Public speaking tips: Little known secrets of great public speakers

Oh no!

You've been asked to give a presentation. Gulp! A lot of people gasp at the thought of having to talk in public yet for others it comes so naturally. Want to know what you can do to be a confident, capable public speaker? There are many books and websites out there which teach you the 'what' of public speaking and not the how. Let me show you what I and my fellow Toastmasters colleagues do to improve our public speaking.

Know your audience

What is the age of your audience? The age of who you are presenting to may very well determine the attention you get in your speech. Elderly persons and small children are opposite ends of the age pole but they have similar attention spans for different reasons. Make sure if speaking to these groups you get to your point quickly! If the audience is comprised of different ages then you need to cater for this using different presentation methods.

How much knowledge does your audience have?

Related to the age of the audience is how much knowledge they may have about the subject you’re speaking on. Now without handing out a questionnaire on your topic before you speak you may have to take a rough educated guess. Are they already experts? Will they know absolutely nothing about your topic. The best thing to do here is to take a punt somewhere in the middle. Unless it’s on the mating cycle of the African dung beetle most people know a little about a lot but a little pre speech research on your audience will certainly assist in your assessment of their knowledge. If it seems they know a lot about your topic then you might bore them to death but if they know nothing about your topic then don’t overwhelm them with information overload either.

Know your surroundings

My second point in speech awareness is knowing the room you will be presenting in. Ideally it is a very good idea to visit the room you will be speaking well before you have started wrting your speech. Why? Knowing the room will help you work out where to stand to get maximum impact, whether you will be free to move around or even what methid of presenting will be best. Is the room conducive to forum type questions, will everyone be able to hear you or see slides if you’re using them. Here’s a hot tip: If you can visit the room before you write you speech use your mobile to take a photo of it.

Where are you?

Related to room layout is room location. Again if you can, visit where you will be presenting. What type of building and where is it? Is it located next to a construction site, a busy road or as I found out during one of my speeches, is the room next to a busy lunch room. It is very hard to complete against micrwave dings and coffee machines! If you will be competing with these environmental noises perhaps request a microphone.

Presentation methods

My third point relating to speech awareness is what is the best type of presentation method to use? When I was at school I had a Economics and History teacher who had a love affair with an overhead projector. I think she took it home and cuddled it at night. Whilst overhead projectors are now only found on the scrapheap a lot of speakers now rely in powerpoint presentations. I think knowing how to use powerpoint is a fantastic skill to have but you shouldn’t lean on it like it is a ventolator keeping your presentation alive. People, that is your audience have come to see you, to hear you and to be wowed by you. Leave them with a great impression of you not just of your sexy slides. If you are doing an informative speech consider hand outs. But what you don’t want is your audience reading your handout when you’re talking so either:

Make your handouts succinct, maybe a 1-pager with dot points

OR

Wait until the end of your speech to hand them out.

When are you presenting?

The final point I want to make about speech awareness is thinking about what time of day you are presenting.

Are scheduled to talk first thing in the morning? If so you might want to start with an ice breaker to perk people up as they burn their tongues sipping their skinny soy lattes. Or wake them up with something better than a caffeine hit-audience participation!

Similarly what happens first thing after lunch? Our cycadian rhythms which is our 24hr biochemical cycle tells us that it is nap time after lunch. So beware of the post lunch speech. You will be sure to see some yawns in the sudience at this time. To overcome this start with some questions or use a variety of techniques to get your audience involved.

Most of all-practice and have fun! The more fun you are having the more engaging you will be!

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