Successful public speaking: advice from a professional

• What techniques will help make public speaking successful.
• Why impostor syndrome interferes with performance and how to detect its symptoms.
• How to increase self-confidence and reduce fears of public speaking.

Public speaking is an integral part of the professional life of almost all leaders and people involved in active social activities.

Public speaking can take different forms:

• presentations at industry meetings or business forums;
• speaking at press conferences, client days and presentations;
• protecting projects before investors;
• presentation of the division's performance results for the reporting period, etc.

The purpose of a speech is to motivate people to do something (for example, make a purchase), stimulate interest, clarify and clarify information (for example, when speaking to the media), and more. Almost all speakers experience fear, and sometimes it literally paralyzes beginners. And this is not surprising, because publicity involves the expression of one’s thoughts and ideas, which may not be accepted or misunderstood by listeners, and this will inevitably affect the speaker’s reputation.

That is why, when preparing for a speech, it is important to follow basic rules that can reduce the level of fear and be persuasive.

BASIC RULES FOR PUBLIC SPEAKING

Rule 1: Preparation is the key to success

Any performance, even if it involves improvisation, requires preparation. Going out in public without the speaker understanding what he will be talking about is practically doomed to failure.

Here are a few stages of preparation:

• Formulate the topic of your speech or clarify what exactly the organizers are putting into the formulation of the proposed topic.
• Identify 3-5 key ideas that you want to convey to your audience. As a rule, organizers request abstracts for posting event announcements, and this is where you need to start preparing the text of your speech.
• Create a plan for your report. It can be presented in the form of text or a mental map, which allows you to visually represent the content of the report (Fig. 1).

Rice. 1. Example of a speech mind map

• Think about what information you will use to reveal each key idea (expert opinions, calculations, forecasts, facts, research, etc.).
• Follow the classic scheme for presenting the material: introduction (what the speech is about, what determines the importance and relevance of the chosen topic, the speaker’s introduction), the main part (key ideas, arguments and facts) and conclusion (summarizing, encouraging the audience to take action and gratitude).
• Prepare presentation materials if necessary. A presentation is always the “face” of the speaker, so use high-quality templates or involve a designer in the preparation. Try to avoid the key mistake of speakers - the presentation should contain illustrative materials, not the text of the speech.
• Be sure to take into account the timing of your speech when preparing so that the moderators do not have to interrupt you mid-sentence during the event.
• When preparing a report, avoid “lyrical digressions” so that your speech does not turn out to be empty and of no value to the audience. Follow the basic rules of oratory in public speaking.

Rule 2. Assess the level and determine the interests of the target audience

Different audiences require different terminology and depth of immersion into the topic. If a speaker speaks a lot, he rarely uses the same report and presentation; he adapts them to the needs and characteristics of the target audience. Therefore, when preparing, be sure to check with the organizers for a preliminary list of participants or a portrait of the event’s target audience. This will allow you to structure your report, focusing on the most interesting and relevant points for listeners. I also recommend studying the list of speakers and their stated topics in order to make the event as a whole the most interesting for the audience.

Rule 3. Research the venue in advance

If possible, visit the venue of the event to see with your own eyes the premises, seating arrangements, equipment, etc. If the event is held in another city, ask the organizers for photos, find them on the Internet, request a list of equipment and indicate your wishes (for example, a flip chart and colorful markers). Understanding the environment in which the performance will take place will allow you to prepare and avoid unpleasant surprises. If possible, rehearse your speech in the room where it will take place.

Rule 4. You can’t make a first impression twice.

During the first couple of minutes, event participants will judge you based on your appearance, so think carefully about your appearance. Be sure to take into account the format of the event - your confidence may be shaken if it is supposed to be a casual format, and you come in a formal business suit. Also pay attention to the phrases with which you begin your speech. In addition to a greeting, this could be a good joke or a couple of interesting facts.

Rule 5. Feedback (listener reaction)

During the performance, try not only to see, but also to feel feedback from the audience. Are they interested? Is the pace of your report too fast? Do participants leave the hall? Do they write down your abstracts? Are slides photographed? Adapt quickly to keep people's attention and prevent them from getting bored. Use pauses, ask the audience questions, joke appropriately, play videos, and more.

Rule 6. Remember the purpose of the speech

As a rule, listeners remember the most striking moments of a performance or its ending. Therefore, prepare in advance the phrases with which you will end your speech. Always remember why you came to the audience. If the goal is to obtain new clients, include information about the company’s competitive advantages in the text of the report, and at the end, invite them to cooperate and leave your contact information on the last slide. If you are presenting a project, ask event participants to express their opinions about it and indicate areas for development. If you want to draw attention to your expert position, invite people to become friends on social networks or subscribe to your newsletter on your website.

Requirements for the form of speech:

1. Clear pronunciation.
2. Normal and average pace.
3. Proportionality of voice power.
4. Change of pace, the ability to pause to give the interlocutor the opportunity to comprehend what you said.
5. Rich vocabulary of speech. Absence of unnecessary words, slang and vulgar expressions.

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HOW TO OVERCOME FEAR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING

Summarizing my 17 years of public speaking experience, I want to give some recommendations that will allow you to overcome your fear and increase your confidence before speaking. Experienced speakers consider self-confidence to be the key element of successful public speaking.

• Don't be afraid to make mistakes
  The fear of saying or doing something wrong holds you back. But there are no ideal people who perform without blemishes. The presentation may not start, there may be an error on the slide, or you accidentally made a mistake - if this happens, stop, apologize to the participants, make a joke and calmly continue on.
• Ask for Feedback
  Your listeners can help you become better and more effective. Consider recommendations not as criticism and belittlement of your merits, but as an area of ​​growth.
• Analyze your performances
  Make video recordings of your performances. This way you will see whether you are using filler words, whether there are excessive gestures, at what moments you “fail”, and what you do best.
• Constantly train.
  Use every opportunity to improve the level of oratory skills, do not be afraid to appear as a speaker at events, accept invitations to speak for free. The more performances you have and the more diverse the audience, the faster you will gain confidence.
• Remember the main thing
  If you know why you will perform, and this goal is really important to you, the fear of speaking will recede. For example, a 10-minute thesis defense means new professional prospects, a presentation of a project to investors means receiving money for business development, a report at a business event means strengthening your expertise, attracting partners or clients.
• Have fun
  The first steps in public speaking are stressful, there is no talk of drive. However, shaky knees and sweaty palms are not forever. Try to find positive aspects in every public appearance, then as your level of public speaking increases, you will begin to see more benefits from publicity.
• Get rid of impostor syndrome
  To some extent, all people who strive for professional heights have it. To assess your level of doubt, use the checklist.

If you have identified two or more symptoms that occur regularly, you need to work through impostor syndrome to improve your performance. To do this, you can use the recommendations from the article.

• Be an expert on your topic
  It is not enough to maintain your current level of professionalism. To win the competition with others, it is important to constantly grow “in depth and breadth.” Advanced training, increased expertise, and development in several related professional fields are the key to interesting, vibrant and useful presentations for listeners.
• Prepare for questions
  Beginning speakers are afraid of questions, but the absence of them is even worse. In most cases, this means that you failed to hook your audience. Therefore, consider any questions as a sign that people care about what you said. Most often there are five types of questions: Clarifying - a person wants to get more information on a specific point in the speech. If you prepared the presentation yourself and are familiar with the material, there should be no problems answering these questions.
• Application - the question is needed so that a person can understand how the main ideas of your speech can be applied to his field of activity, company, task, etc. In this case, you can limit yourself to general recommendations, because In a couple of minutes it is difficult to understand the specifics of your opponent’s activities, and also to suggest continuing communication on the sidelines.
• Disagreeing – these questions are asked when a person disagrees with your point of view. It is important to view them not as harsh criticism, but as the opponent’s desire to convey his opinion to you and the event participants. To move communication into a constructive plane, while remaining calm, ask to justify your point of view and give several arguments in favor of your ideas.
• Duty questions - such questions are rare; they occur at events, the format of which requires mandatory discussion. For example, a thesis defense, a meeting at which minutes are taken.
• Provocative - a person is trying to unbalance you and even “drown” you, calling your professionalism into question. If none of the moderators can help you, it is important not to remain silent or ignore the attack. Stay calm and ideally respond with a joke.

All questions, except provocative ones, are your growth area; they allow you to see your shortcomings and outline ways of development in the subject area.

• Speak without previously received questions
  Often, organizers, especially when holding round tables, offer participants questions in advance that will be voiced at the event. If the questions do not require preparation of a presentation and involve a blitz format, try not to prepare in advance or think only about the general outline of the answer. Such improvisations at the beginning are a serious way out of the comfort zone. The more you perform, the better the improvisations will work. They will be very useful to you if one day you have to speak at a debate, at a serious press conference, or conduct complex negotiations.

Source

It is necessary to express yourself not only precisely, but also figuratively

Here is an example from the book of the hypnologist Boule. The person in hypnosis was told: “You ate fatty foods.” Then the processes in the gallbladder were experimentally studied, but no results similar to the picture of real saturation with fatty foods were found. Then they changed the formula of suggestion: “You see on the table in front of you a lot of delicious, nutritious, fatty dishes - scrambled eggs with lard, sausage, butter, ham with mustard, pork with horseradish. You start eating by choosing what you like...” X-rays of the stomach and gallbladder showed a picture similar to that which occurs after actually eating such food.

The more specific the speech, the brighter the visual ideas, and in vain, in the pursuit of scientism, the imagery of speech is eradicated. Thus, the newspaper wrote about how the director of the popular science film “Be Clean Air and Water” handed it over to the customer. The announcer's text began with the words: “Scientists formulate this problem simply: either people will make there is less smoke in the air, or smoke will make there are fewer people on Earth.” Two respectable customer specialists saw sedition in this and corrected the text as follows: “Scientists formulate this problem simply: either people will ensure sufficient purification of emissions into the atmosphere and water bodies, or the fauna and flora will be subject to destruction.” And it became boring.

ALSO SEE: Diagnosing Insincere Masked Behavior

The poetry of speech contributes to its perception. For example, architect F.O. Shekhtel once addressed his listeners with the following words: “There is hardly a fairy tale more magical than the fairy tale about three sisters: Architecture, Painting and Sculpture. Since our world has existed, we have never ceased to be fascinated by this constant fairy tale, in which Music, Poetry and other muses are no less involved...” The audience remembered this performance for a long time.

It is advisable to use direct addresses more often in speech . This technique helps to activate the thinking of listeners, since they are thereby directly involved in solving the problems presented.

The beginning of Cicero’s speech against Catalina, from which many generations of orators learned, sounded like this: “How long will you, Catalina, abuse our patience? How long will you continue to mock us in your rage?”

Expressions like: “We’ll try to solve this issue together with you”, “Now let’s approach this same issue from a different angle...”, “Let’s look at this problem from a different point of view”, “What do we know about this matter?”, “So what do we see? invite the listener to actively interact with the lecturer. Use personal pronouns and colloquial abbreviations.

Oratory: exercises

Many of us would like to have public speaking talent: the ability to speak beautifully and persuasively and present our ideas can greatly improve everyone's life. But what steps do you need to take towards becoming an outstanding public speaker? This is where special exercises come to the rescue. They relate to voice, breathing, articulation, diction and other components that are of great importance for any performance. There are very few of them, even this amount is quite enough to improve your speaking skills and learn to be a charismatic and memorable speaker. Read more…

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Colloquialism.

The style of presentation should be predominantly conversational, the presentation should be in the nature of a casual conversation. This is the conversational style of speaking.

Paul Soper wrote: “Public speech should have the qualities of a good interview, with some adjustments in voice, manner and topic to suit the situation of the speech.” The same idea was expressed by D. Carnegie: “A good speech is, first of all, a conversational tone and spontaneity, somewhat accentuated. Speak at a charitable trust meeting as if you were speaking to John Henry Smith. After all, the members of the fund are nothing more than the sum of the John Henry Smiths.” The colloquial nature of an oratory significantly increases confidence in the speaker, and therefore in the content of his speech.

There is no need to use a lot of special, bookish, foreign words, you need to speak more simply - this is also a manifestation of the requirement to be colloquial. You can use (in moderation!) colloquial words, humor, and jokes.

Restrained emotionality.

Emotionality is a mandatory requirement for public speaking, an absolutely necessary element of it. Listeners should feel that you are speaking emotionally, excitedly, that you yourself are not indifferent to what you are saying. The performance should under no circumstances be monotonous.

However, emotionality should be restrained. One cannot but agree with the famous American expert on teaching rhetoric, P. Soper, who wrote that the listener experiences a feeling of awkwardness at the sight of the speaker’s emotional revelry. Let us recall Gogol’s famous statement about one teacher-speaker, who, while talking about A. the Great, became so angry that he broke a chair: “Alexander the Great, of course, is a great man, but why break chairs?” In this regard, it is preferable to present facts that evoke emotions in listeners rather than speak too emotionally.

Improvisational speaking skills

Public speaking is always a cause for extreme stress. If you have a lot of time to prepare, you can study your topic thoroughly and reduce some of the stress. If you don’t have time, this can lead to stupor and complete frustration. This is why the ability to improvise is so important: it increases self-confidence, allows you to look and be at ease, perform with dignity and save face even in the most unexpected situations. In this article, we've put together five strategies for practicing and improving your improvisation skills. Read more…

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