Professional Speaking: The Real Message
Your verbal message is the first to polish. Supporting this verbal message is the message you send with using the tone of voice. The tone of voice has the ability to liven up your topic. Emphasize highlighted points with excitement and enthusiasm. A quiet, somber tone of voice can bring seriousness to identifying problems you present when you present your solution. A loud, booming voice can emphasize definitive statements. One visual presentation you make is the one with your personal appearance and attire. Your audience doesn’t know you. If you say that you are a professional, do you look like it? You don’t have to have the Armani suits or the Dolce and amp; Gabbana dress, but you should at least look like the professional you claim to be. Men speakers should avoid loud colored shirts. Leave those shirts at home for the night out. Women should dress conservatively. You don’t have to be wearing a burlap sack, but low-cut blouses and high skirts don’t belong here. Your goal is to create credibility as a professional. The movements you make in your speech should be planned or at least controlled by you. Any movement that is not planned could potentially be distracting. Many of the above-mentioned mannerisms stem from being nervous about being on stage. Additionally, they could also come just because you don’t know you are doing them. Either way, you’ll need to minimize and eliminate as many of these movements as possible. Work on feeling comfortable with delivering your speech. You should feel natural as you speak about your topic. You should feel like you are sharing information with a long-time friend. This will come when you’ve spent many hours practicing, reworking, and revising your speech. This will also come because you speak from your heart and let others know the way you feel about your subject. Work on eliminating nervousness when delivering your speech. This will come as you get more familiar with your material. This will also come as you take the time to focus on delivering your message instead of focusing on the feelings of fear and anxiety. The real success of every presentation is leaving your audience with something of value. What do they get out of spending time in your presentation? Many people believe that they need natural brilliance in speaking well and presenting well. The belief is that they need to be polished, smart, witty, and charming all before they actually start to build a speech. Those attributes can come naturally, but most often, they come as a result of passion, knowledge, and practice of the speaker’s material. Give your audience something of value by becoming their friend. Sometimes you may need to stop thinking of yourself as a professional speaker and start thinking of yourself as a close personal friend of the audience member. You’ll teach them something and give them advice. You’ll sound more natural in our speech and you’ll be more relatable to your audience. People often associate those on stage as automatically having knowledge and wisdom on the topic covered. While this thought is great to establish you as a leader, the points you make in your presentation may be better received if you came across from a more personal standpoint.
Speaking Well In Public Is By No Means Accidental
You might possibly know how jokes can complement your speech. But jokes can also cause your speech to be disastrous. Jokes are both a boon and bane to a speech. If you are very much in comfort with it, use humor. Just check it first if it fits, serving as a breaker between sections or emphasizing a certain point. A funny and great line, or a comment that is irreverent can help liven up the presentation that you have and will help people to remember the things you have said. Of course any joke must be related to the topic that you have in some way. If you are not sure about something, you could also use a humorous photo or cartoon (with the permission of the photographer or illustrator, of course) in your slides. Aside from making jokes or humor in your speech, you could improve your public speaking with these other tips. – You should be able to grab your listeners’ attention even right at the start. That is why it is important that you start correct – confident posture, eloquent speaking style, controlled voice tonality and impact, and a nice, well-thought speech from you. – The information in your message should be organized clearly and logically, making it easy for your listeners to follow what you are trying to say. Keep things easy and simple. Divide the information into smaller blocks and work from there. Highlight the points that you want your audience to remember. – Your most crucial point should be the conclusion, bringing the speech to a close. The conclusion sets the tone of the speech, and lets the listeners think about and ponder on the things you have just said. Literary devices, such as quotes, stories, rhetorical questions, or surprising facts, can be used for concluding a speech, although of course, these devices should relate well to the topic of your speech. – Deliver the conclusion that you have clearly and slowly. Keep eye contact with your listeners as you speak. Smile at them, thanking them for the time that they have given you. – You should remember all these tips and in due time, you would be surprised to see how these techniques have helped you in your future speaking presentations. Your listeners will eventually understand the information you have given them and respect you for your ability in delivering that information.
How To Overcome Nervousness When You Speak In Public
Even if the speech you have is already prepared and you know everything about it, public speaking can be difficult. Many people are very nervous when they speak in public. Here are some tips for you to overcome your nervous feelings when you speak in front of many people. Preparing your presentation Center on yourself. Try practicing standing properly – with your feet under the hips directly. This position is the best and most stable for speaking in public. Rehearse this position with somebody or in front of your mirror. Your shoulders should be relaxed. The muscles in the shoulders support directly your larynx, so it has a fast effect on your voice. Shoulders should be rolled out. Warming up the voice. You should treat all your presentations as if they were performances. Prepare yourself by rehearsing. Deeply breathe into the bottom part of the lungs. You feel your rib cage is expanding slightly higher than the navel. You should thrice sigh. Sighing is your signal to the body that everything is okay and it is just perfect to relax. Then make a siren sound, starting from a high note to a lower note at the bottom part of the voice range you have. With enough practice, you will be able to find the low note connecting to the place located right above the navel. This is the natural voice pitch that you have. Managing meeting skills Directing your voice. Every time you speak, imagine that each word you say is like a beam of laser traveling from your mouth to the end person listening to you. Practice this outlook to be able to reach to many people at the same time. Directing your thoughts. Pay attention to your thoughts, especially their beginnings and endings. Make your communication complete and fully rounded. Diction as well as articulation. Convey clearly your message. During questions Give yourself time and space in breathing. Before answering, slightly breathe out first. When you are flustered or nervous, you usually take in more additional air than you need, and you hold onto that air while you try to think. However, this is not helping you. Usually, this method causes you to panic. Remove this habit by breathing air first before you speak, allowing you to relax and thoughts to come in clearly and more logically.
Effective Public Speaking: Audience Contact
Although speaking in public is really a monologue of sorts, this monologue is addressed to a ready, able and receptive audience who wants to learn from you as much as you want to learn from them. Speaking in public would be more effective if it is listened to. The following are effective tips to maintain that necessary contact with the audience. Greet them Minutes before your actual speaking engagement, you could walk around the venue and familiarize yourself with the people who will be listening to you. As the people and the attendees arrive, give them a warm greeting. It is so much easier to deliver a speech to a group of people whom you consider as friends than to a bunch of anonymous faces. Be positive Honestly, people expect and want you to succeed. Audiences want to be as informed, stimulated and entertained as they could be. If you fail, they cringe with you. Succeed and your audience benefits just as well from your great speaking performance. There is nothing to be sorry about If you mention to the audience that you are nervous or if you express your apologies to any problems you think may exist about your speech or your speech delivery, you may be setting them up to focus on that thing you are apologizing for. You do not have to mention this to them, chances are they haven’t noticed this until you brought it up. Relax and be silent. Your audience will relax with you. Establish eye contact Connect with your audience, appear natural. Or better yet, be as natural as you can be, without overdoing it of course. You should be able to get the audience to nod their heads as an acknowledgement of what you are trying to convey. Do not breeze through your speech. Pause for a while or for a brief moment, especially at those points you want to emphasize. This is also a good time to establish eye contact with your attendees as well as to catch that much needed breath. Do not debate If during the question and answer part of your speaking engagement an audience expresses disagreement with any part of your message, you need not aggressively prove your point to him or her. A debate is not just a futile means to get your point across but it could just as well never be resolved. Get that attendee to talk with you after your speaking engagement, never during.
Delivering A Speech? Maintain Eye Contact
Body language is very important when delivering a speech. Have you ever seen our great leaders fidget or make unnecessary movements while addressing the nation? Since you are the center of attention while making the presentation, you should mind every move that you make so as not to bore or distract the people listening to your speech. So you already have a speech prepared, you know the topic well and you are now standing in front of the audience. They are in for a treat because you have prepared a great presentation, yet you also know that they have a very short attention span. How would you keep them interested with what you are saying? The answer is to maintain eye contact.This is one public speaking technique that great speakers use when addressing a large group of people. Here are some tips on how you can use this “trick” to keep your audience interested while delivering a speech: Once you have already started speaking and have delivered your introduction, take a look at your audience. Do not be nervous if you see one or two people frowning as you are not sure of exactly what they are thinking. Instead of looking out for unfriendly or blank faces, search for the people who are smiling and nodding their heads. Try to focus on this person for a couple of minutes and look him or her in the eye. This way, you would have an immediate “friend” in the audience to whom you can look at and gain confidence from. This will not just increase your confidence but also relax you in the course of your speech. Gaze steadily at your audience, moving from one part of the room to another. This way, you would immediately grasp their attention. Never read your speech. Just make an outline of the important points that you can expand on. If you have visuals, do not read the bullet points word for word as this might imply that your audience cannot read that themselves. With this, you are instantly creating a “bond” with your audience as a speaker since you do not have to keep on looking at your notes through the course of your speech. The key to delivering a great speech is to just breathe, relax and make eye to eye contact with your audience. Thus, you are not just making a physical connection with them but you are also ensured that you come out as a sincere speaker who wants to inform and interact with the audience through your speech.
An Effective Style To Use In Public Speaking: Audience Participation
An effective public speaker should be able to utilize devices that will be able to capture the attention of the audience. One effective means for them to give you that much needed interest is this: get them to go on stage. Make them participate. When someone is on stage and he or she happens to be a member of the audience, the rest will almost always stay attentive. Why? Because they would like to see what you will be doing to one of them. Also, because they are thinking they could be up there themselves and so to save their precious egos from embarrassment they at least need to know what is going on. No matter how good or excellent you are as a presenter or as a public speaker, nothing beats the excitement of getting someone to be on stage who really should not be there in the first place. What is going through their minds at that moment when you pull an unsuspecting someone from their complacency is that, “Oh my god, what if the speaker selects me to go up there next? What am I going to do?” Then later, “I need to pay attention to this.” A little bit later as you go through your presentation, the audience will then most probably think, “What point is he/she making?” And then as you take your point across, the audience will then get to think, “Now I get it.” Because you made them pay attention, you have forced them to listen and respond to your statement in the privacy of their minds. However, there are those extremely shy and very sensitive members of the audience who might withdraw from going through the rest of your presentation if they hear you will be calling on them up on the stage. The objective is to gain an audience and not to lose any of them. Make it clear prior to your asking someone to come up on stage with you that you are asking for a volunteer and that no one will be forced if they do not want to. Notice that if the majority of your audience are shy, once you finally get someone to be on stage, all of them will almost always heave a sigh of relief that you would actually feel a breeze pass you by, really. Another way to get the audience to participate as well as pay attention is by giving them due recognition. Try to acknowledge a single member of the audience for a specific achievement or a moment of a good performance, or also acknowledge a group of the audience.
A Key Element In Public Speaking: Timing Pauses
Timing is essential when speaking in public. The cliché: It is not what you say but more on how you say it, applies so much to public speaking. Where you put your pauses during your presentation is one of the important aspects of maintaining an audience that is free from drowsing off. Couple this with humor and you are definitely on a roll. Timing is the element involved during reactions that are spontaneous especially on developments during your delivery that are unexpectedly expected. Do not forget, though, that when you expect any laughter to burst any time soon, avoid speaking as your voice and whatever it is that you are saying will most probably be drowned out by the noise of the audience. Make sure to remember that laughter is extremely difficult to get and so very much easy to discourage. Try as much as possible to maintain eye contact with the audience for a little time longer when you deliver that punch line. The audience size could also affect the way you use your timing. When the audience is small, the presentation you have will most probably be delivered in a lesser time compared to if you have a large audience. The reaction of a large audience will get to be a little longer and not as quick as if the audience is small. You also have to wait until the seemingly ripple effect of your punch line gets to that audience in the back row. Believe it or not, putting that much needed silence in your presentation is one of the hallmarks of a skilled and good presenter. No public speaker should jabber constantly away in the hopes of keeping an audience glued to anything it is you have to say. Ironically, this is one effective way to keep their focus off you. The use of silence adds that much needed polish in your presentation making you appear as a confident expert. Short pauses are effective to use in order for you to separate your thoughts. These pauses last from half a second to two. You do not have to literally count though, just keep in mind to slow down. This gives the audience a chance to absorb all of what it is you are getting across. It also helps if you change the inflection in your voice during the end of a thought as this could also signal to the audience that another thought is coming their way. Pauses are also an effective means if you want to highlight something. Put it before any word or thought you want the audience to focus on, they will most definitely get that.
Relax Your Way To Public Speaking
Believe it or not, fear of death is actually second to the one greatest fear that the majority of humanity seems tensely afraid of: fear of speaking in public. If fear is all that you are thinking, then forget about that presentation that could earn your company and you the necessary sales. Presentation and public speaking is one of the most efficient as well as effective manner in making your products and services known. Why deny your product or service the chance to be heard? If you are still afraid, try your very best to focus on the various positive after effects of making that presentation. Create in your mind the numerous clients, customers and contact persons you might not get to see or be involved with if you let that unnecessary and irrelevant anxiety take hold of you. Your presentation may only take thirty minutes but the long term effects of your pitch or presentation might go a long way. If the fear is still gripping you, try to do the following exercises to help your body relax and warm up to whatever it is you plan to do in your presentation. Turn that negative energy into a positive one and see who benefits best from it. Warm up your body Are you wearing high heeled shoes now? If you are, please take them off now. Then go and stand up. Try to stand on only one leg. Then shake the leg that is off the floor. Switch legs and do the same thing again. What you are doing is taking the negative energy of anxiety towards the floor and out of your body. Though this may appear and sound so out of this world, it actually works. For your information, actors use this as a warm-up exercise prior to attacking any scene. Hold out your hands, shake them, fast. Put your hands over your head and bring them to your sides. Repeat the same process. Doing this continually will take the tension off your hands and arms so any movements you make with them during your presentation gets to appear natural. Ease the tension present in the muscles of your face. In order to do this what you could do is chew in a manner that is exaggerated. These exercises are done for the purpose of warming any part of your body that is edgy, uptight or taut from being too nervous thinking about how you will do in your presentation. Do not think too much though as it only adds unnecessary stress. Relax and your audience will relax along with you.
Rehearsing: A Way To Eliminate Public Speaking Anxiety
It is almost impossible for one to go through his or her adult life without having been asked to speak in public at least once. You might have proposed a toast to a wedding, or reported in front of a class. At work, you could have done an oral presentation for a promotion. Or you could have faced a group of interviewers before you actually got hired for the job that you now have. All of these and more would require a person to get up and speak out in front of a number of people. This can either be a good or a bad experience for the speaker. In the United States, studies show that public speaking is one of the most common fear that Americans have. How do we eliminate this widespread public speaking anxiety? The key is to face your fear, master your material, and rehearse. Here are some helpful tips on how you can use rehearsing to eliminate the fear of speaking in public: Have a “dress rehearsal” before the big day If you are making a formal presentation in a particular place, go to the venue a day ahead or several hours before the presentation to familiarize yourself with the surroundings. If there is a rostrum, stand in front of it and test the height. Make the necessary adjustments so that the audience will have a clear view of you as a speaker. Know your material. Prepare an outline of your speech and look for bits of information which could be a major point of interest. Read about every aspect of the topic so that it will not be difficult for you to answer unexpected questions should they come up through the course of your discussion. This is also a good time to check out the equipment that you need to proceed with your presentation. Create charts and photos for a slide presentation to make your presentation more informative and interesting. Time is also important so you can have a run-through of the entire speech and record your voice while doing so. This would give you an idea of how long it will run. The recording will also reveal the focal points where you can vary your tone of voice for a more lively speech. It is also a great idea to tape yourself or have somebody do it for you while you are rehearsing your actual speech. Review the video and look for ways to improve your overall presentation. Practice makes perfect, so it is very important to rehearse before giving out that all-important oral presentation and help you reduce your public speaking anxiety.
Preparing Yourself When You Speak In Public
Public speaking does not have to be difficult. Here are some tips to help you prepare for public speaking. You don’t need to be perfect in succeeding in speaking in public. You do not need to be too witty and brilliant to be successful when you speak in public. Public speaking is not all about that. It may look like it is, but in actuality, it is not. You can be the average guy you are. What is important in speaking in public is that you give your listeners something that is worth their time. If people leave after your speech with something that is of value, they would think of you as a successful speaker. They would consider your speech as something that was worth their time. Deliver your main points You may want to put in as many facts and information as you can. But only emphasize three or four main points. You could even talk about one main point if you want. You should remember that what your listeners want from you is that you give them two or three key main points that they can understand and would make a lot of difference to them. If you are able to structure the talks that you have, lots of complexity will be removed. Inject some humor but still practice humility While there are many other public speaking styles, humility and humor are some of the devices that you could use to make your speech livelier and entertaining to your listeners. Just make sure that you are comfortable being humorous and that the humor is appropriate for the occasion. If you do not feel comfortable giving jokes, then you might as well not use jokes which might fall flat on your nose. Or if you are speaking before a crowd of Americans of Asian descent, do not tell jokes about Chinese food or Oriental customs. Humility in public speaking means standing before the others and sharing with them your own mistakes, your human frailties, and weaknesses. If you show to other people that you are not afraid or ashamed admitting such things, you create a relaxed and intimate environment that will permit them to open up to you too. Being humble in public also makes you more believable, more credible, and more respected, with your listeners relating to you easier. You are no longer the remote expert who is ahead of them, but is one of them.
