If you've been asked to make a speech or presentation and you want a bit of help with preparing yourself and your talk, you've come to the right place! This website is all about public speaking skills and how to improve them.
In the Public Speaking Skills section of the site, you'll find more detailed advice about how to prepare, practise and deliver a successful speech or presentation.
I am a public speaking coach based in Manchester (UK) and here is a quick guide to my top ten public speaking tips.
Top 10 public speaking tips
01. Watch, listen and learn. Whenever you're in the audience for a speech or presentation, it's an opportunity to learn from the speaker in front of you. If he/she is not making a positive impression, you can learn from his/her mistakes. If he/she is doing a good job, what aspects of his/her performance you can emulate? While, of course, you want to develop your own style, it's useful to have a rolemodel or two to give you points of reference.
02. Prepare thoroughly. Make sure you know as much as possible about the subject you're going to be talking about. Also, find out as much as you can about the audience and what they are expecting from you, about the place where you're going to be speaking and about what any other speakers at the event are going to be saying.
03. Prepare early. The best time to start writing your talk is as soon as you find out you're going to be giving it. If it's months away, there's no harm in preparing it months in advance - you don't have to go on working on it all that time, you just don't have to worry about it because you're ready. Just in case preparing your talk turns out to be more difficult than you expect, make sure you've got time to do it properly. If you're dreading speaking in public, preparing yourself early will help to calm your nerves.
If you leave preparing your talk till the day before you're due to deliver it, you are unlikely to do yourself justice.
04. Practise until you're happy with your performance. One reason for preparing early is to give yourself time to practise and rehearse as much as you need to. Practise saying your speech aloud until you're so familiar with the content that you hardly need to look at your notes. Rehearse your presentation with all the props and visual aids you're planning to use on the day, imagining the audience in front of you.
05. Get yourself in the right frame of mind to deliver a successful talk. Among the essential attributes for effective public speaking are confidence, clarity and enthusiasm.
If you're confident about addressing an audience, that's great! Don't allow yourself to cut any corners; you still need to prepare carefully and to deliver your talk with energy. Overconfidence leads to problems but a healthy dose of self-belief is a wonderful thing and will stand you in excellent stead. Not being plagued by nerves frees you to think and express yourself clearly and to enjoy speaking in public.
If you're not lucky enough to be naturally confident in front of a crowd, you can acquire confidence through hard work, through experience and by training your mind. Assuming you've prepared and practised thoroughly, there is absolutely no reason your talk shouldn't be a success. Your hard work will pay off. Your speech will go well and it will be easier to feel confident next time. As well as this, you need to fake it. If you act as if you're confident, your presentation will go well and you're into a virtuous circle.
Before you start speaking, take some deep breaths and tune into the subject of your talk. If you're thinking as you speak, you're far less likely to make any mistakes than if you're reciting from memory while your mind is in a tailspin.
Remember that, as the speaker, you are setting the tone for the room. If you're apologetic and enervated, it will be hard for people to take in what you're saying. If you exude energy and enthusiasm, this will energise and engage your audience.
06. Feed the audience easily digestible chunks. When you're addressing even a smallish group, you need to speak more slowly than you normally would to one or two people. At the end of each nugget, bring your voice down (if your sentences end on an upward inflection, it sounds as if you're seeking affirmation, you haven't finished the point or you've said this a hundred times before) and pause before going on to the next one.
07. Keep your voice interesting. During the course of your speech or presentation, you need to vary the pitch, tone and pace of your delivery. You're not reciting, you're talking. The way you speak should have all the colour, light and shade of your everyday conversation.
08. Look at the audience. People won't feel you're really talking to them unless you look at them. If you look down or away from the people with whom you're trying to communicate, the impact of your message will be diluted or even lost.
09. Be aware of your body. Unconscious swaying, pacing, fidgeting and fiddling can be very distracting for the audience, so stay reasonably still unless you're making a definite movement or gesture. Conversely, don't feel constrained to stand in an unnatural position and keep your arms in close - aim for open and friendly, while keeping yourself grounded.
10. Enjoy delivering your speech or presentation. As long as you never lose sight of the fact that it's not about you, it's about the audience, the more you enjoy (or, in the early days, appear to enjoy) speaking, the more your audience is going to enjoy listening to you.
Public speaking coaching
If you're finding it difficult to master the techniques of successful public speaking, a session or two of individual coaching can make all the difference.
Read more about public speaking coaching.
Public speaking ebook
All the public speaking tips on this website - and a great deal more advice and assistance - are contained in the ebook Loving the Limelight, which can be yours in under five minutes.
Read more about my public speaking ebook.
Public Speaking Tips