Delivering Your Speech or Presentation

While you’re rehearsing your speech or presentation, you may have the feeling that there’s a lot to think about, that you need to be concentrating on a lot of different factors at the same time. This is true – and this is the point of practising! When you’re first learning to speak in public, there is a lot involved, but the good news is that, once you’ve learnt the techniques, you can apply them time after time and each speech is easier than the last.

When you get to the point of delivering your speech or presentation, you should no longer have that feeling of there being a lot to think about, because you’ve practised so much that it’s now second nature. All you need to think about is engaging with your audience.

On the day

It’s a good idea to go through your speech or presentation a couple of times on the day, to make sure it’s completely fresh in your mind. And check everything is in order and you’ve got everything you need (see Preparation). When you’ve done that, stop worrying about the content and concentrate on getting yourself into the right mood.

Before you’re due to speak, take some time out to calm your nerves and to get yourself in the right frame of mind. Do some deep breathing and visualise yourself making a fantastic speech, being extremely well received and really enjoying it. Public speaking can be fun and you’re more likely to enjoy it if you expect to. Self-talk is very powerful and you must talk to yourself positively.

If it helps you, become someone else for a while. Imagine you are Angelina Jolie or James Bond – or whoever you consider to be cool and confident. You know she/he could make this speech easily and have a great time doing it. So go on as that person (but speak in your own voice!).

Confidence

You have been asked to make this speech or presentation and the audience is sitting there with the purpose of listening to you. You are in control. No matter what happens, if you remain unflustered, you will be fine. The only mistake you can make that will spoil it all is to show nervousness or embarrassment. Cover up those and you can get away with anything.

I once went to a presentation where this was made very clear. There were two or three hundred of us in the room, waiting to hear how this guy transformed a small sports shop into a multi-million-pound leisure complex. He’d brought all sorts of slides and videos and nifty stuff to illustrate his talk… and none of it worked. I suspect he tempted the gremlins by a) trying to overdo the visual aids and b) not checking everything thoroughly enough in advance, so let that be a lesson to us all.

The much bigger point, however, is how the speaker dealt with this potentially disastrous situation. Far from being thrown by not being able to show us anything he’d brought, he made jokes about it for a few minutes, while technicians were struggling to sort things out, and then decided to abandon the visuals and just talk to us. He spoke naturally, from the heart, and told us about the adventures he’d had expanding his business. The audience was riveted and we went on buzzing about it for days. You don’t need special effects to tell an interesting story.

If something goes wrong, laugh it off. The audience will forgive you anything except your getting embarrassed.

Even if what you’ve got to talk about is inherently not very exciting, you can make a big difference to how your listeners perceive it by the amount of energy and enthusiasm you put into your speech. Whatever the material, it’s your job to make it interesting – and you can. If you give the impression of being involved with and stimulated by what you’re saying, you will draw the audience in.

Act as if you’re confident and enthusiastic and success will follow.

Use of notes

There is no shame in having a few discreet notes to refer to. How much better than forgetting what you want to say and just gaping. Until you’re very experienced at public speaking, I strongly recommend you have a few cards in your hand with bullet points on. If you don’t need to look at them, great. If you do need to look at them, look at them. You don’t need to do this surreptitiously; just calmly and openly see what’s next.

Dealing with distractions

The first thing to say here is, make sure you’re not causing any distractions yourself. Don’t keep shifting your weight around or sniff or fiddle with a pen or anything that takes attention away from your message.

If you want to do something unscripted, such as take a swig of water, do it and move on. Don’t pick up your bottle or glass and wave it around while you talk because people will start to wonder when you’re going to take your swig, instead of listening to you.

When there’s an external distraction, many people feel you should ignore it and soldier on regardless. My own view is, it’s better to be natural. If it’s something that can be dealt with quickly, I always stop for a second and ask someone to sort it out. For example, if a loud conversation starts up outside your meeting room, someone can ask the culprits to be quiet. If it’s something bigger, such as a pneumatic drill outside the window, I always mention it, to diffuse it, and then carry on (more loudly). Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away and I find acknowledging a distraction can help the audience forget about it.

Dealing with questions

As mentioned under Preparation, it’s useful to make it clear from the outset whether you welcome interruptions if people have questions, or whether you’d prefer people to wait till you’ve finished presenting what you’ve prepared.

If you take interruptions, this automatically makes the session more interactive and often more relaxed. It also avoids people missing the whole idea - and potentially switching off - because they failed to understand one small detail of what you were saying. The drawback is that you have to be careful not to be sidetracked. Points of information and clarification are to be encouraged, I’d say, but bigger questions may be better dealt with at the end.

If you take questions only afterwards, you may not get any immediately. You’ve given the audience a lot to think about and they may need time to process it. They may feel their question is not important any more, have forgotten what it was, or not want to be the first to speak up. To prevent that awkward silence from dragging on, it can be useful to plant a question in advance. This will help you because you’re not just waiting there, wondering if anybody was actually listening to you, and you can start off with a question you’ve prepared for.

If you don’t know the answer to somebody’s (factual) question, be very cautious about making it up. There may be situations where this is necessary but it is usually far better to come clean and admit you don’t know. As with everything else, if you’re unfazed and say something like, “What an excellent question!”, the asker will feel smug and be most unlikely to hold your lack of knowledge against you. Depending on the circumstances, you may need to get back to him/her with the answer later, or perhaps you could open the question to the floor and see whether anyone else present knows the answer.

And finally…

The way to get through to people is to care about what you’re saying and say it as if you mean it, which brings us back to the holy grail of public speaking: rehearsed spontaneity. Rehearsed spontaneity, sprinkled with a little bit of genuine, spontaneous spontaneity, if necessary, is how you get your audience to engage with even the driest subject. If they can see it’s important to you, they’ll be interested. If they can see you’re enjoying talking about it, they’ll enjoy listening.

You can learn to love public speaking. If you still doubt that, it’s time to expand your comfort zone!