A Few Ways to Up Your Public Speaking (Part 2)

part 1 | part 2

Last week I discussed some introductory ways to improve your public speaking skills. Keeping things simple (KISS), not using notes, and telling a story were all covered. Now let’s get into a few more finer techniques on how to effectively give a public speech.

Control the Audience

As a public speaker you always have to be aware that you are in control of the audience, not the other way around. If you make a mistake, forget a sentence, stumble on your words, etc… you have to remain in control. If you need to pause to collect your thoughts or even recover with a funny joke, then do that. What you don’t want to do is panic and lose control of your message. Even if you feel embarrassed and you get laughed at, it doesn’t matter. You have to keep your equanimity and remain in control of the stage. Breathe. Stay calm. And get right back at it.

Move Around

Make sure that you aren’t remaining stationary while you give your speech. It’s okay to walk around and animate yourself. You don’t want to come off as some sort of robot that is planted to the ground and just spitting out words. Use your hands to gesture and enforce what you are saying. Step around the room and keep your body fluid. This also let’s the audience know that you are comfortable and confident with what you are saying. If you don’t move around, then you will come off as being stiff and uptight — that’s not the message that you want to give off.

Eye Contact is Crucial

Always connect with your audience by looking directly at them. The worse thing a speaker can do is ignore the audience. You want constantly scan the entire audience and lock eyes with everyone that you possibly can. This will let the audience know that you truly care about conveying your message to them. You respect them enough to look them in the face and speak “to” them, not “at” them. If you stare off into space and neglect to give people face time, then they are going to care less about what you have to say. Credibility will be lost.

Smile

Smiling makes the world go ‘round. Be happy. Be passionate. Be enthusiastic. When you are in a positive mood when giving a speech, the audience knows it. You can really liven up your speech by smiling. Now don’t get carried away and have a big fake joker grin on your face throughout the speech. This will not only make you look silly, but it’ll probably scare a few people in the audience. (Geezz… is that dude possessed or something?) Just be genuine.

Finish Properly (strong)

Inexperienced speakers will finish a speech like this: “Now to conclude, I will leave you with this quote….blah…blah….blah…. and please remember to blah…blah…blah… and that’s it. Thank you.” No… you want to finish a speech strong! Don’t ever say “Now to conclude.” Before your conclusion you want to succinctly reiterate the main points in your speech (that will be the cue to the audience that you are wrapping-up). Then you want to finish with a bang. You want to leave your audience with a final message. A call to action. A new message that wasn’t introduced in the body of the speech. Something that supersedes everything that you have said up to that point. Something that you want them to go home a think about. After you drop that message, pause, and say “thank you.” And that’s it.

If you have any more speech pointers, please share them with us. I hope that you’ve been able to learn something from this series and good luck on your next speech. Rock on!

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