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When I first started my speaking career I had to fight constantly against the urge to tell my audience everything I knew on the subject at hand within the one hour assigned to me. After the contract had been signed and the topic defined the conflict began. What content should I include? Which stories should I tell? What humorous anecdotes should I select? My answer to these questions was always, ” Why not tell them everything you know?”

When I prepared a speech I had so much good resource material that I was easily seduced into giving the audience the whole works in one sitting. My rationale usually centered around the fact that I might only have one opportunity to share my accumulated wisdom with these people so I wanted to give them the whole package while I had the chance. This kind of thinking can get a speaker into difficulty on a few fronts:

1.If you share too much material in a limited period of time you run the risk of appearing disorganized and rushed. What you want is to come across as relaxed, focussed, knowledgeable and entertaining.

2. Imparting more content than is reasonable or desirable results in your attention being scattered thus giving the impression that content is more important than creating an intimate connection with your audience. In my opinion a good speaker is one who relates well to the people being addressed. When you are concentrating on quantity of material rather than on quality and intimacy you are heading in the wrong direction.

I don’t want to give the impression that it isn’t important to have a thorough and comprehensive understanding of your speech content. It is. But you also need to be able to effectively measure the dosage of content to the time available and the audience’s ability to absorb the material you present.

Here are a few tips that I have found helpful in overcoming with my inclination to saturate my audiences.

Keep in mind that most people can only absorb five or six points in a speech. This seems to be all our human attention span can handle at one sitting. If this is true, it’s pointless to feed them 30 or 40 points at a time.

* When you have the topic defined and clearly articulated, prepare a catchy introduction. This can involve a personal experience, relevant quotation or a humorous quip. It is important that your introduction grab the attention of your audience and make them want to hear more from you.

* Now identify and list your six main points. I like to write them in point form as I just need them to jog my memory. I have no intention of reading them to the audience.

* It’s now time to go to my story and humor files to select a few items to help get my key points across. Stories are important in public speaking as people seem to be able to recall stories more readily than they can general information. For this reason I sprinkle my presentations with liberal doses of story and humor.

* When you have finished listing your main points and connecting the stories and humor to each one, write a reminder to recap your material for your audience before concluding your presentation. The old rule in public speaking that says “Tell your audience and then tell your audience what you just told them.” is still a rule worth following. Make certain that the recap is very brief. You don’t want to give the presentation over again.

* Now conclude your speech with a couple of lines from a poem, share a quote or a quip or just offer a few words of encouragement or affirmation. I also like to thank my audience, tell them how much I enjoyed being with them. and say that I look forward to meeting some of them after my talk.

I find that when I discipline myself to follow this outline I am more inclined to stay on topic, avoid becoming scattered and I am more present and connected to my audience. It also gives me the feeling of having given a power packed, well organized presentation that will be easily remembered long after I leave the building.

Tags: public speaking articles, public speaking books, public speaking course, public speaking tipspublic speaking articles, public speaking books, public speaking course, public speaking tips

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Here are a few tips you’ll want to keep handy when you’re just starting out in public speaking. These aren’t anything out of the ordinary and for the most part the points below are really common sense. The idea here is that too often we forget common sense when we’re overtaken by anxiety, social phobia and fear of public speaking. That’s a reality for a lot of people who are just starting to speak in front of an audience and it’s also a reality for more seasoned speakers who still find it challenging to overcome their fear of public speaking and stage fright.

Once again, these points are common sense, but you’ll still get a lot out of reviewing them:

1. Learn from people who have gone through the same experience.

2. Use sentences and techniques that have been tested.

Some structures are known to work better than others. Rely on what works!

3. Practice a lot!

This point can never be stressed enough.

4. Practice in front of a mirror.

Learn to integrate your own body language style to your words.

5. Record yourself and listen to your pronunciation.

This is an excellent way to speak with clarity.

6. Make sure you know your subject inside out.

Your audience will respect you if you are an expert and know what you’re talking about.

7. Let the audience know upfront that public speaking is not easy for you.

Some speakers may disagree with this, but many have embraced this idea. It might be more practical to use this technique in front of smaller audiences - this works particularly well if you have to present a wedding speech, as the audience is smaller and more forgiving. When you are drawing crowds of several thousands listeners, they expect you to be a top speaker.

8. Know your stage.

You’ll want to visit the podium (and the room) before you speak to make sure you know where to step and what to avoid. If anything is unsafe on that podium, you want to know about it before hand and not risk being embarrassed on stage.

9. Know your technology before you deliver your speech.

You should always test your visual aids and microphones before you deliver your speech.

10. Hire a specialist to take care of all technical considerations.

If you’re microphone doesn’t work, you don’t want to be caught on stage trying to fix your own technical problems. Hire experts who can do it quickly. You should only have one focus - your audience.

11. Have handouts prepared just in case your visual aid doesn’t work.

For obvious reasons, you should check your Power Point presentation many times to ensure that it works perfectly and there are no technical glitches. But sometimes, the best intentions are just not enough. Always have photocopies of the handouts that can be quickly distributed in case anything goes wrong.

12. Don’t forget to interact with the audience. This will not only make it more interesting for the audience, but it will ease the pressure off of you.

If by any wild chance you get a question or comment that you cannot answer, simply be honest about it and let the audience member in question know that if they want to contact you directly you can try to get them an answer. If that question is really important to that audience member, he/she will take you up on your offer. If the question was not that important, you won’t need to worry yourself much because the audience member will not purpose matters any further.

Tags: Christian public speaking teaching, fear of public speaking, public speaking, public speaking tipsChristian public speaking teaching, fear of public speaking, public speaking, public speaking tips

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