papers, wandering around the room aimlessly, rocking back and forth, and walking out of the audiences line of sight. Good movement includes gestures that add something to your speech, a couple steps toward the audience to emphasize a point you’re making, and any needed steps to get out of the way of any visuals you may have, so the entire audience can see them. Try to use this as a walking guideline: don’t take more than 3 purposeful steps in one direction. Going outside this boundary will put you outside the audience’s viewing area, and probably too far from the podium, or center of the room where you are giving your speech. If you are giving a speech in a setting where audience participation is used, or where it makes sense to do this, walk among the audience. This is usually never used in a formal speech setting, but sometimes can be effective for teachers in the classroom.
Use jokes effectively. Make sure the joke is at an appropriate place in your speech, one where it will make sense, and where you can take a natural pause in the speech to allow the audience to laugh after the joke is delivered. The pause will also allow for emphasis, and pauses can be used throughout the speech IN MODERATION. Make sure pauses are placed within the speech after a point has been made, and where the audience needs a second to think about what was said.
Vary the speech’s intensity. People go to hear a speaker because they want to be engaged. They don’t show up because they want to hear someone mumbling in a monotone. Therefore, when speaking, you’ll need to vary your tone, speed, excitement, movement, and volume. For the most part, you’ll be giving a speech on something you feel passionately about, or at least enjoy talking about, or at the very least, something you have an interest in. Your job in passing this information along, is to engage your audience through your voice, visuals, and movement to feel the same way about the topic that you do. Figure out parts in your speech that are easier to talk about (examples, stories, jokes, etc.) and make those more interesting. You don’t have to directly READ from your notes for many of these things, so use that freedom to spice it up a bit, and get your audience to really take in what you are talking about.
Be aware of your movement and gestures. If you are in front of a larger crowd, make sure your gestures are larger and slower (this is mainly for people giving a speech at the front of a large hall or on a stage). If you are talking to a smaller audience (in a classroom, a small meeting/conference room), make sure your gestures are smaller and you use fewer of them. Using many gestures in a setting of only a few people will be very distracting for your audience. In a small group, eye contact is MUCH more effective. Eliminate all nervous or useless gestures. Don’t play with your tie, skirt, hair, jewelry, repeatedly put your hand in your pocket, pace, or fidget. Try to avoid clenching and unclenching your hands, keeping your hands in your pockets, repeatedly flipping your hand, randomly pointing, and looking too stiff. A good pointer of when to use gestures in a speech is this: let the words trigger your actions; if you say ‘no’, shake your head in a negative way, if you’re counting a list, use your fingers to mark off each point.
Should you say ‘you’ or ‘I’? Honestly, it depends on the type of speech you’re giving. ‘You’ speeches will receive more applause and interest than ‘I’ speeches. These will engage your audience more, and make them feel as though you are talking directly to them. An ‘I’ speech generally comes across as self centered, and puts the audience on the outside. As a rule of thumb, you should use 10 ‘you’s’ for every ‘I’ in your speech.
Don’t speak too fast. I am a fast talker, so I know this can be hard to control sometimes. Pretend you are speaking to young children–slowly explain what you’re saying (but be careful not to sound too juvenile when you do this). Also, use word combinations outside of the normal usage–but not in a confusing way. The reason for this is because it will make you take time to think about what you’re saying to make sure you say it correctly, therefore naturally slowing you down as you talk. Cut as much material as you can, so you don’t feel like you need to rush through it when you’re presenting. Knowing you have a certain amount to get through can cause you to rush. And the most important thing, Practice!! The more familiar you are with your speech, the better your chances of knowing what you’re going to say, and the slower you’ll be able to speak.
Know your script. This goes hand in hand with practicing…but keep in mind that the audience doesn’t know where you’re going, so they’re not going to know if you say something out of order, or leave anything out. The only way they will catch on to this is if you trip over something, allowing YOURSELF to get rattled and throwing you off during the speech.
Grab a Red Bull! Not necessarily, but do have plenty of energy when you get up to talk. Like I said before, the audience wants to be engaged by your speech. A tired speaker will NOT be entertaining to listen to. Even if you aren’t that into what you’re talking about, FAKE IT! No one will know if you think your topic is the worst thing on the planet if you have plenty of energy while giving your speech.
Now you know what to expect when GIVING the speech… but what should you think about when WRITING the speech?
A very important thing to remember when writing a speech is word choice. What words you use can make or break your speech, because it can either be very easy for the audience to understand, or it can be very confusing if you use words that aren’t too common. For example, you wouldn’t want to say “The man’s elocution is impeccable.” The audience, regardless of how intelligent, had to stop and think about what that means, since it’s not written using everyday words. Therefore, you lost the audience for a few minutes.
Use good brainstoppers. The above example is a bad brainstopper because it caused the audience to stop and think about the words, not about what you were saying. A good brainstopper will engage the audience and draw them in even more. An example of a good brainstopper is: “Think of the first toy you had as a child.” This allows the audience to have a moment away from your speech, but still remain engaged in what you are saying, as long as the brainstopper you are posing to them has something to do with your overall speech topic.
Incorporate emotion when needed, it makes the speech more powerful. Read the following examples, and you’ll see what I mean.
Example 1 (Using just the facts):
“There have been eleven accidents in the past year at the sharp curve which is two miles north of Cherokee Lake on Route 857. Installation of guard rails, warning signs, and a flashing light will cost approximately $34,000. Even though we have not balanced the budget this year, I feel that we should appropriate money for this project. Thank you.”
Example 2 (Using emotion):
“On July 18th of this year John Cochran was found dead. The radio of his car was still playing when the paramedics got to his overturned vehicle. John’s neck was broken. It was snapped when his car flipped over an embankment. No one here knows John Cochran because he did not live here, but he died in our neighborhood. Most of you do know of the hairpin turn on Route 857 that has been the scene of eleven accidents this year alone and has injured many friends as well as strangers. We need money to put up guardrails, signs, and a flashing light. I know money is tight, but I hope you see fit to find the funds to remedy this situation before the unknown John Cochran becomes one of your loved ones.”
The second example causes the audience to FEEL what you’re saying, rather than just listening to the words coming out of your mouth. This tactic is especially helpful when you are trying to persuade someone, or a group of people.
Alright, you’ve got the speech part down… but what should you wear when you give the speech?
For women: Don’t wear anything loud or obnoxious. People will be more focused on what you’re wearing than what you’re saying. Don’t wear mini skirts–try to keep them at a professional length, or simply wear pants. Dress as though you’re going to a job interview, or to work in a professional office (suits, blouse and skirt, blouse and pants, etc.). Make sure your makeup is professional as well—keep the eyeshadow and lipstick color toned down. Again, makeup can be just as distracting as wild clothing when giving a speech. Finally, make sure your hair is set. You don’t want to be messing with it during your presentation.
For men: Wear professional attire (suits, dress shirt and tie, etc.). If you’re wearing a double breasted suit, keep it buttoned. If wearing a single breasted, it’s up to you if you keep it buttoned or unbuttoned. However, if you decide to leave it unbuttoned, make sure the jacket does not open too wide. Make sure your tie is straight, and if you will be bending over a projecter, use a tie clip for insurance, so it doesn’t block the audience’s view of anything being projected.
For both: Make sure the outfit you plan on wearing is broken in. You don’t want to wear something uncomfortable while you’re giving a speech. Check out the area where you’ll be giving the speech beforehand and note the color of what will be behind you. Once you know that, you can choose an outfit that won’t blend in with the background. Avoid flashy jewelry, and earrings that dangle a lot–again, they will only distract your audience and potentially take away from your speech.
Practice makes perfect! Make sure you practice, practice, practice once you have the speech written. Some tips that will help in your practice include: tape recording yourself so you can hear how you sound, watch yourself in a mirror so you can see if you use any unnecessary gestures, and practice the speech in parts. Practicing in parts will help you know each part of the speech better, and you can work on smaller segments rather than the entire speech all at once. This way you can target your problem points, and the speech will be easier to memorize.
Finally, I have a few tips to help you avoid stage fright:
-Pretend you’re talking to friends
-Seek out a friendly face in the crowd
-Focus on the subject you’re talking about
-Be Prepared
-Be Organized
-Arrive early…the more time you have in the room where you will be speaking, the more acclimated you are, easier time you’ll have speaking in that area
-Look through your notes
-Paper clip pictures to your note folder…it makes you think of something unrelated and familiar
-Talk to audience members…when you have a familiarity built up, they are more likely to respond well, and give you a friendly face to look at while speaking
-Take deep breaths before your speech
-If you’re shaky–use 3×5 cards…it’s less likely the audience will see them shake than full pages of notes
Now you have a backbone of steps to take to be a successful speaker, and hopefully you’ll find these tips and tricks of the trade to serve you well in any public speaking setting you may encounter!
