1. Understand the
Expectations and Learn the Details
“Gather all of the
information regarding location, technical setup, time you’ll be speaking,
dress, topics to include/avoid, type of presentation, etc.,”
Having all of this information ahead of time
will help you prepare a presentation that fits the occasion and resonates with
your audience.
It’ll also help you
avoid technical or logistical snafus that can add unnecessary stress, “You
don’t want any surprises as in realizing you were
supposed to bring a laptop or handouts.”
2. Know Your Audience
It’s as important to
understand your audience as it is to understand the subject you’ll be
discussing in front of them. “Make sure you understand the level of knowledge,”
and tailor your presentation accordingly. “You don’t want to bore them
with details they already know nor do you want to overwhelm them.”
I emphasize that even if
she’s giving the same speech to two different audiences, she’ll take the time
to customize it. She always asks herself, “What is the specific audience and
why are they there?”
So, for example, the
toast you’d give at an engagement party among all your college friends might be
pretty different from the speech you give at the same friend’s wedding in front
of the whole extended family.
Or in a professional
context, imagine you’re giving a presentation about the future of your company.
That would look really different depending on whether you’re talking to a group
of executives from your own organization versus a room full of college students
who are interested in getting into the industry. For one, you might dive into
the nitty gritty of last quarter’s performance and share your insights about
what changes your organization needs to make to remain competitive. For the
other, you’d probably zoom out a bit more, give an intro to your
industry, and sketch out what your company does and where
it’s going.
3. Plan and Structure
Your Speech
So often the focus of
advice about public speaking is about how you’re saying the words in front of
an audience. Those things are unequivocally important (which is why we go into
detail about them below!) but before you get there, you have to think
about what you’re saying.
“You can have great
diction and you can have great presentation skills, but if your words and
structure are all over the place then people are not going to remember what you
said,” says Lee, who credits Toastmasters with teaching her how to write a
speech. “It is 100% about simplicity, because when you’re giving a speech in
front of a live audience it’s so fleeting that if you have multiple points and
if you go off on tangents and if you don’t stay on one simple path then people
won’t remember what you were speaking about.”
Lee always picks one
central point when she’s preparing a talk—whether she’ll be speaking for five
minutes or 45. She’ll present her central theme, give supporting evidence and
examples, and keep circling back to that main message. “So even if the audience
forgets 99% of your speech, which they will, they will go home with that 1%,”
she says.
I takes a similar
approach with a slightly different formula. His go-to structure for a talk is
“inward, outward, forward.” He starts with a story that explains why he’s
talking about this topic in the first place, zooms out to evidence that others
are thinking about it as well, and ends with solutions.
In a workplace setting,
this might translate into laying out a challenge your team is facing, zooming
out to examine how other teams and companies are thinking about and handling
similar issues, and end by proposing next steps for your
team.
4. Don’t Overload Your
Slides
If you’re using slides
to accompany your presentation, make sure you avoid overloading them with too
much text. “Think about how you like to be presented to,” “Very few of us like
an 80-slide presentation where the person just reads everything to us.”
Beyond the simple fact
that people will be distracted squinting at that teeny tiny type, you might
be tempted to start reading off the slides and you’ll end up sounding a little
too much like economics teacher
Instead, use slides primarily
as visual complements to your words and a tool to
emphasize your main takeaway.
5. Practice, Practice,
Practice
Okay, pay attention,
because if you absorb just one thing from this article it should be this: You
have to practice. Not once or twice but over and over again.
“When you practice it
enough you figure out the rhythm,” says Nathan, who estimates he practiced his
TED talk about 100 times before he gave it. You’ll also feel more confident and
comfortable speaking without reading off a piece of paper (or your slides)
because the structure and progression will become so familiar.
Lee takes advantage of
any opportunity to practice when she’s preparing to speak. “Practice of any
sort can be very helpful. I practice in my room or in the
shower or driving in the car,” she says.
6. Get Feedback
While practicing on your
own is useful, it can be even better to do it in front of a live audience—even
if that’s just your work bestie or your sister. The more you get used to
speaking in front of actual humans the easier it’ll get.
Plus, you can get feedback
from your trusted practice audience before you go out and do the real thing.
Ask them if your words and points were clear, if there was anything that
confused them, how your rhythm was, and if there was anything else they
noticed.
You can also give
yourself feedback. Use your phone (or whatever other device you have) to record
audio or video of your practice sessions. When you play it back, you can become
your own audience in a way and pick up on things you didn’t realize needed some
attention.
“I have had clients
astounded at their mannerisms and overuse of ‘um’ when we’ve played back video.
Most of us have a nervous ‘go to’ sound or movement,” “Once
you’re aware of it, you can work on it.”
7. Memorize Your First
and Last Lines
You’ll want to have a
pretty clear idea of what you’re going to say, of course. But you also don’t
want to sound like a robot regurgitating a pile of words you wrote down.
By the time she was
comfortable in front of an audience, Lee wasn’t reading her speeches or even
memorizing an exact script. “If you memorize everything word for word, it’s not
going to sound very natural,” she says. Instead, she plans the structure but
keeps the words themselves a little loose with a couple of exceptions: “I
generally try to memorize the opening sentence and the closing sentence.”
The goal is to ensure
you start and end strong while still giving yourself the
room to speak naturally in between.
8. Join a Toastmaster or
Go to a Workshop
If you’re committed to
improving your public speaking skills, then not only should you practice each
speech or presentation before you give it, but you should also try to get as
many of the real thing under your belt as you can so that you become accustomed
to it.
“It’s the most important
to get as much stage time in front of an audience” as possible, Lee says.
“That’s why Toastmasters was such a useful organization for me because it gave
me the grounds to practice on in front of a live audience.”
Toastmasters is of
course one of the more well-known options, with more than 16,000 clubs all over
the world, but you can also check out meetups, classes, and workshops. If those
options aren’t available in your area or don’t appeal to you, try gathering a
group of friends and/or colleagues who want to practice their skills and give
and get feedback on a regular basis as well.
During Your Speech
Doing all of the prep
work should help you feel ready and confident—at least, more than you would
otherwise. Here’s how you can keep helping yourself in
the moment.
9. Get in the Zone
For about 10 minutes
before he gets on stage to give a talk, Nathan becomes something of a recluse.
He doesn’t talk to anyone, he drinks some water, he crouches down somewhere, he
focuses on his breathing, and he repeats this phrase to himself: “Use
expression to create possibility.”
Now, that’s a very
specific set of actions that works for him, but he recommends everyone figure
out their own “stage mantra” or routine. Ask yourself, he says, “What do you
need to be repeating to yourself beforehand? What, action-wise, do you need to
do beforehand to get yourself in the zone?”
It might take some time
to find the things that help you in the lead-up, whether you do them the night
before, the day of, or in the moments just before you begin. If you’re not sure
where to start, think back to some other reference point in your life when you
were preparing for an important event, Nathan says. What did you use to do
before a baseball game or piano recital or big exam? See
if those things help now and iterate until you find the right combination.
10. Don’t Bury Your Face
in Notes
When I first started
giving speeches, she’d just read the whole thing word for word off a piece of
paper. “It was terrible,” she says, remembering the early days before she
became the accomplished speaker she is today. “Notes are like a crutch. So you
just start to rely on [them] more and more,” she’s realized. “It’s more
important that you’re connecting with the audience, making eye contact with the
audience, and [having] a true conversation with the audience.”
She no longer uses notes
at all—she just memorizes the opening and closing lines, as mentioned—but
reaching that comfort level takes practice. If you’re still working up to that
and need your notes, she says, go with bullet points. They’ll help you stay on
track without tempting you to read everything from the page.
Notes can also block
your face or torso, or draw your eyes down as you’re reading, says Nathan. So
if you plan to bring some, try folding your paper or
using index cards with just those few bullet points to serve as a reference.
11. Make Eye Contact
You’ve surely heard it
before, but eye contact is key in public speaking. It helps you connect with
the audience, Lee says, and it’s most effective when you focus on one person at
a time. “When you are giving a speech, you should always sound like you are
delivering to a single individual rather than speaking to the masses,” she
says. “Direct eye contact with one person then moving to
another is an effective way to do that.”
12. Use Pauses
“A lot of times people
speak really fast. Their mind is racing and they want to make a good
impression,” says a Muse career coach and human resources professional. “People
tend to want to rush through and get it over with,” especially when they’re
nervous. It’s something you might get feedback about or pick up on if you
record yourself.
One of my biggest tips
for public speaking—using pauses—can help with overall speed as well as pacing.
You can use pauses strategically, inserting them right after important points
to let them sink in or right before to allow you to gather your thoughts and
get the audience’s attention for what you’re about to say.
I likes to follow a
structure where she makes a point, pauses, provides support for that point and
recaps, pauses again, makes a related point, etc. “If you follow that outline
and pause in conjunction with the points you’re making,” she says, “the
audience has a chance to let that simmer, to let your
points settle and think through [them].”
13. Repeat Yourself
Remember that the people
listening to you talk live can’t rewind to catch that important thing you just
said or flip back a few pages to find that crucial point you made earlier the way
they could if they were watching a video or reading a book.
So help them out by
repeating the thesis or main takeaway of your talk, says Nathan. In his own
talks, he might repeat that take-home line six or eight times. The repetition
ensures that everyone hears it, realizes it’s important, and can process it and
let it sink in.
“It’s got to be short
and punchy,” says Nathan, and you can accentuate it with pauses before or after
you say it. If you have slides, you might also want to put it up there once or
twice. It’s like the chorus of a song, Nathan explains. It’s
catchy and it’s the first thing someone will be able to repeat back to you.
14. Let Some Questions
Go
You can do a whole lot
of planning, but the truth is that you can’t anticipate everything, including
questions that might come up. I stress that it’s okay to say, “That’s a great
question, let me get back to you on that.” In fact,
that’s far better than stammering through and making something up.
15. Keep Talking
Lee may now be an
award-winning speaker who travels all over the world to give talks and feels
comfortable ditching the notes, but even she still freezes and forgets her
speech sometimes. You have to just keep talking until you find your way back.
“Get away from that
mentality that you have to be perfect. It’s okay if you forget,” she says. “You
learn to start to fill in the gaps. Start to speak until you remember. No one
in the audience knows you forgot your speech,” she adds. “What you are feeling
inside is not as apparent as you think it is. If you keep that in mind and keep
talking, eventually you’ll come back.”
16. Remember the
Audience Is on Your Side
For many people, public
speaking feels like one of the scariest things they could be called on to do,
Lee says. They’re terrified of failing and think they’ll be humiliated and
ostracized. But the people on the other side don’t want to see you mess
up—they’re eager to hear what you have to say.
“If you remember that
the audience wants you to do well, that they’re on your side, it’s a much
easier process,” says Lee. Focus on what you’re giving to the audience—as if
you were giving advice or telling a story to your best
friend—rather than on yourself and how you appear.
17. Don’t Be So Hard on
Yourself
Finally, remember that
everyone gets nervous. Those executives many levels above you whose presence is
making you sweat? They probably get nervous when they speak, too, I point out.
“Give yourself a little bit of grace,” she says, and do the best that you can.
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