Richard Kaloust Weblog

 Public Speaking - Seven Secrets of Dynamic Delivery

By Barbara Busey

Article recommended by Richard Kaloust

It’s a painful truth, but the hours and hours you put into researching, organizing and writing your presentation are not going to be the key to your success. The secret to being an engaging, compelling speaker does not come from your content. Research has documented that only 7 percent of our communication impact comes from the words coming out of our mouth. But a full 93 percent of our impact comes from the way we look and sound when we say those words. This is what delivery is all about-how we use our vocal and nonverbal qualities to present a message that’s dynamic and compelling.   There are seven key skills to being a dynamic speaker, which I have captured with the acronym S.P.E.A.K.E.R. Here’s a summary of these key delivery attributes:

Smile Let your facials be expressive, whether showing anger at something unjust or concern at something unfortunate or simply smiling because you’re happy to be there.

Posture Your stance in front of a room says a lot about how comfortable and confident you appear. Keep this general rule in mind: balanced, symmetrical posture with weight evenly distributed on both feet conveys a sense of poise and confidence.

Eye Communication To truly make an impact on your audience, you need to make members feel like you’ve looked at and talked directly to each of them individually. Look ‘em in the eye. Talk to them, not at them.

Appearance When you’re in front of an audience, your appearance has an impact on your believability and how receptive they’ll be to your message. Two areas that have a huge impact on your appearance: your attire and distracting mannerisms. When you want to look your best, nothing has more impact than what you choose to wear. So pay attention to the style, fabric, fit, appropriateness, and color of your clothing choices. If you want an appearance that’s poised and credible, be aware of and monitor those distracting mannerisms that serve no purpose except to drive an audience crazy. Things like jingling change in your pocket, or playing with your hair, or saying “um” every few seconds. Remember, movement that’s purposeful has power. A distracting mannerism is distracting because it’s not purposeful.

Kinesics Kinesics is the science of body motion and how it communicates. When you use your hands to show an object’s dimensions or hold up fingers to represent a number: those are all examples of kinesics. As a speaker, you want to use kinesics. Physical movement and gestures will help make you more dynamic. The key is purposeful. A repetitive gesture is not purposeful and will become a distracting mannerism. Purposeful gestures seem to naturally accompany what you’re saying. They give meaning and power to your presentation.

Expressive Vocals Expressive is the key here. Vocals that are flat, monotone, soft-spoken, and have no variety in them are not captivating. If you vary your rate, volume, tone, and inflection, you convey far more interest and become more engaging.

Resting Places If you have purposeful gestures, then by definition, it means you’re not gesturing all the time. What do you do with your hands when they’re at rest, when you’re not gesturing? Here’s a basic guideline: avoid closed and tight positions. Examples would be hands in the pockets, crossed arms, hands on the hips, clutching one arm, and the “fig leaf” (hands clasped in the groin area). On the other hand, resting places that combine relaxation with some energy come off as more poised but engaged. Examples are: Arms at your side. Parade rest. Arms bent at elbow with hands loosely together.

Tips on Public Speaking - Preparation is Key For Effective Public Speaking

By Michael Lee

Want to learn some proven tips on public speaking? Your number one task is preparing for your presentation. Preparation is to public speaking as location is to property. You can never prepare enough for your talking engagement and your home’s location can never be good enough.

Public speaking is the process of speaking to a group of people in a structured, deliberate manner with the intention to inform, educate, influence or entertain the listeners. For many people the idea of having to stand in front of people and speak is extremely frightening.

The most important counter measure to overcome this fear, and to be able to confidently present, is to prepare yourself to the maximum of your ability. This is one of the most vital tips on public speaking.

The first point of preparation should focus on obtaining the information and knowledge needed. This refers to the content of your talk. What information do you need to present? How can you ensure that you know far more than your talk will cover to ensure that you are not caught by members of the audience who might end up knowing more than you?

Although having somebody know more than you is not necessarily bad. But it does mean that you have to be extra cautious to be accurate and not allow there to be any question mark as to the validity of the material you are presenting.

It is by virtue of the fact that you have been asked to present, you are perceived to be an expert in this particular topic. You need to be able to substantiate this assumption by the content you offer up. If you slip up on this, your reputation could be damaged quite seriously.

When mapping out your talk into sections and then drilling this content down into relevant slides, you will need to examine each part and ensure that your knowledge base covers these points. It is not enough to know a lot about a section and just hope to be able to wing it for other parts. There are many tips on public speaking, but this one should be remembered and followed at all times.

Your talk will be evaluated on the entire content and how you managed to present the knowledge you have. If you only know some parts about your topic, you will have a problem with being confident when you speak.

You will also find yourself wishing to skip over the sections that you don’t know enough about; and your audience will, in all likelihood, catch on to the fact that you lack knowledge in certain sections.

Better to leave out a section if you are not sure of the content and focus on what you really do know. This could mean that you might need to be more detailed in your talk so that you have more than enough content to present.

It is of course advisable to complete several dry runs of your presentation to feel comfortable with the flow of the talk and to iron out any irregularities. Working through the content by delivering the talk either just to yourself out aloud or to a friend or family member will also provide you with a more accurate idea as to the length of the speech.

Richard Kaloust Key For Effective Public Speaking