Public Speaking - Part II Give Speeches that are Enjoyable
About a week ago I attended a seminar where the main topic was female entrepreneurs and the challenges they face. Since I am a female entrepreneur, the subject
matter was of great interest to me, but the presentations given by several of the speakers where boring enough to put an insomniac hopped up on amphetamines to sleep.
In public speaking, how you present the information is just as important as the information itself. Let’s find out how good eye contact and gesturing can help make a dull, uninspiring presentation into a lively, fun and informative one.
Establish Good Eye Contact
What is good eye contract? If you watch a very skilled public speaker give a speech, you'll notice that he never spends more than a few seconds glancing at his notes (and if
they have a TelePrompTer, you won't see the speaker looking at notes at all). Instead, the speaker looks directly at the audience. One of the reasons to establish good eye
contact is that it makes the speaker seem more knowledgeable about the subject being discussed than someone who is tied to reading the information from note cards. So good
eye contact will increase your credibility.
Since every public speaker wants to be credible, what is the best way to establish good eye contact? When you start your speech, pick a friendly face in the audience and spend
a few moments speaking directly to that person. If looking directly in someone’s eyes makes you nervous, look at the bridge of their nose, which is so close to their eyes that
they won't be able to tell the difference. Then, move on to someone else and talk to that person for a moment or two.
For that few moments of eye contact, its like you're having a one-on-one dialogue with that person, so that your presentation seems more like a friendly conversation, and less
like a lecture. As you can see, establishing good eye contact is an important step in good public speaking.
Hand Gestures
Previous conversations tips have discussed the importance of non-verbal communication, but here we are talking about a specific form of it, and that is the hand gesture. Using
hand gestures can make your speech come alive because it adds visual cues to what your saying. If you are talking about “one simple rule”, for example, holding up one finger will
help drive home your point. Or, if you are talking about “a great expanse of ocean”, spreading your hands far apart can help your audience visualize what you're saying.
If you've ever had a conversation with someone who uses hand gestures naturally, I'm sure you'll agree that the gesturer adds a lot of attention grabbing animation to what he or she
is saying. The same holds true for the public speaker that uses hand gestures frequently during his speech. An animated delivery will hold your audience’s attention.
In Summary...
To summarize the information in this conversation tip, establishing good eye contact with your audience will make your speech or presentation more like a conversation then a lecture. It
will also help you establish credibility. Be sure to use hand gestures to add emphasis and animation to your speech to keep your audiences attention. These two tips will help you give
speeches that are enjoyable.
Next weeks tip will help you avoid speaking in a monotone and combat the butterflies that sometimes invade your stomach before you give a speech.
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