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For many people, speaking in public can feel harder than pushing a boulder up a slippery mountain. It may seem unnecessarily complex and confusing. Even more so if you do not have the practice, because good public speaking skills are learnt through conscious repetition.
Public speaking is a fundamental skill that can be developed all through one’s childhood and adulthood. These public speaking practices, when honed to perfection, are effective in many aspects, such as team meetings at the workplace, to engage an audience on a stage or host college events.
In this article, we explore the best practices for public speaking that will get your message across and create a memorable impression in the minds of the audience.
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13 Best Practices For Public Speaking
Here we have compiled a list of public speaking best practises you can follow to leave a lasting impression on your audience.
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Focus on one main idea and structure your speech
Make sure all the facts and data you include support the main argument or topic of your presentation. It can be difficult to split your audience’s attention on many sub topics. Staying true to one theme can go a long way in instilling that idea in the listeners’ minds.
Moreover, the human brain is built to handle only a certain amount of information, and keeping in mind the levels of distraction humans face today, it is sensible to state one idea, in one speech, at one time.
Even when digressing from that idea, use connectors to then bring back the audience to the same thought. The basic point is to explain one idea through a series of anecdotes and data.
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Storytelling with effective language
Storytelling is a useful tool for public speaking, even in non-creative environments. Humans love to tell and listen to stories. If you can tell your story in a compelling and interesting way, then people will connect with you and your content on a deeper level.
It also helps to keep speakers on track and focused because they don’t want to lose their audience.
One of the best ways to connect with your audience is to tell a story that evokes an emotional response. When you’re telling a story, be sure to describe what you saw, what you felt, and what you heard. Describe the scene and use sensory words to evoke the scene in your audience’s mind.
By sharing your struggles, failures, and successes, you can let the audience into your story and invite them to be part of it. When you personalise a thought you are trying to portray, it becomes relatable to the audience, which keeps their attention hooked to what you are saying.
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Combine humour with your stories
Humour is a powerful ingredient in any interaction. It’s a great way to break the ice with people you don’t know and can help people feel more comfortable around you.
You can use humour as a way of easing the audience into your speech. By opening with a joke or funny story, you can help them become more receptive to the content you’re about to present. People can relate with you on a personal level, even when the audience count is in hundreds or higher.
When you use humour, though, be sure that it’s appropriate for the topic and your audience. Humour is a great way to build a connection with your audience and to offer them respite from the seriousness of their day.
If you can make people laugh, you can make them feel good and they’ll be more willing to listen to the rest of what you have to say. Also, someone whom a person can laugh with, becomes more trustable and reliable. This way your story becomes more compelling with the audience.
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Organise and master the topic
It is no surprise that at the core of any public speaking endeavour is the topic you wish to discuss. Having a clear idea of the topic in mind will make sure you don’t veer off course and that every subsequent point you make is tied to the main subject.
Jot down the main purpose, talking points and the overall flow of your speech. You can even summarise it in short bullet points, to help you stay on the right course. This will help you familiarise with the topic so you can speak freely without stumbling.
Also, structuring your thought and speech will enable you to memorise it better, and it is a fact that a story read out of a sheet of paper will always hold less credibility than something that comes off your tongue naturally.
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Word choice and language
We often use filler words and pauses in everyday conversation while we think of the next point to make or to process what we just heard. While that’s understandable and acceptable in one on one situations, a larger audience may lose focus if you use them too frequently.
So watch out for words like ‘actually’, ‘like’, ‘um’, ‘etc’ and make it a conscious choice to leave these out while public speaking.
You can even plan the pauses in your speech to create maximum effect, like building up to a revelation or punchline in your story. If you want to borrow some cues from the experts, TedX is a treasure trove of different public speaking and presentation styles in action.
Consider these Ted Talks as online public speaking practice videos to observe professionally trained speakers.
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Embrace the nerves
Nervousness before any big event or activity is simply your body’s physiological response to it. In fact, public speaking is one of 10 most common phobias across the world, even ahead of deadly spiders on the list.
While it can be difficult to think objectively at such instances, it helps to acknowledge the reason behind it.
Remind yourself that the reaction of your nerves, be it quicker heartbeats or dry throat, will not lead to a poor performance on your part. Anxiety releases excessive adrenaline in your body and makes you more alert.
One way to combat it is to use this extra energy in your favour and approach the topic with enthusiasm. You can’t eliminate nerves, but you can learn how to minimise them by taking deep breaths, warming up your voice, and visualising yourself doing well.
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Get to know your audience and address them individually
“Know thy audience” is a long known commandment of public speaking.
In order to capture anyone's attention, one needs to offer value in a way that the listener can relate to. Every person has a unique viewpoint and understanding of any message based on their own worldview.
This is why it’s important that a speaker consider the experiences and perspectives of the audience. Keeping these factors in mind while crafting your speech will make it more relatable in a genuine way.
If you want to tell a story that truly resonates with your audience, you have to put yourself in your audience’s shoes. By doing this, you’ll be able to identify what they care about and what they’re trying to solve.
Then, consider how your main idea can benefit the viewer in their journey. By demonstrating that you empathise with them, the viewers are bound to engage more with your speech.
While writing and presenting your speech, keep in mind that you're speaking to one person. Even in a group setting, we perceive things at an individual level, even if the main activity or experience is shared.
Whether it’s attending a workshop as a team or enjoying a concert. This is why it’s crucial to tailor your message and language for the individual viewer.
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Be your genuine self on the stage
When you are on stage, be yourself. If you’re nervous, it’s okay to let people see that. If you want to take a moment to acknowledge someone in the audience, do it. If you want to crack a joke to lighten the mood, do it.
Don’t try to be someone you’re not or say something you don’t believe in just because you think it will help you to win the audience over.
The more comfortable you are, the easier it will be for you to connect with your audience. As you speak passionately about the topic and with the right intent, your personality will shine through.
When watching you take centre stage, your audience wants to be able to connect with you and feel like they know you. That’s the beauty of public speaking, you can add a personal and human touch to your speech.
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Incorporating visual aids for better impact
While too many visual aids can hinder your connection with your audience, well spaced slides can act as signposts within your speech. Effective visual aids magnify the impact of your message.
When used well, visual aids better capture the attention of the audience, support and amplify the points you make and help re-orient the audience as you dive into a newer sub topic.
These visual cues can come in the form of slide presentations, posters, models or charts. When your audience starts reading your presentation's slides that are text heavy, it will take their attention away from your presentation.
If the majority of your presentation is simply reading what's on the screen, it won't appeal to your audience.
In this case, slides can be used to highlight the main takeaways at the end of different sections of your speech, in the form of bullet points, quotes or statistical data. If someone in the audience misses a beat, they can quickly glance at the slide and board the collective train of thought.
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Hook your audience with a strong start and a stunning finish
A strong start to any speech involves drawing the audience in. You can do this in a number of ways, like narrating a relevant anecdote, a thought provoking quote, or an intriguing fact or statistic.
For the conclusion, you can summarise the overall topic and end with a strong statement. If your speech ties to an actionable step that the audience can work on, reiterating those steps at the end your speech can have a strong impact.
If you want to be able to deliver your opening and closing statements with impact, you can consider memorising these parts.
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Watch out for audience feedback
As you engage with an audience, keep an eye out for how they react at different points in your message. This helps you gauge if your message is being received as intended.
Are they nodding in agreement, or leaning back with hands crossed, or are they laughing at your jokes? As you glance across the audience, watch out for these cues. You can then adapt your style and message as suitable.
A direct way to determine whether your public speaking style is working is to practise it in front of an audience. Recording yourself as you address a crowd would be great, but in most cases, you will need to stay attentive to capture this type of feedback live.
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Maintain eye contact
Maintaining eye contact is crucial to building a connection between two people - it's a nonverbal signal that indicates the person across is paying attention.
While retaining eye contact is standard practice in individual situations or speaking to a small group of five, it can get tricker when engaging a larger crowd. In a conference meeting or a family gathering, you can engage in eye contact with one individual before moving on to the next.
While addressing a huge crowd, scan across the room from left to right and engage different sections of the audience.
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Frequent practice and preparation:
As humans, our brains are wired to learn through repetition. If we didn’t repeat something until we got it right, we’d never learn a new language, play an instrument, or do anything else that requires a certain level of mastery.
Preparation is a big part of public speaking to help deliver your message effectively and with ease. You need to know your subject matter, you need to know your audience, and you need to understand the context in which you’re speaking.
Practise public speaking in front of friends and family who you are comfortable with. You can also practise your public speaking skills in front of the mirror with the same level of enthusiasm that you would in front of a crowd.
Takeaways
Keep in mind that everyone is just as nervous as you when it comes to public speaking. Even the most experienced speakers get butterflies in their stomach before they go on stage. Remember that no one is expecting you to be perfect and if you mess up, it’s okay!
That’s because public speaking is more about being yourself and being authentic than it is about being perfect. However, putting in the requisite time to prepare will help you deliver a better speech. Nerves can be a good thing as long as you don’t let them take over.
They can help you to focus and get your best work done, if you learn how to manage them and use them to your advantage rather than letting them take over and cause you to freeze.
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