To climb the ladder in today’s business world, public speaking is a requirement. The higher you climb, the more you will need to hone your skills in this area. There are some basic and some advanced skills that will help you to get the most out of the time you have in front of your audience.
This article will present several tips to enhance your public speaking skills. You will learn the basic Dos and Don’ts of public speaking, and then take a look in greater detail at some advanced skills. You will discover ways to engage your audience and improve their chances of retaining the information you give them and you will learn how to avoid some common pitfalls.
Remember, the most important part of public speaking is getting your audience to receive and retain the information you provide. It’s about them, not about you, so you must adjust your delivery accordingly. If your audience walks away from your presentation better informed and better prepared to do their job, everyone benefits.
Speaking Basics
These tips can, and should be used any time you are delivering information to a group of people. Your goal is to direct your audiences’ focus to the information you are delivering, to hold their attention and to leave them better informed, and maybe even inspired, at the end of the presentation. The following tips will help you to achieve that goal.
Don’t Read
The first rule of public speaking is “don’t read” to your audience. Look at them. This can only be accomplished by proper preparation. Know what you are going to say. Memorize it if necessary. Index cards or a teleprompter should be used as a guide only, not a script.
If you feel nervous in front of a room full of people, then pick several points on the wall in the back of the room on which to focus. Looking at these points will give the illusion that you are looking at the audience. They will never know that you are focusing on the clock, the door and the empty chair.
Use Visual Aids
If all they have to look at is you, your audience will lose interest very quickly. Use visual aids to introduce a topic, underscore an idea or create a theme. The most common visual aid is a presentation or slide show. Since most people are visual learners, graphs and charts are a great way to deliver information. Pictures can be very helpful as well because they add life to a presentation.
Be careful not to make your visual aids too complex or too busy. Some simple rules to follow:
- Organize your visual aids around one single idea or theme. The objective should be clearly defined and obvious to your audience.
- Use no more than three colors. Using more than three colors will make the visual aid feel too busy and distract your audience from its meaning. Choice of colors depends on the mood or feeling you are trying to convey. Some examples include:
- Yellow – Bright, sun, intellect, caution, notice me
- Orange – Power, unusual, eye-catching, weird
- Red – Bold, urgent, powerful, angry, emergency
- Dark Blue – Communication, sky, sea, calm, steady
- Light Blue – Playful, sky, up beat, flow
- Green – Growth, money, earth, power, plants, spring
- Brown – Wood, solid, dull, ground
- Black – Sleek, finished, formal, final
- Purple – Bright, psychic, regal, royal, intuitive, artistic
- Use different styles of lettering to catch the class’ attention. Examples include:
- CAPITALS
- lowercase
- BLOCK
- Shadow
- Slanted
- UNEVEN
- Always use a border around a poster or slide.
Visual aids do not always need to be a slide or poster. For example, if you are discussing the strength and durability of a new all-weather cell phone, throw it against the wall, drop it in a bucket of water and then take a phone call. Being dramatic can be a great way to demonstrate your point.
Control Your Body Language
Don’t stand behind a podium during an entire speech or presentation. Interact with your visual aids, even if you are just pointing out a fact or line on a chart. If you are interacting with someone in your audience, take a step or two toward them. This gesture will demonstrate that you are interested in them and what they are saying.
Keep your hands out of your pockets. When necessary, use your hands to direct the audiences’ attention to the screen or another visual aid. Gesture with an open hand to a member of the audience if you are calling on them, but avoid pointing with one finger at someone. This may be taken as a sign of aggression.
Adjust Your Tone
Use inflection to get your point across. A monotone voice will lose an audience and perhaps even put them to sleep. Sound excited and your audience will be excited. If necessary, over-emphasize your words. What may seem like over-doing it to you will come across as energetic to your audience.
Think about the words you want to emphasize ahead of time and practice. Your use of inflection can actually change the meaning of your words. For example, place the stress on the word on bold in the following sentences and see how the meaning also changes:
- I never said you stole the money. (No, but someone else did.)
- I never said you stole the money. (I said that Sally stole the money.)
- I never said you stole the money. (I said you borrowed it.)
Use Examples
As demonstrated above, they will enhance your message and they will tie your concept to a real-life situation. Keep the following rules in mind when choosing your examples:
- Keep your example relevant. If you are speaking about delivering quality customer service, use an example of when you received quality customer service or of when you received poor service.
- Discuss the example. What made this a positive customer service interaction? Why was the service poor?
- Keep your example simple. If your audience can’t understand the example, then it does nothing to help them understand the concept.
Advanced Skills
If your goal is to teach your audience about a new product, process or a policy change, you will need to employ more advanced speaking skills. In this situation, your goal is not just to deliver information. Rather you must ensure your audience receives and understands the information you provide and be able to apply it on the job as well.
Ask Questions
It can be easy to fall in the trap of becoming a “talking head.” One way to avoid this is to include your audience in the presentation. You may ask questions that tie the topic to the audience. For example, ask:
- By a show of hands, who here works in the Finance Department?
Choose a member of the audience, who raised their hand and continue:
- How will this change in policy effect you?
Asking questions allows people to feel included. If the question and response are applicable to a group, like the Finance Department, then others in that department will pay attention even if they were not called upon. If you take this approach, be sure that you ask questions of several groups or departments so that you include a larger portion of the audience.
You may also call directly on people rather than asking for volunteers. This has the effect of getting your entire audience to pay attention. No one wants to be the one who is called on unprepared.
Lead a Discussion
One of the most effective skills, and the one that is probably most difficult to master, is leading a discussion. This method is often used in Law School and is generally referred to as the Socratic Method. The idea behind this method is to guide a conversation using questions and accepted facts to keep the conversation on its proper course. As participants discuss their views and, essentially think out loud, others will learn from what is being said. A good teacher will ask the participant to justify their response and the audience will learn as a unit why the response is correct or incorrect.
Effectively applying these skills takes practice but, like any other valuable job skill, will payoff through advancement and a greater sense of confidence.
More importantly, practicing the skills outlined here will help you to engage your audience and accomplish the goal of leaving your audience better informed and better prepared to do their job. Remember, in the end it’s about them. Have you direct their focus to the information delivered? Did you hold their attention? Do they understand the information you provide and can they apply it on the job?
Lucas D. Ives is a training consultant at Verizon Wireless and a
StrategyDriven contributor. A dynamic facilitator, he excels at creating and delivering captivating training focused on the business professional. To read Lucas’s complete biography,
click here.
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