Category Archives: Speaking Skills

Five Tips for Great Beginnings and Endings

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If you have a great beginning and powerful ending, you can hide some of the mistakes you make during the bulk of your presentation. Here are five suggestions for always getting off to a great start and concluding on an emotional and mental high.

First, make the opening sentence count. Out of curiosity, if nothing else, your audience will want to check out your appearance and how you deliver the speech. Don’t waste your opening on the weather or what a privilege it is to be there. Begin with a sentence that grabs the attention of the audience.

You can use a quotation that relates to your topic. Sometimes I begin my “Be Present When You Are Present” keynote with “The single greatest secret to success is paying attention.” Who doesn’t want to know the one secret to success?

The opening might be an object that draws attention. My cannibal fork from the Fiji Islands gets quick attention.

Humor might be the attention getting opening that will work best. Whatever you do, make sure the opening relates to your topic. For example, in a speech on listening I might begin “The only reason we listen is because we know we get to talk next.”

Second, preview your presentation. Your audience wants a road map of your speech. Tell the audience your main points and what you hope your audience will do as a result of your speech. “Today, I want to talk about three ideas that will help you pay better attention in your job and with your family members. They are: look for a connection with everyone you meet, embrace the day, and listen to ask questions.”

Mention a name, place, company value, or current event that lets the audience know you have done homework in learning about them and their organization. “I appreciate….” Here you can mention a person who helped you learn about the context of the conference you are keynoting, an ancillary plant you have visited in another state, or even a current news item about the company.

Third, do not spend much time on either the opening or the conclusion. Two to three minutes should be maximum time with each even if your presentation is an hour or more in length. I find that speakers have a hard time concluding. When you say, “In conclusion,” make sure you are near the end of your presentation. Don’t speak another ten minutes. The safest approach is never to say “In conclusion” at all. Just conclude.

Thus the fourth tip is to make it clear to your audience that you are concluding and that should include a summary of your thesis or main ideas. If the presentation is persuasive, then you want to fill in the blank of this sentence, “What I want you to do as a result of my presentation is.…” Use your unique application of this sentence: “I want you to remember that you must be aware of your surroundings to pay careful attention, and connecting, embracing, and questioning will provide the self-discipline to do so.”

Finally, end with an exit line, as I will do with this article. People remember best what you say last. Make that last sentence count.

One of my endings is a reference to the logo of Australia; I show a picture, which has two animals on it—the emu and the kangaroo, indigenous to that country. Then I say, “There is another reason why these two animals are on the logo. They can only move forward. By what we have discussed today, may you always move forward and never backward in your ability to pay attention.”

Five Tips on the Use of Visual Aids

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With the rise of many kinds of software for computer-generated visuals, such as PowerPoint and Keynote, we have additional choices for visuals we use in a presentation. Whiteboard, flip charts, objects, and cutaways are all standard means of visually reinforcing our points in a speech. Whichever type of visual you use, here are five tips on making them more effective.

The visual should be big enough to be seen by everyone. That is the benefit of software-generated visuals; you can adapt the size of the visual to the size of the audience and the room. Although I have seen effective use of poster boards on a tripod on a stage with several hundred people the audience, you should never have to ask, “Can you see this from where you are sitting?” You should know ahead of time because you have personally sat on the back row to see if the visual is readable or understandable.

I typically use 24-point Times Roman font as the minimum size. A way to insure easy visibility is the 6 by 6 rule: no more than six lines on a page and six words on a line.

Talk to the audience, not to the visual aid. You should know what the next slide or page contains; thus looking at your visuals should be unnecessary unless you are working with the visual to demonstrate how something is done. If you need to see the PowerPoint slide as it appears on the screen, make paper copies of the slide and use them as your notes. I find that I can put up to six slides per sheet of paper and the words are large enough for me to see.

Visuals should be simple and easy to explain. Some charts I’ve seen speakers use confuse more than they clarify. A general rule is one idea, one picture, or one chart per slide, page, or poster.

The visual aid should not overshadow the speaker. Each visual should require your explanation or elaboration. If not, then you, the speaker, become unnecessary. Always tell more than you show. If you use video of any kind, the content should require your commentary; introduce the clip to prepare us for something that is about to happen on screen or draw a conclusion at the end of the film.

Finally, practice with your visuals as you practice your presentation. If you don’t work with your visuals until the actual speech, the extra dimension of visuals may complicate your delivery of the presentation. Show the slides as you practice in an empty conference room. Go through the actual demonstration with the cutaway or object.

Visuals add more time to the presentation. The practice session(s) allow you to be more confident with the length of your speech. This practice also helps you identify typos or grammatical errors on your slides. Have someone else proof your slides to avoid the embarrassment of seeing a typo on your slide as you are in the middle of your presentation.

Visuals give us the sixth sense in speaking—the combination of two or more of the five senses. When visuals are an essential part of our speech content, we can give the audience more opportunities to pay attention and understand.

In case you missed the previous Tips articles:
Five Tips for Organizing a Speech
Five Tips for Good Delivery
Five Tips for Controlling Stage Fright

Enthusiasm!

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This statement is one of the best I have found on enthusiasm: “Light yourself with the fire of enthusiasm and people will stand in line to watch you burn.” No matter the topic or activity, the person who shows enthusiasm is irresistible. Always be enthusiastic about what you say in a speech.

As I often say in speeches, the last four letters of the word “enthusiasm” stand for what is important in communicating your passion for your subject: “I am sold myself.”

Most people are enthusiastic about something. One place where I worked made me fear for my safety near the time clock at quitting time—I could get run over as people enthusiastically hurried to punch the clock to leave work.

The key to a successful speech is to be enthusiastic about your content.

Are you enthusiastic about the topics you speak about? Does it show? In Where the Game Matters Most, William Gildea writes about kids’ enthusiasm for basketball in Indiana: “The game is still played in barns. It’s played on driveways, at playgrounds, in alleys. Indiana’s beacon remains the outdoor basketball hoop.”

To get the most out of your next presentation, be enthusiastic. Enthusiasm is generated by having ideas and examples in your speech about which you get excited. As the old caution goes, “Be fired with enthusiasm or you’ll be fired with enthusiasm.”

You Receive a Poor Introduction…

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On more than one occasion I have been introduced as a professor at the University of Kentucky instead of Northern Kentucky University. What do I do about that inaccurate information when I get up to speak?

Perhaps an introducer has mispronounced your name (Steve Boyd is hard to mispronounce!) or the city where you are from (Nagadoches, Texas, for example). These errors put the speaker in a difficult position because your opening remarks have a lot to do with your success for the rest of your speech.

The best policy is to ignore the bad or inaccurate introduction and move quickly into your material. If inaccurate information has been presented, make the correction in the content of your material. For example, I might say, “In my 39 years at Northern Kentucky University, I have found.…”

If your name is mispronounced, you could mention your name in connection with a point later in your presentation. For example, at a writer’s conference I attended last week, an author said, “A reader asked me, ‘Ms. Macias, what happens when…?’” Then the audience knew to pronounce her name “muh-SIGH-us,” and not what the introducer had said.

In any of the above situations, here are a few principles that apply no matter what the problem is.

Never make a member of your audience look bad. Don’t insult or point out the mistakes of someone in the audience, including your introducer. Even if it is deserved, you will lose some of your rapport with the audience.

Don’t panic. When something goes wrong in the introduction, or in any other part of your presentation, take a moment before you take action. Just pausing will sometimes calm you and give you time to use good judgment on what action to take.

Learn from your mishaps. Analyze a presentation problem and ask yourself how you might handle it differently next time. Keep track of what you did well in handling that last problem area and remind yourself to do it again next time. (Fortunately or unfortunately, there’s always a next time!)

Introduce yourself to the introducer prior to the beginning of the program. Get to know him or her. If nothing else, getting to know you will often prompt more warmth in the voice when you are introduced. When you tell your name and what you do, you are reminding the person of correct pronunciation and verifying key biographical information.

I assure you that you will receive an occasional bad introduction, but these tips will help you minimize damage.

Preparation Should Be Continuous

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I’m always preparing—well, in a loose sort of way. As I go about my activities during the day, I am always alert for material for a sermon or speech. Any new or unusual object or action I see or any current event or story I read, I evaluate as to whether I might incorporate it in one of my programs.

For example, years ago while on vacation, we stayed in a bed and breakfast in Utah that had hummingbirds feeding in the flower-covered front yard. Their energy and speed and beauty impressed me. I began thinking, “How can I work what I am seeing into one of my presentations?” By simply having this question in my mind, I eventually developed a hummingbird story that I use to end many of my speeches.

When I am preparing a new presentation, I go back to notes I have taken or clippings I have kept that might be appropriate material for an upcoming presentation.

When you regularly speak on your area of expertise, pay attention to the new, the unusual, the historical, or even the hypothetical. Keep notes on each. You never know when you might be preparing a key point in a presentation you have not yet been assigned or agreed to deliver.

To be an effective speaker over a long period of time, your preparation does not begin and end on a certain day or hour. Preparation is a continuous process.

 

Five Tips for Organizing a Speech

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We have covered five tips each on handling stage fright and delivery. This “five tip” article is on organization.

Alexander Pope said that “order is heaven’s first law.” When God created earth, his first concern was giving order by separating creation in six units and then declaring on the sixth day that this was good. If God thought it was good to be organized, then we should be concerned to organize our speeches.

Give your audience a roadmap early in your presentation. Think how important the GPS or MapQuest is in getting to unknown destinations. The same is true with an audience. Each person listening wants to know where we are going and how are we going to get there with our presentation content. A good lead-in that takes very little time is a simple, “What I want to talk about today is…”

Develop few and specific points. When you say, “I have six points I want to make today,” that is information overload and the audience will tune you out. I think three points are sufficient. Specificity of a point is saying “To be successful, one must give attention to detail” instead of “To be successful, one must work hard.”

Use transitions when moving from point to point. You can simply use numbers: “My first point is…,” My second point is…” Be sure you remember what the number is of your next point!

Internal summary is another effective transition such as “Now that we have covered the importance of specificity in speaking, let us move to the use of transitions.” If you want to wake up an audience, consider an interjection. “You may forget everything else I say today but remember this next point!” Clear transitions will help you avoid meaningless phrases such as “You know” and some version of “and uh.”

The use of repetition is an important organizational tool. An audience cannot review your material unless you do it for them. In a book, we can go back and reread a chapter or page. The listener cannot do that, so when you begin a statement with “Let me say that again” or “Thus far we have covered…” the audience is very appreciative. Certainly review your main points at the end of your presentation.

Finally, show your organization through your delivery. When you move from one point to another, take a step away from the lectern. Move back to the lectern when you finish the point or story. Change your tone of voice when you are changing direction in your speech. Pause before you mention the next point. Hold up the number of your point with your fingers if you are using that approach to transitions.

To sit and listen through a thirty-minute presentation is difficult for any audience. You are more likely to hold their attention when you are well organized. In the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall.” Organization helps you do that.

5 Tips for Good Delivery

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How ideas are presented has a great deal to do with how much value they appear to offer. Delivery is the audience member’s contact with the speaker’s mind. Here are five tips to have effective delivery.

1. Make music with your voice. Frequently use the pause and punch; speak loudly and then softly. Pause before proper nouns or statistics and punch them out. Speed up to show excitement and slow down to indicate drama and suspense. In a sense, to use your voice effectively you are putting music in your speech; you are doing the same kinds of things a vocalist does by speeding up, slowing down, pausing, getting louder or getting softer, and punching out certain words.

2. Use your hands to describe and reinforce the point you are making. Just imagine the following joke without showing the actions with your hands.

A man is pulled over on the interstate by a state trooper for speeding. At the window of the stopped driver, the state trooper sees in the back seat several sharp knives. He says to the man, “I’m going to have to arrest you for possessing the deadly weapons in your back seat.”

The man replies, “You don’t understand. I’m a juggler for the Barnum and Bailey Circuses and the knives are a part of my act. Let me show you.” So he gets out of the car by the side of the interstate and begins to juggle the knives.

About that time, two good ol’ boys drive by and one says to the other, “They’re sure getting’ tough on those driving tests, aren’t they!” You have to describe and reinforce with gestures to help people enjoy the joke.

In addition, keep your gestures under control. Adapt the size of your gestures to the size of the room. If you have a big room and high ceilings, use gestures from the shoulder out; if you have a small room with low ceilings, use gestures from the elbow out. Keep your hands away from your face so as not to diffuse the impact of either facial expression or gestures. Instead of pointing to your audience with your gestures, “embrace” them by reaching out with your full hand and bringing them in to you.

3. Connect with your audience with your eyes. Eye contact is a visual handshake with your audience members. Without looking directly at members of your audience, you cannot determine if they are listening and understanding your message. Look at small clumps of people in the room and in doing so you will be able to look directly at people within that clump and in a short period of time you can engage all of your audience with your eyes. An ancient proverb states, “The eyes are the window of the soul.” This describes how important looking at the eyes of the audience is to the speaker.

4. Show self-confidence by your posture and space. Avoid slouching by standing on both feet with your weight equally distributed on the balls of your feet—between 7 and 12 inches apart. “Plant” your feet to fend off the tendency to pace or bounce with your feet. When you move, move toward to the audience and not away from them. You want to stand equally distant from most members of the audience. That way everyone feels equally attended to by the speaker.

5. Finally, look pleasant as you speak; smile, look expectantly for positive feedback, and change facial expression to match the content of your presentation. The face is the object of attention by listeners when you begin to speak, so work to express the feelings behind your content through the face. Begin with a smile and a pleasant demeanor; that will encourage you to be more that way throughout your presentation.

Certainly content is more important than delivery, but you have to keep the attention of the audience to insure that the message will make it into the minds of the listener. Delivery does that. As Robert Redford said in the movie, The Horse Whisperer, “Knowing it is easy; telling about it is the hard part.”

Five Tips for Controlling Stage Fright

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We can remember five easily because we can count1, 2, 3, 4, 5 on the fingers of one hand. Thus this is a handy unit of organization.

Stage fright is the area of public speaking I receive the most questions about. Here are five ways to control stage fright.

Be prepared. There is no substitute for careful preparation. Practice new material at least three times. Each time you practice you gain confidence. Practice your delivery by simulating the speaking situation—standing and delivering the content as though you have an audience.

Be physically ready for your presentation. Get the proper amount of sleep the night before you speak. Practice a healthy diet before speaking. Go light on sugar and caffeine. Wear comfortable clothing.

Learn about your audience. Become as familiar with your audience as you can. The more you know about your audience and the speaking context, the more comfortable you will be. One of the causes of stage fright is fear of the unknown. By going online and checking out websites, articles, and blogs that relate to your audience, the unknown will grow smaller and your confidence will increase.

If you are not familiar with the city or speaking location, check out directions ahead of time. Verify pronunciation of any unusual proper nouns connected with the speech, such as the names of people you will be meeting and talking to and the name of the city or location of the speech. For example it is Lafayette (Lah fi ET), Indiana, but Lafayette(Lah FAY it), Tennessee.

Develop a positive mental attitude toward your speech and the audience. You are speaking on a topic you know a lot about and are excited to share with your audience. (If that is not the case, you have my sympathy and perhaps you should be looking for another career). Shut out thoughts of “This audience does not care about this topic” or “They don’t want to hear me speak.” Instead fill your mind with “I have prepared well for this presentation” and “The audience will learn important principles from my talk.”

Finally, get off to a good start. Work hard on your opening lines to get attention and to preview your presentation in an interesting and creative way. If you get off to a good start, you quickly lose the high level of anxiety and become at ease with your audience. That beginning could be a relevant quotation, story, or reference to a current event that ties in with your topic. Attempt humor only if it relates to your topic and you have a high comfort level with using humor.

So here you have your handy list of five strategies to cope with stage fright. Remember Dale Carnegie’s classic statement: “You don’t want to get rid of the butterflies in your stomach; you just want to get them to fly in formation.”

Stephen D. Boyd, Ph.D., CSP, is Professor Emeritus of Speech Communication, College of Informatics, Northern Kentucky University, near Cincinnati. He presents keynotes and seminars to corporations and associations whose people want to speak and listen effectively. See additional articles and resources at www.sboyd.com. To book Steve, call 800-727-6520 or email him through his website.

Name-Dropping in Presentations

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A friend of mine once hosted at the University of Cincinnati a special committee which included both business leaders and university people. After they assembled around the conference table, she turned to one gentleman and said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know you. What is your name?”

Everyone froze.

With a gentle smile, he responded, “Neil Armstrong.” She had certainly “dropped” his name, but not in the way we usually think of. Not recognizing the first man to walk on the moon was embarrassing.

In speaking, name-dropping can add positive impact. Let’s examine how we should “drop” names in a speech.

First, mention the name of someone in your audience in the introduction of your speech. Before the speech, talk to enough people that you can refer to a person in the audience in a way that connects to you or your topic.

For example, I sometimes have in the audience a former student who now has a responsible job in the organization for which I am speaking. I will say, “___ was one of my students who majored in communication and now he is one of your managers. It is always great to see our graduates doing well.” Or “I met ____ earlier today and found out he too is a Hoosier and grew up in Southern Indiana as I did.” A specific reference to a person shows you have thought about and given attention to this specific audience. Such a reference helps establish your credibility.

A second way to drop a name is always to tell the name of the person who is responsible for a study you reference or a statistic you use. Stating the name connected with the study or statistic indicates you have done your research and also removes any pressure for you to be responsible for the statistic or study results. You are simply the reporter of the information to prove or illustrate a point.

Thirdly, quote a famous person. If the person is not readily familiar to them, you should also make a qualifying statement about the person. For example, I might say, “William James, an early American psychologist, said, ‘That which holds attention determines action.’” Or “Bill Gates said, ‘How you manage and use information will determine if you win or lose.’”

Adding a literary quotation of a famous person will provide quality to the language you use; mentioning the name will add depth to your content. One of my favorites is from Goethe: “One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”

When another person can say something better than you can, drop his or her name. For example, I like Thoreau’s statement, “The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”

The last way that “dropping names” can add to your presentation is to mention someone who can be a source for more information on the topic of your speech. For example, if I were talking about learning to pay attention in a world of distractions, I might mention Alan Alda’s Never Have Your Dog Stuffed (and Other Lessons I’ve Learned) or another author who has written an article or book on the subject. If I wanted the audience to take action, I might say the name of a person who will assist in taking specific action. Doing so gives reality to the content of your speech.

Dropping names in a speech can add depth and interest in your next speech. I’m thinking about talking to some of our current candidates about how they could use some of the tips in this and other newsletter articles.

This article, repeated here for its timeliness, was originally posted in August of 2007 by Stephen D. Boyd, Ph.D., CSP, Professor Emeritus of Speech Communication, College of Informatics, Northern Kentucky University, near Cincinnati. He presents keynotes and seminars to corporations and associations whose people want to speak and listen effectively. See additional articles and resources at www.sboyd.com. To book Steve, call 800-727-6520 or email him through his website.

The Hard Way-Usually the Best Way

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I suggested to my adult son that he should exercise more.

His response: “Dad, I always take the stairs.” Good response, since that means he never takes the easy way to get to classrooms on several floors on Purdue’s campus.

When I was a young man, my coach gave me a leather basketball to play with during the summer. “Dribble it and shoot it as much as you can. You must make basketball a part of your daily routine if you want to improve for next season,” he said. He was telling me there is no easy way to improve.

This is a basic principle for most any worthwhile thing in life. This is especially important in delivering a speech. While coaching executives in presentation skills, I am amazed at how little time many actually take to prepare a speech. I’ll ask “How much time do you usually take in preparing for a presentation?”

The common response is, “Well, I have thought about it a lot, but I have been so busy.…”

It is hard to convince people that a bad speech can mean failure in securing a contract or project as well as affecting the reputation of the company in a negative way.

Here are tips on preparing the “hard way” for a successful speech.

Start early in preparation. Don’t procrastinate. Cramming might work for an exam, but not a presentation. Outline your speech carefully. Examine relationships among your main points to determine that the points relate to each other and to your main idea.

Be willing to revise and redo key words and phrases so that meaning is instantly clear and correctly develops the word picture you want to convey to your audience. Crafting the right words for that audience helps maintain interest and creates understanding in the audience’s minds. Read good literature to help you learn to do this.

For example, James Lee Burke in his most recent book, Creole Belle, describes the reaction of an audience to a preacher: “I had to hand it to him. As a speaker, Amidee was stunning. There was an iambic cadence in all his sentences. His diction and voice were as melodic as Walker Percy’s or Robert Penn Warren’s.” That is much more meaningful than “Amidee knew how to motivate an audience.”

Practice your entire presentation at least three times. However, with key stories and sentences, practice them as many times as you can. Speak them aloud as you drive to work or make sales calls.

Practice in front of a colleague or film a part or all of your speech and ask for feedback. Ask, “How can I improve? “

These techniques are not easy. To be effective, carefully craft your presentation—both content and delivery. With the “hard way” approach, your efforts will be rewarded.