Author: Daniel Midson-Short
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The best stories to share in a speech are your own.
Avoid generic, lofty stories that involve other people. We all know it took Edison over one thousand attempts to create the lightbulb. Nobody is going to be impressed or engaged when you reiterate somebody else’s story.
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Instead of instructing your audience, try inviting them.
Ok. Here’s what I want you to do… read this article and then try out the lesson. How does that sound to you? If you’re like most people, that simple instruction made you feel a little resistant. That’s because as adult human beings (or as kids for that matter) we don’t like to be told…
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Don’t use notes when giving a speech, use a prompt sheet.
What I have learned from my own experience as a speaker, and also from helping others become better speakers, is that using the notes from your speech can actually cause you to feel more flustered.
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Give your audience a sense of control, and they will love you.
Any audience you speak to is a group of individual people who all think for themselves, and about themselves first. It is simply human nature to think from our own perspective. We can’t help it, and we can’t stop it. For this reason, when we listen to someone speaking to us, we are mostly seeking…
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To keep your audience interested, use the 10 Minute Rule.
When giving a speech, most people are able to focus for 5-10 minutes on one topic before they start to drift off into their own thoughts. Some people can last longer if they are highly auditory learners, but generally people tune out around the 10 minute mark.
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Don’t apologize or draw attention to your nerves onstage.
As a rule, the audience will likely feel or sense about half your level of anxiety. By keeping your nervous feelings covert and keeping moving with your speech, you will find that soon the nerves will settle and you will get back on track.
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When you practice your speech, do it all the way through.
Practice is key piece of the performance. A week of daily practice will boost your confidence hugely by the time the speech day comes around. You will thank yourself when you are up there speaking in front of a real audience that you invested the time in practice.
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Before you start speaking to an audience, do this.
Greet your audience with silence, let them take in who you are, and then when you feel there is a connection, begin speaking.
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How to not freak out while giving a speech.
You’re minutes away from giving a speech. You’ve been pretty calm all morning, but now as the minutes tick closer, you feel the anxiety starting to make its way from your stomach all the way to chest. You pretend that you’re cool on the outside, but beads of sweat start to appear on your forehead…