Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Public Speaking”
How to open your presentation
Your first words are important because your audience is judging you. They are scrolling through questions in their mind:
Should I listen? How long will this take? Do I trust the person? How painful will this be? When will we get to the relevant part? What does this mean to me?
The purpose of your opening is to grab their attention, establish rapport and set the direction.
Most importantly – grab attention. How might you do that?
We Can’t Hear You. The next flaw was that we didn’t hear or understand many of his words. Why? He mumbled often. Mumbling is a sign of incomplete thoughts and the lack of editing your words for a clear message.
His voice often trailed off at the end of his sentences. That’s a common mistake made when a speaker is thinking about their next thought instead of finishing the current thought. He wore a lapel microphone and often turned his face away from the mic which meant that his voice faded. That’s a mistake made by novice speakers. He didn’t know how to use a microphone.
Spend more time and effort getting your opening and close right.
When creating your opening and close, consider the possibility that they might only remember these two parts. If that was true, would they have received your intended message? If not, revise your opening and close. The body is the detail, the opening and close provide the motivation and the direction.
Build rapport with your audience by demonstrating how you are like them. Imagine if you could be an audience whisperer.
What can you do when facing a hostile audience? How can you speak so they listen? How might you connect with them so they see your side of the message? Those are difficult challenges that we can learn to face by learning from Shakespeare – in particular the speech that Marc Antony gave after the death of Julius Caesar.
Notice the shift in tone of the audience and the techniques used to persuade the audience to change their thinking. Let’s visit the scene and listen to the speech and the changing tide of the audience.
Presentation Tips 02: Speak to an Audience of One
Imagine how you might feel when you’re sitting in an audience listening to a speaker and it feels like the speaker is talking directly to you. It seems more like a one-to-one conversation despite the audience present.
Now imagine that you could convey that intimate feeling when you are the speaker.
The secret is to speak as if you’re speaking to one person. Sounds simple yet few speakers have mastered this technique.
It is not about you. It’s about your audience. What did they see, hear, believe and feel? That means that during your presentation you might experience those moments of anxiety – but the audience doesn’t need to know. Confidence starts by becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Instead, he parked himself behind the lectern and boringly read the speech that someone wrote for him. Cleary the speech writer wanted to demonstrate his vocabulary by including several ten-dollar words. That doesn’t enhance comprehension, rapport or trust.
To persuade your audience to act on your message they must believe you. To be believable you must be both credible and earn their trust. If you don’t have credibility, no one will listen. If you have credibility but your audience does not trust you, they will not believe you.
Do you want your message to resonate with your audience? The message is more likely to land well, be received and trusted if you have connected with your audience. They must know, like and trust you. How can you accomplish that? By building rapport rapidly near the beginning of your presentation.
