“He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.”
– Joseph Conrad
Your mouth is dry, heart palpitating, and knees knocking. You go into panic, facing a dreaded public speaking assignment.
It doesn’t have to be so.
These five tips will give you some strategies to overcome those symptoms and have the butterflies flying in formation.
1. Deep breathing will pull in oxygen. Adrenalin, secreted to help you deal with the fear brought on by little doubts, causes breaths to become shallow, or causes you to hold your breath. Deep breathing will help your brain work to capacity, and forcing the slower pace will quell the panic.
2. Bluff. Stand tall, with shoulders back and chest out. Smile. Even though you don’t feel happy or confident, do it anyway. You will look confident and your body will fool your brain into thinking it is confident. This really works!!
Bluff – body and smile
3. Keep you mouth and throat hydrated. Plan to keep a drink on hand while you are speaking., though this sounds impossible. Visualising how you will use it if you need it, and calling up the audacity to do such a thing will carry across to your attitude as you take your place to speak, placing your glass just where you need it to be.
4. Adrenalin sends the blood rushing to the fight/flight centres of your brain at the base of the skull. Place your hand on your forehead and press gently on the bony points. This will bring the blood to the parts of the brain that need it to present your speech best.
5. Know you are prepared. Obviously this depends on actually being prepared, so take every opportunity in the days leading up to the speech to prepare your material. Be familiar with the structure of the presentation, and the ideas to use. Memorise the most important parts, and the parts you are frightened of forgetting. I would memorise the opening of the speech and in the moments before presenting it, would reassure myself that I knew that part, and that would lead on to the rest. It worked!!
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©Bronwyn Ritchie
If you want to include this article in your publication, please do, but please include the following information with it:
Bronwyn Ritchie is a professional librarian, writer, award-winning speaker and trainer. She is a certified corporate trainer and speech contest judge with POWERtalk, a certified World Class Speaking coach, and has had 30 years experience speaking to audiences and training in public speaking. Get her 30 speaking tips FREE and boost your public speaking mastery over 30 weeks. Go to http://www.30speakingtips.com
For my eBook on Overcoming public speaking nerves, visit http://bit.ly/NEKghl
Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln
James C. Humes
Turn Any Presentation into a Landmark Occasion
Ever wish you could captivate your boardroom with the opening line of your presentation, like Winston Churchill in his most memorable speeches? Or want to command attention by looming larger than life before your audience, much like Abraham Lincoln when, standing erect and wearing a top hat, he towered over seven feet? Now, you can master presentation skills, wow your audience, and shoot up the corporate ladder by unlocking the secrets of history’s greatest speakers. => http://bit.ly/X5H56N
Unless your speech if absolutely fascinating, any “pause fillers” you add too repetitiously, like um, or y’know, or OK will start to stand out. They will capture the audience above your speech. Start by listening to others – sports commentators, interviewees on television, anyone speaking publicly. Listen for their fillers then you will learn to listen for your own.
“It’s not how strongly you feel about your topic, it’s how strongly they feel about your topic after you speak.”
~Tim Salladay
It’s embarrassing for the nervous speaker and it’s embarrassing for the audience – those awkward, horrible moments when something goes wrong, something embarrassing happens. They are an experience neither the audience nor the speaker wants to have to endure.
Here are four situations where you can smooth out those embarrassing moments … and a powerful strategy to use in the future.
1. The mental blank That terrible moment when someone loses complete track of what they are saying – there is a blank, their face drops, and then becomes more and more frantic. This is painful not only for the speaker but for the audience. Develop a strategy now so that if, despite your best preparations, a blank happens, you have something to say. You could remark, “Oops I’ve lost it” and maybe you can add some appropriate humour (“Must have left the speech in front of the mirror!”) and then add something like “Now where was I?” Look at your notes if necessary – “We were talking about …” If it’s really bad, ask the audience. Whatever strategy you use along these lines, you keep the audience, and yourself, moving on, returning to target and none of you is embarrassed. So if you fear the blank moment, be prepared with a strategy that will allow you to deal smoothly with the situation.
2. The audience is bored It’s a moment that nervous speakers dread – to realise that most of your audience is bored. They’re glassy eyed, maybe even falling asleep, chatting or texting on their mobile hones. Horrors! Worse still and more embarrassing is the presenter who becomes frantic, attempting to regain attention. Avoid the whole situation if you can by ensuring you have variety wired into your presentation, and have something up your sleeve that you can move into if necessary. Introduce a new visual. Involve the audience. Change your stance, body language or walking pattern. Stop. Stand still. Whatever you use, it will become a smooth, professional piece of your presentation instead of a situation that embarrasses you and your audience.
3. Dry mouth Do you have a persistent dry mouth? Then take a glass of water with you. Before the speech, organise a place to put it and then choose a time where you can drink without interrupting the flow of your speech. Incorporate this into the planning of your presentation and your visualisation of your successful presentation. If it does interrupt, then find a way to explain it, incorporate it, or joke about it.
4. Those other embarrassing physical symptoms The same applies to anything else you expect might embarrass you or detract from your speech. If you cannot overcome the physical symptoms in the lead up to the speech, then these are the ones you need to develop strategies for. And use this same set of tactics for any other symptoms like blushing or shakes – if they detract from your speech – find a way to explain it, incorporate it or joke about it.
Then you will have defused any embarrassment that you feel or your audience feels. In all of these situations where you might make mistakes or have a mishap, there is one underlying powerful principle that works to avoid embarrassment: “It doesn’t matter what happens. What matters is how you deal with what happens.” It really does not matter!. The embarrassment for everyone lies not in the event itself, but in how you respond to it. So instead of being embarrassed, respond, instead, with professionalism and confidence.
Be as prepared as you can for whatever may arise, and be prepared to explain, incorporate or joke if something does happen. Then you will have been able to deal with it, confidently and professionally – without embarrassment. The added bonus? You are reducing your nervousness and increasing your confidence in the process.
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©Bronwyn Ritchie
If you want to include this article in your publication, please do, but please include the following information with it:
Bronwyn Ritchie is a professional librarian, writer, award-winning speaker and trainer. She is a certified corporate trainer and speech contest judge with POWERtalk, a certified World Class Speaking coach, and has had 30 years experience speaking to audiences and training in public speaking. Get her 30 speaking tips FREE and boost your public speaking mastery over 30 weeks. Go to http://www.30speakingtips.com
You can avoid boring your audience by varying the pitch and the volume and pace of your words. Use pause for drama.
Speak quickly to communicate your energy and enthusiasm, and then use a slower rate for emphasis.
You can also deliberately vary the structure of your sentences. A single word can have huge impact used on its own, particularly if it comes after a wordier segment.
All of these are keeping your audience hooked.
In any speech or presentation, your body language adds power to the message. It supports what your words are saying. The operative word here is, of course, “support”. Body language must be in tune with the message. And the corollary is that body language must also not distract or detract from the message. If they are denying each other, then your presentation will fail.
Confidence and sincerity are the absolute basis for this process. If your body is declaring that you are not sincere in what you are saying then your credibility decreases and there is no way your message will have the impact it should have. Think about the tone of your message. Is it relaxed, conversational? Then make your body language relaxed. Is it passionate, strong and powerful, then create body language that conveys that power. Is it alert and enthusiastic, then your body language will be upright and reflecting that enthusiasm.
You also need to be aware that your gestures can support or detract from your message. Learn to become aware of what your hands are doing while you speak. If necessary, make yourself hold them still. Many people have habits that are terribly distracting and yet they aren’t aware of what they are doing. They click or twiddle a pen, play with their hair or their clothes, hold a microphone with fingers unconsciously making a rude gesture, take glasses on and off, put hands in pockets and take them out. All of these things are not necessarily detrimental in themselves, if the audience is absolutely focused on the speaker and the message. But if there is any reason for the audience’s attention to stray (and we all have short attention spans) then they will become fascinated, at best, and possibly annoyed at whatever it is that the speaker is doing with their hands.
If, on the other hand, (my pun!!), those hands are working to support the speech, they will bring the attention back to the message. They will also give power to the impact of the message.
Natural gestures are basically the aim. If you are not a natural gesturer, your body will support your message. It is necessary to be aware that you are not repeating the same gesture many times. It may add emphasis the first time, but after that it will distract as much as the others mentioned earlier. Watch television journalists and sooner or later you will notice this.
You can also practice gestures. Join a public speaking club (and I recommend POWERtalk), where you can practise in a supportive environment until you are comfortable, and confident that your gestures are not detracting from your message.
Of course, there are many books and websites with information about body language and gestures. Basically:
Gestures above shoulder level support messages about things that are spiritual or uplifting (a church minister will raise his hands in blessing).
Ordinary messages are supported by gestures at the middle level of your body.
Things that are despicable or degrading or debilitating are supported by gestures below the waist.
You can use your palms. Held out, palm upwards, they support supplication, requesting a response, or openness. They can be used to indicate division if held vertically with the little finger down. Using a fist is a very powerful gesture. It indicates strong power and passion, and may also be used as a threat. Be careful with that. Take care, too, with pointing with a finger. People don’t respond well to accusation or to being singled out, so be sure your gesture supports your message.
Your clothes, too, can distract attention from your message. If you have a very bright or unusual item of clothing, if your scarf or tie flaps in a breeze, if your earrings dangle or click, or your necklace or tie pin clicks on a microphone, the audience will be distracted from your message. Again, unless your message is absolutely riveting, your clothes will become the centre of attention just as gestures can, and your message will lose its impact.
How you stand and walk works in just the same way. If you are a passionate speaker who simply cannot stand still, then hopefully you will support the passion of your message. Try to use standing still to give the same sort of impact that a pause in the middle of rapid speech would give. If you choose to move or change position just to provide relief because you think your speech is boring; be careful. It may be that your movement will have more impact than your massage. Timing can help so that you change position with a new idea or with a new visual support. Try to make all of your body language work with the movement. So, for example, if you want to walk to give the impression of thinking of a new idea, then set your hand up to your face to indicate thoughtfulness, and speak slowly or stop speaking altogether.
Facial expression, too, must be in harmony with your message, or it will work against it, just as your body language does.
Everything – body language, image and message must work together to create the impact you have chosen.
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© Bronwyn Ritchie … If you want to include this article in your publication, please do, but please include the following information with it:
Bronwyn Ritchie helps speakers to be confident and effective. In just 6 months time, you could be well on the way to being admired, rehired as a speaker, confident and sucessful, with the 30 speaking tips. Click here for 30 speaking tips for FREE. Join now or go to http://www.30speakingtips.com
Journalist and language expert Erard believes we can learn a lot from our mistakes. He argues that the secrets of human speech are present in our own proliferating verbal detritus. Erard plots a comprehensive outline of verbal blunder studies throughout history, from Freud’s fascination with the slip to Allen Funt’s Candid Camera. Smoothly summarizing complex linguistic theories, Erard shows how slip studies undermine some well-established ideas on language acquisition and speech. Included throughout are hilarious highlight reels of bloopers, boners, Spoonerisms, malapropisms and eggcorns. The author also introduces interesting people along the way, from notebook-toting, slip-collecting professors to the devoted members of Toastmasters, a public speaking club with a self-help focus.
According to Erard, the aesthetic of umlessness is a relatively new development in society originating alongside advents in mechanical reproduction, but it may be on its way out already. http://bit.ly/XZdPfe
Use humour if you can, create vibrant word pictures and tell stories to reinforce concepts. These will allow you to avoid presenting a continuous flow of theory which will kill audience attention and it will give vividness to your material that will make the message last in the minds of your audience – powerful impact.
Welcome to this guest post from Jim Harvey. Jim helps speakers with his very practical approach, an approach he has developed for himself and his clients through years of research and experience. Enjoy his insights on creating the big picture with Prezi.
A big picture is what makes Prezis immediately stand out from all other presentations, and lets your audience know they’re in for a different type of presentation. Because of its zoom functions, Prezi allows you to put images at the heart of your presentation – even incorporating all of your information into one picture.
No matter how you’re structuring your presentation, there’s probably a way to incorporate a big picture which makes it easier to understand and more interesting to watch. Here are three big picture techniques I use when designing presentations for myself and my clients.
1. Set the scene
Pictures have the power to make us think and understand things which we’d need hundreds of words to convey. It might be a landscape photograph which reminds us of a place we love, or a diagram which shows us how a manufacturing process works. Sometimes one image can explain exactly what your presentation is about – making it the perfect backdrop to your introduction, or window into the subject you’re explaining.
In Prezi, a big picture has the power to set the mood of your entire presentation. You can begin with it filling the screen, giving exactly the message you want to begin with, and even structure the rest of the presentation in and around that image.
A Prezi with an Informative Big Picture
For this Prezi: http://prezi.com/ow8zo7rbkt7v/raise-the-rate/
2. Show the structure of your presentation
A big picture can act like a map – showing where your presentation is going, and giving context to each point you make. This makes your whole presentation work, because it shows how everything links together and relates to your overall message.
It’s a great approach to delivering both short and long presentations, and particularly useful if you’re building up a series of points, for example to argue “3 reasons why xyz”. At the end of the presentation your audience should be able to look at your big picture, and pick out the three reasons you’ve identified.
Prezi with a Clear Structure
(for this prezi: http://prezi.com/y3f0vwjfiayl/we-day/ )
3. Present in a different way
Prezi allows us to plan presentations in an entirely new way – instead of creating an inflexible path through the information in advance, you can simply decide how to structure your presentation on the day. We’ve used this method before by creating infographic type big pictures, which cover all of the information a client may like to know.
When we come to present, we deliver a short introduction and then ask the client, “what would you like to know?” In present mode, you can click anywhere in a Prezi and be taken to that point – from there you can follow a linear path or carry on moving around organically.
Prezi Made for Exploring Naturally
For prezi: http://prezi.com/xtthuex5lynq/prezi-faq/
Jim Harvey is a presentation skills coach and blogger. His aim is to help people to tell stories – about themselves and their products – better. Take a look at his presentation skills blog, or find out more about using Prezi.
by David Booth
Don’t Just Present. Persuade, Inspire, and Perform!
Powerhouse presentations that engage and move your audience
Own the Room is written by a unique set of authors with the expertise perfect for creating vivid narratives. Own the Room shares how to excite your audience’s emotions and intellect. And Own the Room will give you a communication toolkit to make any presentation lively, compelling, and memorable. => http://bit.ly/OIMYh4
by David Booth
Don’t Just Present. Persuade, Inspire, and Perform!
Powerhouse presentations that engage and move your audience
Own the Room is written by a unique set of authors with the expertise perfect for creating vivid narratives. Own the Room shares how to excite your audience’s emotions and intellect. And Own the Room will give you a communication toolkit to make any presentation lively, compelling, and memorable. => http://bit.ly/OIMYh4
“Be interesting, be enthusiastic … and don’t talk too much.”
– Norman Vincent Peale
We all have short attention spans. This is exacerbated in these days of communication delivered in truncated, rapid-fire bytes.
So you have to set up your presentations so that you do something frequently to keep attention.
Change your delivery style.
Support your words with a new visual.
Challenge with an activity for audience involvement.
Tell a story. Whatever techniques you use, introduce them often and vary them.
Each will have its own impact, but make sure that impact supports your chosen image and message.
“Be interesting, be enthusiastic … and don’t talk too much.”
– Norman Vincent Peale
As a speaker, when you introduce a story, you have instant engagement. People stop to listen to stories. People are drawn to stories and take the time to tell their own. This works in conversation … and it will do the same in your speeches. Mention a story and people’s attention snaps on and they are immediately engaged.
Studies have shown that when people listen to stories, their heartbeat slows, their eyes glaze and the brain releases chemicals that make them relax. Their brains switch from a factual processing of information to the storytelling mode. This is sometimes called the Listening Trance or the Storytelling Trance. It activates different centres of the brain and the result is to reduce disagreement, and to activate the search for the moral of the story – turning on focused engagement.
This is the response that stories evoke, and why the brain is so predisposed to record, so easily, the stories it hears and the points the storyteller associates with them. And it is what makes stories such a powerful tool in engaging your audience.
Stories are also a great way to change the direction and pace of the speech. They give the audience time to relax, as people do when listening to stories, and to absorb the points that have just been made. At the same time you can be creating another point, or reinforcing points you made earlier.
People participate in our stories. They take ownership of the story. Stories that are well crafted let the audience anticipate where you are going. Giving just enough information about the characters and the setting also allow your audience to fill in the details for themselves, thus creating their own version of the story and continuing that participation …. and engagement.
And finally, if we choose them well, our stories can elicit their own stories from our audience members. Look for examples and points that your audience also will have a story about. Your story will elicit their own stories- a further engagement level.
© Bronwyn Ritchie … If you want to include this article in your publication, please do, but please include the following information with it:
Bronwyn Ritchie helps speakers to be confident and effective. In just 6 months time, you could be well on the way to being admired, rehired as a speaker, confident and sucessful, with the 30 speaking tips. Click here for 30 speaking tips for FREE. Join now or go to http://www.30speakingtips.com
Apple CEO Steve Jobs was well known for his electrifying presentations. Communications coach Carmine Gallo discusses the various techniques Jobs uses to captivate and inspire his audience — techniques that can easily be applied to your next presentation.
Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either.
Gore Vidal
It’s one of the speaker’s worst nightmares -that terrible blank moment – or getting to the end and realising you have forgotten important points that are crucial to the success of the presentation.
The first solution we automatically want to adopt is to read the material either from paper or from slides. Unfortunately it is really difficult to maximise the impact of your presentation if you read it. It can question your confidence with your subject, and it dampens your personality.
So we need to develop other ways of remembering our material and presenting it in the best way to create an impact.
You can start by remembering the structure of your speech.
As you created the presentation, you chose the main sections and the best order for them. Remember that decision, the logic and power of it and it will be the basic framework of your memory.
When you created the speech you would have created a single sentence that embodied what you wanted to achieve with the speech – the purpose of the speech and the message you wanted to put across. That will be the first memory cue. If you use nothing else (and I hope that is NOT the case !
Dates, figures and statistics are all very powerful ways to support your points.
Overuse them, though, and they just become boring, and your audience will turn off.
If data is absolutely necessary, use your slides to create a visual rendition of it.
Tell stories about it.
Find some way to relate it to your audience – percentages of people like them, for example, or of their country.
Most audiences will respond to humour. You don’t need to be a comedian, or even a humorous speaker, if it is not your style. You can still use humour to engage with an audience and have them be comfortable with you and your presentation.
“But I’m just not funny and I’m hopeless at telling jokes” Yes, I know – me too. So where do we find humour to use in our speeches? There are three main places to find humour. They are readily available to you, and they are used by all successful speakers and comedians. Those places are life, jokes and situations. Let’s look at how to extract the humour from them.
The first place to find humour is to look around you – look at your life – look at everything within it. Look at the conversations that make people laugh. Use them. Or look at what worked to make people laugh and use that. When you find yourself laughing or even smiling, look at why. What made you smile? Yes, I know you have your own sense of humour, but it is your own sense of humour that will make the humour in your presentations authentic, strong and personal. Select from that, what you think will appeal to your audience and what will best support your points.
Seek out humour. Look at the internet – not to copy jokes (we’ll look at that in a minute) but, again to see what makes you laugh. What makes other people laugh? Go to the library. Look into magazines and ezines. Read humorous writers, go to comedy clubs, listen and watch radio and television. What works and what doesn’t and why? When you find out what works and what doesn’t and why, then you can go back to your own life and watch for those same things, what works, what doesn’t and why – those same conversations, those same situations. See the humour and how that humour can be used in your presentations.
When they are situations and conversations and events that have happened to you or around you or to those around you, they have so much more impact. They have all the added benefits that storytelling brings to a speech. They are authentic and not some joke that you are repeating and trying to twist to suit your point. And they are certainly not a joke that your audience has heard before.
Another source of humour is our own speaking experience. You will discover, as you speak, what people find humorous about you and your style. Sometimes you may make an aside or a throw away remark that was not intended to be humorous, but that makes people laugh. You may make a point using exaggerated body language and people laugh. You might create a situation with the audience or the stage that creates a laugh. Note it well, and use it again. Next time it will be deliberate, certainly, but you can make it look spontaneous if need be. If it works, keep it!
Other people’s jokes are a very dangerous source of material for your humour. Part of the danger lies in the way people use jokes. Some speakers, desperate to be humorous, plan to simply tell jokes to get a laugh, relax their audience and create engagement. If it is not your joke, you risk it falling flat. If it is just a joke on its own, you increase the risk because everything is riding on that joke being funny, you telling it well, the audience being in the mood for that sort of humour – all sorts of pitfalls. If, on the other hand, you choose to use the joke as a support for a point you are making, then you decrease the chances of failure. If worst comes to worst and your audience does not respond, you can just carry on as if it were a story and not necessarily a funny joke. If it succeeds then you have got double value from the joke in creating a memorable tag for the point you were making. You can find jokes in all of the places I mentioned above – the internet, the library, magazines, other comedians and so on. You can use quotations and crazy predictions. You can search in the area of the subject of your presentation or in the expertise of your audience. Just be very careful that the joke suits you audience and the occasion, that it suits your style and your sense of humour and that it suits the point you are trying to make.
The final source of humour is one that works really well. I will call it situational humour. Find humour in the situation you find yourself in, for this speech. You can use geographical humour – compare your home country with this country. Tell the story of something funny that happened here on this occasion, or on another occasion. Use the organisation or the people in the audience or the event. Research the history of the organisation and its culture. Find (appropriate) humour in that. Find humour in your relationship with someone in the audience – something funny that has happened or that the person said had happened. Turn someone’s idiosyncrasies into humour if t can be done respectfully. Use current events – in the world, the country, this town or this audience. All of these are particularly useful in your opening segments that will help relax the audience and to make build engagement with them.
Making eye contact with the audience is vital in projecting confidence and authenticity.
Looking people in the eye in any form of face to face contact means you are not afraid of being caught out.
You are not lying or deceiving. You have confidence in your message. You are being sincere.
So use it as much as you can in your public speaking, to have people connect, believe and follow.
An Open Letter to Steve Ballmer
Dear Steve,
How are things..? It looks to have been a bumpy few months for you but it all seems to be coming together for you now. Nicely played…
We wanted to drop you a line to firstly commend you, secondly to point out some “opportunities for improvement” and lastly to suggest something a little “out there”. Bear with us…we think you’ll like it.
So firstly, the commendation – PowerPoint 2010 is really very very good…. => http://bit.ly/i9cBRH
I am spending time on other writing projects and restructuring my business, so will not be writing new articles for this blog for a while. Enjoy this and the others to come from other writers! I just love Si Yuan’s style in this one …
10 Habits of Effective Speakers
1. Positive thinking
Hang on… isn’t this too much of a cliché? You might have heard umpteen times from people all around you. While it is true that many of us have came around this advice of thinking positive. How many of us actually know how to do it? How many of us believe in this phrase and have seen it in action?
Allow me to demonstrate this point with an exercise you can do in the comfort of your own home. Take a time-keeping devise such as an alarm clock or a stopwatch with a beeping function. (So that it could alert you when the time is up). For the next one minute, think of nothing but a pink elephant. Any pink elephant will do. Think of the size, contours, the intensity of the color “constructed” image in your mind. Do so for the next minute. Do not stop thinking of that pink elephant. Time your with your devise Do so until the beeping sound echoes in your ears. Next I want you to think of anything else except the pink elephant.
That means to say DO NOT think of the pink elephant even for a split second. Do that for another minute. What is the outcome? Can you stop thinking of the elephant? It is IMPOSSIBLE to do so. Why? The reason being our brains are wired in such a way that it is not possible to process negation. When I told you “DO NOT” our brain still thinks it is a “DO” The above example clearly shows that our brains is able to retain what we visualize. Therefore it is important that we do not dwell on negative thoughts. You do not want the images of the pink elephant to stick to your mind.
2. The Act of Repetition
Studies have shown that repetition can increase the rate of retaining of information in our brains. The key here is to lead the audience in repeating the message of the speech like a mantra. An example could be found in the Bible: When I was a child I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. (I Corinthians 13:11)
The stage on which you are on in the exact place where you can make use of this technique. This applies when you have two complimentary speech messages. You may want to stand one side (say the left when delivering one message and the right when delivering the second message. This ensures the effect of repetition as audience will be able to recall the speech message readily by visual association of the stage positioning of the speaker.
3. Establishing Rapport
Let me touch on what rapport is first. Why? Rapport to many people, seems to take the notion of getting people to like them, whereas in fact, you can be in rapport with someone and they don’t like you. All rapport means, according to the dictionary definition, is that it is a relationship harmonized by accord. You can in accord with someone and not like them. The pursuit of liking takes you in the wrong direction, what I am aiming to do here is to make the audience easier to follow us. One thing to note is that in order for rapport to work, the person on the receiving end must have a similar experience in his mind so that we are deemed credible by the other party, THAT increases our powers of persuasion. We must not say anything that will challenge their worldview, thus making establishing rapport easier.
There is a certain pattern in linguistics whereby when a statement is true and the next is true and still the one following it is also true it makes any statement preceding it more probable with each passing statement. By giving them A, B,C and therefore D, it makes the audience easier to follow us. Let me give you one example, what we want to do here is to give our audience a series of truisms, that is some statements that will elicit a series of yes, yes, yes responses wherefore they can validate in their sensory experience or something where the facts cannot be challenged. This is what is known as the “Yes “set in sales, however it is not necessary that we must get a conscious Yes response, but it is necessary that they must be able to validate the statements to be true in their minds. THIS IS where persuasive powers reside.
You can also establish rapport with the audience by asking rhetorical questions. A rhetorical question is a figure of speech in the form of a question that is asked in order to make a point and without the expectation of a reply. The use of this question will enhance rapport. For example in your speech you want to talk about success in public speaking. You can go like this “How many of you grab opportunities to speak EVERYTIME it occurs?” In your mind you might think” hmm it was… ” You then follow up with a statement such as this “Ladies and Gentlemen, this is important because it is the only way to succeed in the public speaking arena.”
4. Use Pauses with Power.
Pauses allow the audience to digest what you are saying so that they can understand the message of your speech better. However you must use pauses at the correct moment so that your speech will have the maximum amount of impact:
Generally you should pause when
1. You are invited on stage and getting ready to deliver your speech,
2. After each main point
3. and before making a very important point.
I want to stress the third point. This point is also known as the power button technique.
For example ” Let me tell you again what I always tell those critics of Singapore… [pause] I will… ” The words that come before the pause is the power button. The pause here is very important because it separates the “power button” statement with the rest of the sentence. In this way, the pause allows the successful setup of the power button, because the power button prepares the audience for something impactful or important to come. The pause creates the suspense and the rest of the sentence blows the audience away.
5. Engage the audience with a story.
This is known as the story telling framework. It is made up of 5 questions. Namely,
1)Where are we and when is it?
2)What roles are we playing in the setting.
3)Why are we here?
4)What do we want to see happen (goal) and lastly
5) How do we get from here to there? (process)
The first point is obvious. The second point relates to the protagonist of the setting who is your audience. Put the limelight on them and make them the hero of your story. This is a sure fire way to increase your powers of persuasion.
The next point gives them the reason of why they are listening to you in the first place. As in a sales setting, you would want to create a pain point. In short, it must be a problem that your audience is facing. The way to do this is to address the pain point, so that you will remind them of why they are listening to you in the first place. As in a sales process, there must a solution to a given problem. You have to propose a solution to help the audience get what they want. It could be something as straightforward as:
“Buy how to become Persuasive in public speaking!”
6. Always keep a word, phrase, funny incident, Story Bank
This technique is recommended by me as it is one of the easiest and most powerful ways to prepare your speech. Because good speech materials could not pop up overnight, they have to be accumulated. It will serve you well in case you plan to be a professional speaker in the future. Memorable stories are few and even if you could remember them, you will not be able to remember the details. A bank could be as simple as a notepad or book that you bring with you WHEREVER you go. With the advancement of technology, you could also easily store your BANK on your smart phones.
7. The 3Ps – Practice, Practice and Practice
This seems easy but it is one of the most difficult habits to acquire. More often than not, we cram the preparing of our speeches to the last minute, because of other commitments and there is no worse lesson to learn than this: Your speech will not be able to flow without enough practice, at most you will only remember the content of your speech. Smooth delivery can only be acquired through practice.
8. Grab every single opportunity to speak
After the 3Ps comes the 3s(es). What is it? World Speaking Champion in 2001 Darren LaCroix coined this term. It simply means Stage Time, Stage Time and more Stage time. In essence, in order to increase your persuasive powers, you must acquire any opportunity that allows you to speak. Because without it you cannot get any better than you last spoke. To turn down a speaking opportunity is tantamount to losing one chance to improve your persuasive speaking skills
Joining a Toastmasters Club is an excellent way to increase that stage time. That was what happened to me. I was initially very scared of even speaking to a crowd, let alone standing in front of them to give a speech. But over the years, I realized that the ONLY way to be a better speaker is to JUST DO IT!
9. Start with Achievable goals
In order to be a persuasive speaking you have to start with small goals. Each small step you take with take you closer to your larger goals. This is called accumulating small wins for yourself. With each small win, you confidence level will grow.
What I mean by achievable goals not only apply to yourself, it also means giving the audience small achievable goals(step towards the goal) so that they are immediately apply what they have heard as soon as they leave. In this way, your powers of persuasion would also increase tremendously.
10. Learn to analyze the excellent speeches
This last habit is the culmination of all the previous 9 habits. In order to effectively analyse speeches, you will have to know what’s good about it. You must be able to identify the areas of improvement that can be effected in a speech to make them even better. It will therefore allow you to adopt a critic mindset of a speech so that it will give insight as to how to substitute certain words or phrase to make them even more powerful, thus increasing your persuasive powers in delivering the speech. It is also important to learn from these speech, so that if need be you can even use them in your own speeches.
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Si Yuan is a Toastmaster’s competent communicator who lives in Singapore. He has recently embarked on his journey to help others in the area of public speaking.
For more resources as to how you can improve your public speaking skills and free ebook Visit his site at http://lets-learn-self-improvement.com/
and Grab his free ebook at http://lets-learn-self-improvement.com/speaking-power/
The most important things you need to get across to the audience are your message and your image. Any other aspect of your presentation (and there are many – visuals being just one) should be secondary to, and supportive of, getting the message and the image across – and certainly not distracting from those.
The storytelling trance is a vital part of the success of storytelling and for an audience to be led into the story they need to trust the storyteller. They need to know that the story will be worth listening to – that it will actually lead them in to be a part of a scene and a series of actions, a place where they would want to be …. and that it will provide a story arc that they can use.
There are questions an audience will ask – of themselves – and through that process, of you, before they will give you their undivided attention.
What is your why? Are you credible? Are you authentic? Are you trustworthy?
Do you have the skills to tell a story that your audience will want to listen to? Do you have the knowledge or “smarts” to be able to create a useful takeaway from this story? Is the story going to be worth listening to? Is your personality capable of telling a story that enthrals, entertains and teaches? Can you be trusted to tell a story without trickery, without wanting to manipulate your audience into behaviour they will not want? Is this story worth more than the other options available to them for the time they are giving you?
So who are you as a storyteller? What does your audience know of you before you begin? How will you present yourself as someone they can trust and relate to?
Obviously you are going to have to research your audience.
What is their language? What do they want? What do they need? What do they fear? Who are they? How much expertise do they already have in your subject area? What are their objections to the points you want to make, to the outcome you want from your presentation? What do they find funny? What do they do, or think about or indulge in for excitement and thrills? What is their why?
Then speak their language. Show that you understand their way of thinking, that you understand their challenges. Show them your why and your credibility and your trustworthiness.
Introduce the story. Set the scene. Tease with your introduction. Let them know that it is relevant to the progress of your presentation and the point you are making. Reassure them that what is to follow is worth their time and their attention. Then you can take them with you into the story.
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© Bronwyn Ritchie … If you want to include this article in your publication, please do, but please include the following information with it:
Bronwyn Ritchie helps speakers to be confident and effective. In just 6 months time, you could be well on the way to being admired, rehired as a speaker, confident and sucessful, with the 30 speaking tips. Click here for 30 speaking tips for FREE. Join now or go to http://www.30speakingtips.com
Some people memorise their whole presentation. Some people read the whole speech. Both of these approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. But most people use a compromise and, if possible or necessary, use notes.
Two very important parts of your speech are the opening and the closing. If you memorise those you can be sure you will use the words you chose for the greatest impact, and you can concentrate on delivery and especially on eye contact. You can choose to read them, but you will need to find other ways of giving them power. You probably should also memorise the punch lines of your jokes, and any words you are quoting verbatim.
If you want to persuade, you can build your success with the reciprocity rule.
What is the Reciprocity rule?
When someone gives us something, we feel obligated to give something back. We are uncomfortable if we don’t. And that something might be a physical object or it might be a service or a gift. That something might not even be something we want or need. We probably never asked for it, or expected it.
How does this work?
The Reciprocity Rule has been ingrained in us for centuries. I suspect it began in a society that was based on barter and trade. The system could only survive if there was a rule that we always return favours, we must never owe. It safeguards anyone who wants to do a favour or give a gift – they know they will get something in return.
Strangely enough, the return favour can be bigger than the original and we will reciprocate even if we don’t like the person who gave the gift or don’t like the gift itself. The rule is that deep and that powerful. It is part of our socialisation process. People who do not return favours are shunned. We are brought up that this is the right thing to do, and warned of dire consequences if we do not “do the right thing”.
Because the rule is so deeply ingrained, we are used to using it when we need to make decisions. There are so many decisions to be made on a daily basis that we will use whatever we can to avoid having to think about them and this rule comes in handy. Oftentimes the decision to think in a certain way or to choose a particular person can be based solely on the fact that we owe them something, or that they gave us something.
It has been found that no human society does not use the reciprocity rule. It has been used by corporations and governments to persuade people for thousands of years.
I want to look at this concept of “doing the right thing” but first want to add some of the ways the Reciprocity Rule works in practice. It does not just apply to gifts or favours. It applies to concessions. I request a favour and it is refused. Then I request a smaller favour. Because I have made a concession to you, it is highly likely that you will accede to the smaller favour in return. If I yield to your opinion on one topic, it is more likely that you will agree with me on the next topic, in return.
Now, given all of this information, you can go ahead and use the reciprocity rule in your persuasion efforts. Making sales? Offer a freebie, any freebie, and ask for the sale. Asking for a favour? Ask for a huge one first, then you can ask for what your really want. Want to change someone’s mind? Agree with them on anything else, but expect them to change in the way you wanted. And this amounts not just to persuasion, but to manipulation.
We all know of salesmen, the old type of salesmen, who use the rule of reciprocity to trick people into the sale – to manipulate. Many of us immediately put up a barrier as soon as we suspect the trickery. Every time someone knocks on my home front door, I move into that barrier mode. I don’t like it because I cannot “do the right thing”, and politely reciprocate. I have to be on alert to trickery. In the end, we will use the rule of reciprocity to buy or to return favours or to be persuaded, when we believe that the gifts or favours or beliefs are valuable and offered in good faith. We will not reciprocate a favour or gift for a trick or a marketing tactic.
Now I want to turn this around and look at the situation from our viewpoint as speakers who want to persuade. And there are speakers who are so obviously using these techniques with one thing in mind – manipulation – their own gain…. they are not “doing the right thing” either.
And now there are other people not “doing the right thing” – in our audiences. As a speaker, we also are facing the challenge of dealing with people who are distracted from our messages by their electronic devices – their phones, laptops, tablets. Not very long ago, this would have been considered incredibly bad manners, to show such disrespect for a speaker – certainly not “doing the right thing”. So we cannot depend on our audiences to do the right thing and sit through ill-disguised efforts to trick them into buying our products, or trick them into doing us favours or trick them into believing the message we have for them.
So what is the answer to this quandary? How can we create a win-win situation for everyone – persuade ethically and not manipulate or trick. I think the answer lies in “doing the right thing”.
Be prepared to give without expecting something in return. Know that giving is a useful persuasion tool, but give anyway.
Give value – that is value to the audience or your client or potential buyer, something that is exclusively for that person or group of people.
Be transparent and authentic. Make it clear that you are giving a gift. Use language that reinforces this side of the transaction. But make it clear that the recipient has a choice. You are “doing the right thing” but also empowering your client/audience/buyer. Empowered people feel more open to being persuaded. Make it also very clear that what you are asking for in return is in their best interests as well – the service you offer, the new perspective you introduce, the product.
If you want to use the rejection-retreat strategy, then do so transparently. It is valid to assume that a portion of your audience will want the higher priced product, the more difficult action to take. It is also valid to assume that perhaps more will want the lower priced/easier solution, and you can make that clear as well.
In terms of making a concession, it makes sense to address objections to an idea early on in a presentation. People need to feel understood and to have their beliefs and prior understandings validated, even if you are about to prove them wrong!! And that is the “doing the right thing” aspect of making a concession in terms of a belief so that your audience may be more happy to reciprocate and make a concession towards whatever you want to persuade them to do, think or feel.
I really do not want us to be part of the increasing number of speakers who use ill-disguised efforts at manipulation in order to persuade – not when it is so easy to “do the right thing” and persuade with honesty, openness, integrity and to create a win for all concerned.
© Bronwyn Ritchie … If you want to include this article in your publication, please do, but please include the following information with it:
Bronwyn Ritchie helps speakers to be confident and effective. In just 6 months time, you could be well on the way to being admired, rehired as a speaker, confident and sucessful, with the 30 speaking tips. Click here for 30 speaking tips for FREE. Join now or go to http://www.30speakingtips.com
In this cluttered marketplace it is more important than ever to keep your message simple. People just don’t have the attention span to work hard at understanding what you have to offer. Consider Google’s core message as they sought out venture capital years ago.
“Google provides access to the world’s information in one click”.
Can you do that with your business?
Yes you are an expert in your field. Yes you can present mountains of information. But it will not impress your audience, nor will it create an impact … unless you make it relevant. Make it relevant to your audience. How will it solve their problems? How will it make life better or more profitable? Choose the pieces of information that will be of most use to them. Each piece of data or fact should be couched in a point about its usefulness. Use stories and case studies to further make an impact.
Think about your favourite speaker, or perhaps about a speaker you admire hugely. Chances are they use humour. Humour is certainly one of the elements of success as a speaker. Many successful speakers use it. That does not mean, however, that we should all use humour in every speech we give. It may not be our personal speaking style, and it needs far more skill and finesse than just throwing some good jokes into our speeches.
What may be a “good” joke on one occasion may be an absolute insult on another. And that will depend largely on the audience. Before you speak at any occasion, you need to know about that audience so that you do not insult them. Research their interests, their political persuasion, beliefs, this customs and their history. If you want to avoid insulting your audience be very aware of their culture.
Robert Orven said “I’m beyond being shocked – but I’m not beyond being offended.” Questionable humour may suit one audience but not another. So be very sure of your audience when you choose your humour. Be sure you are aware of your audience’s mores and beliefs and their humour buttons.
While you are researching your audience you are also gathering material that you can use to create humour. Imagine being able to share a joke with your audience about the event or the venue – something that they find humorous or ironic about their situation. It will be powerful because they are already open to the humour in that situation. Perhaps there is someone within the group who is already using humour in some way and you can call back to that and share in it. Maybe there is someone who has a particular character trait that they are used to being ribbed about. Be careful! If you can turn the humour against yourself because you share that same character trait it will be so much better.
So research your audience to mine possible situational humour. Find out their favourite sports teams, their home town, well-known people within the group and its history. You can send a pre-presentation survey or questionnaire. You can interview the program coordinator or event organiser or the person who invited you to speak. Read the organisation’s own publications and those of their particular area of involvement in the world or their profession. Talk to people who have been members of the group for a long time. Gather the stories. What are their idiosyncrasies? Find out what they think is funny. Uncover any running gags. There you have a source for humour customised and tailored to work for this group.
And that means you don’t need to bring in generic jokes that someone else has written, unless you re-write them to suit the situation. Being able to relate your humour to the people in your audience is a powerful way to connect with them and to take them on the journey of your presentation.
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© Bronwyn Ritchie … If you want to include this article in your publication, please do, but please include the following information with it:
Bronwyn Ritchie is a professional librarian, writer, award-winning speaker and trainer. She is a certified corporate trainer and speech contest judge with POWERtalk, a certified World Class Speaking coach, and has had 30 years’ experience speaking to audiences and training in public speaking. In just 6 months time, you could be well on the way to being admired, rehired as a speaker, confident and sucessful, with the 30 speaking tips. Click here for 30 speaking tips for FREE. Join now or go to http://www.30speakingtips.com
The introduction to your speech should
– Build credibility
– State your objectives
– Overview the elements
– Lead into the main point
and give a short background for the points to follow
101 Secrets of Highly Effective Speakers: Controlling Fear, Commanding Attention
Ron L. Krannich
Controlling fear. Commanding attention
…covers every aspect of public speaking, and should go a long way in reassuring novices they are adequately prepared. — Today’s Librarian
Everything the audience sees of you as a speaker needs to reinforce the image you have decided to present in your speech – clothes, facial expression, stance and gesture.
At its most basic this means projecting confidence and sincerity. Unless you decide otherwise, the audience needs to know that you are comfortable with your message and believe in it.
If you are also using this presentation to present yourself as the face of your business, or as a candidate for a position, then take that into account as well. You need to be seen as trustworthy, competent, at ease with your material.
It’s not just PowerPoint and its misuse that can cause death to an audience’s interest. If you found yourself suffering during a presentation it was probably boredom – from a boring presenter who was not excited about his subject, from an overloaded, boring slideshow, and most assuredly from an overloaded, information packed presentation, given with no thought to your comfort, your interests or your needs.
As presenters, why do we do this? Why do we feel compelled to force too much information into our presentations?
One reason I am very familiar with is the need to showcase our knowledge. This may be as basic as a novice presenter desperate to gain credibility and kudos for their knowledge. So many of us go into public speaking thinking we need to do this to be liked and respected by the audience. Hence we construct a speech filled with as much information as we can pack into it. Unfortunately, when this is the main aim, we lose sight of the point of the speech and the needs of the audience and consequently have no clear message. And oftentimes, rather than impressing the audience, we end up annoying them. The worst-case-scenario is giving the impression that we really don’t understand the big picture or the relevance of the information. An annoyed audience and a lack of understanding of the topic are not good indicators for a successful presentation or for being rehired.
Another reason for stuffing a presentation with information may be lack of preparation. Perhaps the speaker has been called upon at the last minute. Perhaps they have had their time limit extended unexpectedly. Perhaps they have little experience in presenting. The result is an audience that simply ends up confused.
The third reason for TMI (Too much information) can be enthusiasm – enthusiasm for the subject, enthusiasm for the opportunity to share the information, enthusiasm for the chance to present. There is nothing wrong with enthusiasm. It can be a powerful engagement tool, but when it leads to an enthusiastic deluge of information, the result is not powerful engagement. The audience gets bored. Their brains signal overload and irritation sets n. The brain can really only absorb 3 points at any one time. The maximum is 7 (hence the early telephone numbers having 7 digits). Once it has to deal with much more than that, it needs to go into a different, more difficult processing mode. That’s where the irritation sets in –boredom and a desire to escape or tune out – death by TMI!
Finally there is the belief that decisions are made on rational consideration of the facts. So we give our audiences masses of facts that prove the point we are making – statistics, reports, graphs and diagrams, proof in all its forms. And they tune out. Given the indication that they are going to be subjected to too much information, they start being selective about what they remember. And that choice won’t always necessarily be the one we wanted them to make.
The answer lies in a series of decisions we need to make when we start putting together our presentations and speeches.
The first thing to decide is – what do you want your audience to do, think or feel at the end of your speech? What is the ultimate outcome you want from it? State that in one sentence so that you are laser focussed on it.
You will need to know your audience in order to do this. Always, always, always take them into account. What do they need from you? What do they want from you? What would they think was valuable about a speaker and his material? What will excite them?
So choose your outcome based on those aspects of your audience.
Then choose the points you will use to create that outcome.
Choose them based on what your audience will remember.
Choose them based on what will engage this audience.
And choose them based on the length of the speech. There should be three main points, or sections. If it is a longer presentation, then have three subdivisions of those main points. Expect to have about one main point per 10 minutes of presentation.
Then choose material to support those points that can be remembered and repeated. People buy on emotion and rationalise their decisions with logic, even if they are buying ideas. So use emotional supports as well as logical ones. Use phrases that can be repeated – by you throughout the speech and by your audience members later as prompts to memory. And aim to have one thing – just one thing – that is absolutely memorable and stands out from the whole presentation. It may be an object. It may be a story. It may be an image. But make it so graphic that it sticks in the mind of your audience long after you are finished. Make it something they will chat about afterwards. And make it something that will instantly remind them of the outcome that you wanted.
Once you have your material ready and have rehearsed, prepare for changes in the length of time available to you. If it is suddenly announced that you have extra time, have extra that you can add. If it is suddenly announced that time has been cut, know what you can cut from your material and still succeed with the presentation.
If you choose material that is suited to your audience you will maintain their attention and engagement. If you limit it to a few powerful points you will maintain their attention and engagement and you will make it easy for them to remember your material. If you add memory triggers to the mix, then your outcomes should be assured. Those are the things that will showcase your knowledge (winnowing out the important points), ensure you are prepared, communicate your enthusiasm and guarantee that your audience thinks, acts or believes what it was you wanted them to.
Author: Bronwyn Ritchie
If you want to include this article in your publication, please do, but please include the following information with it:
Bronwyn Ritchie is a professional librarian, writer, award-winning speaker and trainer. She is a certified corporate trainer and speech contest judge with POWERtalk, a certified World Class Speaking coach, and has had 30 years’ experience speaking to audiences and training in public speaking. In just 6 months time, you could be well on the way to being admired, rehired as a speaker, confident and sucessful, with the 30 speaking tips. Click here for 30 speaking tips for FREE. Join now or go to http://www.30speakingtips.com
The very first thing to do in any speech or presentation is to take and hold the audience’s attention – arouse it, focus it and keep it. Don’t waste your breath on the expected or the blah. If you must begin with something like “Good evening”, then make it different, or unusual. Here in Australia, we might say “G’day!” That would be unexpected. Otherwise use your voice and body language to make the greeting unusual, challenging, noticeable. Use pause here. Then use an opening that grabs the attention. You can use a question, a joke, a comment about the people or surroundings or event. You can make a statement, use a quotation, or simply use body language or gesture. But choose that opening to grab attention, to align with the audience and their needs, hopes and aspirations, and to lead into your message.
Whatever you may be trying to achieve, don’t let the impact of your presentation be an accident. Right from the beginning, it needs to be part of the planning. When you are visualizing your production, toying with ideas and possibilities and first drafts, make the impact of you as a person and of your performance an integral part of that process. Visualise it and work it into all aspects of your production planning.
Then you have the foundation for creating the “wow” factor.
by Lily Walters
A heckler is in the audience; the overhead projector breaks; the allotted speech time runs out – these are just some of the panic-producing crises, interruptions, or distractions easily dealt with in this first-aid guide for business speakers. Here, first-timers and experienced pros alike will find everything they need to organize, write, and deliver effective, entertaining speeches – from installations to toasts and roasts. => http://bit.ly/OICL9e
Quiet achievers. Unobtrusive. Professional. There to make sure your presentation gets the results you want. These are your visual supports. They support your presentation, underscore its impact, give power to your points.
It may be that in the culture of your organisation or of your audience, impact will be created by your visuals. If the message of your speech means nothing, your speech means nothing, and your image beyond the ability to create those visuals means nothing, then you will need to develop a high level of competency in creating those visuals and in presenting them. Invest in courses in construction and invest time in becoming competent with their operation.
If, on the other hand, your results will come from your message, or from your presentation skills, then the visual supports need to be just that – supports – unobtrusive in themselves. They need to be professional, yes, excellent, yes, to support your credibility and image, but they should be seamlessly supporting your message, not announcing their presence.
And if you want them to be excellent, work on your design skills. Try to be unique if you can, especially where you want to make an impact. Using the same old clip art and graphics that everyone uses will not be noticed, but originality will.
In creating visual supports, be sure that your material can be seen by everyone in the room. Make your words large and uncluttered. Five or six lines on a slide, flip chart page or transparency is adequate, and they will create far more impact that a mass of written material. The same applies to images.
Objects should be large enough to be seen, too. You can pass the smaller ones around, but know that while people are looking at the objects, they are not looking at you, and you have lost their attention. It may be better to have a display that people can look at after the presentation.
Using the “equipment” has to be as unobtrusive as possible. The first step here is being prepared. If you can practice beforehand, do so. Organise all the physical objects so that you can reach them when they are needed, without having to search, and without having to fumble. This may mean arranging them in the order in which they will be presented. It may mean practising the presentation so that you know automatically where to reach for something. This can apply to objects you want to display, the remote control for projecting equipment, the pens for flip charts or overhead projectors or a whiteboard, or to slides or overhead transparencies.
During these practice sessions, work out how you will move around the visual supports and equipment. Where will you place the objects you want to pick up – on a table, or another piece of furniture? Where will this, or the equipment, be so that you can move around it and communicate most easily with your audience – in front of you, beside or behind you? Always consider the least distracting way of accessing your material and the greatest ease of movement.
If you are using projection equipment, visualise its placement. Think about how you will work with the laptop or the overhead projector – standing beside, or behind? Do you want your silhouette projected on the screen as well as your visuals? Walking in front of the screen will also obscure them.
If you cannot organise the positioning of your equipment, then try to become familiar with it before the presentation and then visualise how you will use it best.
Plan to use visuals so that they support your message and do not detract from it, or overtake the attention. You need to be able to use the visuals easily. Turn the pages of a flip chart from the bottom corner. If you can find the remote control for your PowerPoint, use it, or be familiar with the keyboard shortcuts to use. Practice the way you will pick up, place and put down your OHP transparencies. These operations are all meant to be as unobtrusive as possible, not part of the message.
Please do not treat your audience as illiterate. If your words are on the screen or sheet of paper, then let the audience read for themselves. This will have enormous impact, especially if your audience is used to presenters slavishly following the test on their visuals.
You are presenting your message verbally, and visuals are just that – images or groups or words that support your message They are the quiet achievers, and are certainly not the message itself. If necessary, you may have to explain this, first, because many audiences have been trained by presenters who cover their inadequacies by using their visuals as the message. And this is why you will make an impact if you can present without using this method. You will be different. You will be seen as so much more confident and competent as a person. And this confidence and competence will be the underlying basis of the power of your presentation.
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© Bronwyn Ritchie If you want to include this article in your publication, please do, but please include the following information with it:
Bronwyn Ritchie is a professional librarian, writer, award-winning speaker and trainer. She is a certified corporate trainer and speech contest judge with POWERtalk, a certified World Class Speaking coach, and has had 30 years’ experience speaking to audiences and training in public speaking. In just 6 months time, you could be well on the way to being admired, rehired as a speaker, confident and sucessful, with the 30 speaking tips. Click here for 30 speaking tips for FREE. Join now or go to http://www.30speakingtips.com
Who are you? How will you be remembered after this presentation? Are you professional, poised, articulate? Are you warm, folksy, creative, nurturing? Maybe you want to be seen as ballistic, confronting, no-nonsense, boot camp material. What message will your clothes and your grooming convey? What will your choice of language say about you?
You cannot be someone you are not, when you present, unless you are prepared to be a performer for the entire production. Insincerity will detract from your speech as quickly as a joke in bad taste. But you can present a side of yourself as the highlight – the side you want your audience to remember.
And the most powerful choice you will make is how you get that image to support your message – how you put the two together.
Great speakers seem to stay on track effortlessly. Their presentations are tight and focused. Do you find yourself, on the other hand, sometimes, with too much information, or getting off the point of your story or presentation?
One simple trick to tighten and focus your presentation is to define the message; the central message of your presentation – what one thing do you want the audience to take away?
This message can be called a thesis statement or a theme. It can be given a number of names, but you need to be able to state it in one sentence. One sentence. That way you will stay focused on the outcome when you are planning.
Keep the sentence in front of you as you are preparing your content. Whenever you find a useful piece of information, ask yourself if it contributes to your one-sentence message and how well. When you are choosing the parts of your story, or the supports for your points, ask if they contribute to your one-sentence message and how well. When you are interacting with your audience in Q&A or an ad lib session, ask yourself that same question. Am I contributing to that one-sentence message and how well is what I am saying supporting it?
One sentence – one of the secrets to tightening and focusing your presentations.
Jerry Weissman
Want to make outstanding presentations? See how others have done it! Legendary presentations coach Jerry Weissman shares powerful examples from the media, sports, politics, science, art, music, literature, the military, and beyond. Weissman’s examples reveal universal truths about effective communication–and help you supercharge everything from content and graphics to delivery! => http://bit.ly/ONyZLv
The success of any speech or presentation depends on making a connection with the audience. Good speakers establish that connection from the very beginning and use many techniques to maintain it right through to the end. It is through that connection, made with our audiences, that we can achieve the outcomes we want.
Making eye contact and scanning the audience to achieve it is one of those techniques and a powerful one.
Firstly, make eye contact with each member of the audience. Be present. Though this conversation is a stylised one, it is a conversation, nevertheless. So make the audience feel you are talking to them, not just presenting your material.
The eye contact also builds your authenticity. One of the main signs of a person who is not authentic – not sincere – is lack of eye contact, and that would be a guarantee of losing any hard-won connection!
If you use notes, use them sparingly, or they will diminish your eye contact. If you must look at the projection screen, look briefly, or that, too, will diminish your eye contact. Any time that you look away from the audience make it a choice, make it deliberate, to support the point you are making.
Secondly, while you are scanning the audience to make eye contact, you can evaluate your connection with them. The connection you are making with your audience – is, mainly, nonverbal on their part. So you are not receiving a continuous flow of verbal feedback by which to monitor that connection.
You will have to rely on their nonverbal feedback to make sure the connection is still strong. As you scan, monitor how they are sitting, what they are doing, if they are talking or listening, whether their eyes are glazed or not. Then, if you see the connection waning, you can re-establish it.
One of the best ways is to make a change – a change relevant to what has gone before, relevant to your material and relevant to that audience. Change your presentation style, change their state, change your visuals.
© Bronwyn Ritchie If you want to include this article in your publication, please do, but please include the following information with it:
Bronwyn Ritchie is a professional librarian, writer, award-winning speaker and trainer. She is a certified corporate trainer and speech contest judge with POWERtalk, a certified World Class Speaking coach, and has had 30 years’ experience speaking to audiences and training in public speaking. In just 6 months time, you could be well on the way to being admired, rehired as a speaker, confident and sucessful, with the 30 speaking tips. Click here for 30 speaking tips for FREE. Join now or go to http://www.30speakingtips.com
What do you want the impact of our presentation to be?
That impact is not an accidental by-product of what you say and do. It is not something that occurs by chance, or through luck. It is something you create deliberately. So before you think about what you will say and what you will do, you need to define what it is that you want to create.
What exactly is the impact going to be? In other words, you need to define:
How will your audience respond to your speech or presentation?
What will they take away with them and remember?
What will they remember of you?
Why will they think “Wow what a fabulous presentation!”?
Sometimes, as speakers, we need to make a point that is just too new, or strange, or huge or threatening for our audience to grasp. It can certainly be a challenge and I am so grateful for analogies and the way they can easily and simply and cleanly do the job that we need to do in sharing that information.
An analogy works by relating the element that we want the audience to understand to something that they do understand, something with which they are familiar. It works because we are not very good at remembering concepts that come as words or as numbers, but we retain and understand far better if something is left in our minds as a picture or an image, particularly if it is something we have already seen or experienced. And that’s what analogies can do, leave your audience with an image and an understanding that they will remember long after your presentation has finished.
Analogies are extended similes and metaphors, and because they link your new or difficult concept to something that is familiar and understood by your audience they create a very human aspect to your point – and, by extension, to you as the presenter. Martin Luther King, in his “I have a dream” speech, compared the needs for civil rights to cashing a cheque. He said,
“In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a cheque. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of colour are concerned…”
This is a metaphor, but it cannot stand on its own. King could have said “We have come to our nation’s capital to cash a cheque.” But to make it understood and easily grasped he extended it with an explanation and it became an analogy, a powerful analogy.
As speakers we can all do this – compare our concepts that might be difficult to understand and remember with something that is relevant to our audience, something that resonates with them, something they can picture. And because it is their right brains that process that picture, it will remain with them after we have finished the speech. We have used an analogy to create a connection that will guarantee success for the point we are making.
And finally, to make that connection more powerful, make it relevant, make it resonate. Choose something that will appeal to your audience, something they understand, something they relate to. Use your research into your audience to guide the choice.
When it comes to finding analogies, look to your own life. Keep the major points of your speeches in the front of your mind as you move around your day. Look to the things around you, the people, the stories, the events, particularly with those points in mind. You will find that there are analogies everywhere, once you start thinking about things in that way. And because they are your own comparisons, from your own thoughts and your own life, they will have a powerful authenticity to them.
It can be a lot of fun, finding those analogies, and in the process you have a very useful tool to use.
© Bronwyn Ritchie If you want to include this article in your publication, please do, but please include the following information with it:
Bronwyn Ritchie is a professional librarian, writer, award-winning speaker and trainer. She is a certified corporate trainer and speech contest judge with POWERtalk, a certified World Class Speaking coach, and has had 30 years’ experience speaking to audiences and training in public speaking. In just 6 months time, you could be well on the way to being admired, rehired as a speaker, confident and sucessful, with the 30 speaking tips. Click here for 30 speaking tips for FREE. Join now or go to http://www.30speakingtips.com
That terrible moment when someone loses complete track of what they are saying – there is a blank, their face drops, and then becomes more and more frantic. This is painful not only for the speaker but for the audience.
Develop a strategy now so that if, despite your best preparations, a blank happens, you have something to say. You could remark, “Oops I’ve lost it” and maybe you can add some appropriate humour (“Must have left the speech in front of the mirror!”) and then add something like “Now where was I?”
Look at your notes if necessary – “We were talking about …”
If it’s really bad, ask the audience.
Whatever strategy you use along these lines, you keep the audience, and yourself, moving on, returning to target and none of you is embarrassed. So if you fear the blank moment, be prepared with a strategy that will allow you to deal smoothly with the situation.
