How to become a better public speaker

Want to ace your next speech or pre­sen­ta­tion? Then follow these five public speaking tips from Mary Cheyne, senior training and com­mu­ni­ca­tion con­sul­tant for Infor­ma­tion Tech­nology Ser­vices. Cheyne is the fac­ulty advisor of Northeastern University’s chapter of Toast­mas­ters Inter­na­tional, the runner-up in the 2009 World Cham­pi­onship of Public Speaking, and the founder of Mag­netic Podium, an orga­ni­za­tion aimed at helping people com­mu­ni­cate effectively.

Eat light

Before a pre­sen­ta­tion, stick to light foods like fruit and veg­gies or lean pro­tein like chicken and fish. You don’t want to eat a heavy meal that’s going to cause you to feel slug­gish because your diges­tive resources are con­suming too much of your energy—you want to feel ener­gized while on stage. Carry a light pro­tein bar with you in your bag in case you’re feeling hungry before a pre­sen­ta­tion and always have a bottle of water with you.

Tune out your inner critic

Here’s what I would sug­gest to min­i­mize your public speaking nerves:

• Prepare your presentation as early as possible so you have time to become familiar with what you’re going to say.
• Rehearse with a test audience. The more times you hear yourself say your material out loud in front of other people, the better.
• Be aware when your inner critic is talking so you can ignore it. A simple way to identify the inner critic is to ask yourself, “Would I say what it’s saying to my best friend?” If the answer is no, why on earth would you say it to yourself? One of the biggest misconceptions I clarify is that people’s No. 1 fear is not public speaking. It’s public judgment. So get out of your own way to become the speaker you’ve always wanted to be.

Tell sto­ries

A pre­sen­ta­tion is not just about imparting infor­ma­tion and regur­gi­tating every­thing you know about a topic. It’s about “edu-taining”—educating your audi­ence while enter­taining them at the same time. A great way to do this is to use sto­ries and exam­ples to illus­trate your points and make you more relat­able to your audience.

If you just lec­ture to your audi­ence in a “thou-shalt-do-this” kind of fashion, you’re bound to have some people nod off. They might phys­i­cally be in their seats, but men­tally they’ve tuned you out. They’re thinking of what they’re going to have for lunch after your presentation.

It’s also good to keep in mind that a speech or pre­sen­ta­tion is not a monologue—it’s a dia­logue. You can ask your audi­ence ques­tions, both of the rhetor­ical and inter­ac­tive variety. Use lots of “you” words to make them feel included and part of what you’re saying. A speech is not just about you. In fact, it’s about what your audi­ence can take away from it.

Being com­fort­able with silence and ‘shut­ting up’ while on stage is in itself a skill, a muscle you can develop.
— Mary Cheyne

Make eye con­tact with one person at a time

Don’t think of public speaking as a one-to-many activity. Instead, think of it as having many one-on-one con­ver­sa­tions. In prac­tice, here’s what you would do on stage. You look at Fred in the audi­ence, say a few sen­tences just like you’re having a one-on-one con­ver­sa­tion with Fred. Then you look over to Susan in your audi­ence, say a few sen­tences like you’re having a one-on-one con­ver­sa­tion with Susan. Repeat the process throughout your entire speech. In this way, you do not have to feel the “pres­sure” of pit­ting your­self against the entire audi­ence. Why put that kind of pres­sure on your­self? When you think of your speech as a pre­sen­ta­tion com­prising many one-on-one con­ver­sa­tions, your “eye con­tact” feels more nat­ural both to you as well as the person you’re looking at. The added bonus is that it helps to reduce ner­vous­ness and anx­iety during your speech.

Har­ness the power of the delib­erate pause

If you pause at the right moments, you will increase the impact of your delivery. Being com­fort­able with silence and “shut­ting up” while on stage is in itself a skill, a muscle you can develop. The more often you pause, the more nat­ural it feels.

And be sure to pause a little bit longer than you feel com­fort­able with. When you’re on stage, a one-second pause feels like three to five sec­onds, and it’s usu­ally not enough for the audi­ence to notice it. You’re better off pausing for slightly too long than slight too short.

Here’s are a few instances when you should incor­po­rate the delib­erate pause into your presentations:

• After a question. Pause immediately after asking a question. You need to give the audience time to process your question and then think about their answer before they respond, just like you would if you were asking someone a question in a one-on-one conversation.
• To give the audience time to digest your point. Especially if the content you’re covering would be unfamiliar to the audience, you want to pause after you make a point to give them time to chew on what you’ve said and to make sense of it in the context of their own worldview.
• For dramatic effect. This is my favorite pause to deliver because it enhances the effect of the moment. It’s like a double exclamation point that you might use to exaggerate the drama of a story or example within your presentation. For example, you might say something like this: “Stop thinking too much Fred. You have analysis paralysis. It’s time to stop thinking and take ACTION. Some action, ANY action.” Then you’d take a big long pause here as if to make the double exclamation point come to life.

(Published with permission from News at Northeastern.)