Becoming a Powerful Public Speaker
Plant and grow an idea inside your listeners’ minds. Public speaking is often crucial to successful leadership, but commanding a room doesn’t come naturally to all leaders. We’ve compiled some tips for how to become a powerful public speaker
13 Tips for Improving Public Speaking
Cut content and focus on one single idea, so you have time to explain it.
Ensure that your talk benefits the audience, not just you or your organization.
Make your audience a promise in the beginning that it will be worth listening until the end (e.g., use foreshadowing, engage with a phrase such as “once upon a time,” acknowledge preconceived notions).
Use provocative questions to identify why something doesn’t make sense and needs explaining.
Make your listeners care – emotionally, intellectually, aesthetically.
Build your idea with concepts that your audience already understands – use metaphors, analogies, comparisons.
Connect through storytelling.
Use what you know – capture a truth from your own experience.
Create drama by triggering anticipation and uncertainty to increase listener engagement.
Test your talk on trusted friends and find out which parts confuse them.
Warm up your voice – lips, tongue, vocal cords (breathe in deeply, flap your lips like a horse as you blow out, exaggerate and repeat a sound like “bop,” roll an R).
Speak positively and powerfully with a lower vocal register.
Vary volume and pace – slow down, speed up, pause.
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