Saturday, October 28, 2006
Hot Tips For First-time Public Speakers!
Yes, they came to hear you in person - so be confidently yourself!
Take it from a professional keynote speaker: nothing succeeds like confidence, and nothing turns-off an audience more than modesty and self-effacement.
Motivational speaker Carole Spiers gives presentations to all levels of corporate managers on the secrets of career success, and one favourite subject is the challenge of first-time public speaking, where the subject is most likely to be you and your career.
The personalisation dilemma
As a first-time speaker, your main inhibition is a familiar one called ‘Little Me?’ You cannot believe they actually want to hear the life-story of someone as unimportant as you feel you are.
Well, that’s why they came along in the first place. So for the duration of your speech, you are not unimportant at all. They’re looking forward to a confident performance, full of interesting revelations about your speciality - strongly personalised to yourself. If they wanted a purely factual digest, they could go to a library or the web. At a live show, they’re expecting to learn new things, and be entertained along the way by a speaker who can strike up rapport, and make each of them feel that you’re addressing them personally.
That leads to the second inhibition - individual or collective appeal?
On one level, you are addressing them individually, as on TV, where first-time speakers have to be reminded that they are not addressing a crowd of five million but just chatting to that couple on the sofa. So for example, you learn not to say “I expect some of you have been to Mexico…”. You personalise direct to the listener: “You may have been to Mexico…”
But on another level, you cannot act as though you’re just greeting one individual stranger, starting with small talk about the weather and nice to see you. Up on a platform, the warm-up chat is a sign of fear, almost appeasement, an apology for what is to come. Up there, you’re the showman in charge of an audience, and you have to master them with extreme confidence, possibly even verging on arrogance - the right mix of cheek and charm. And you have to start at once.
Four basic drills to remember
1. Come out punching
Your opening statement should be the opposite of small-talk, which is everything people expect to hear. It should be everything they don’t expect to hear (short of a pure gimmick based on no substance.) It should astonish, challenge or intrigue - definitely leaving them wondering what’s coming next.
2. The so-what factor
It’s worth taping your speech and screening it for any statement that fails to say something new or interesting. It is all too easy for a single so-what remark to lose the whole attention of an audience. You should even avoid “Nice to be here in Nottingham”. Analyse that, and you’ll find it’s a complete so-what.
3. Humour - that two-edged sword
Strictly, your speech ought to be strong enough to work without humour. Also there are many speakers whose personality simply doesn’t suit humour, so the comedy then sounds forced. Yet audiences find it unnatural not to laugh now and again, so the odd (new) joke could help flavour the mix.
4. Dramatising your career as the subject
If they want to hear about your career, tell it like a proper story with a beginning, a middle and an end, tracing the course of your progress. Remind them how humbly you began. Tell them about the people who influenced you. Describe the turning-points in a dramatic way. And reassure them how they could excel too.
Public speaking skills are only one area of Empowerment and Personal Development in which keynote professional speaker Carole Spiers has acquired during her enviable niche on the professional circuit in the UK and abroad.
See Carole live at London Ecademy – lst November 2006
http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=meeting&mid=12163
Carole Spiers – inspirational motivational speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.
Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com
Take it from a professional keynote speaker: nothing succeeds like confidence, and nothing turns-off an audience more than modesty and self-effacement.
Motivational speaker Carole Spiers gives presentations to all levels of corporate managers on the secrets of career success, and one favourite subject is the challenge of first-time public speaking, where the subject is most likely to be you and your career.
The personalisation dilemma
As a first-time speaker, your main inhibition is a familiar one called ‘Little Me?’ You cannot believe they actually want to hear the life-story of someone as unimportant as you feel you are.
Well, that’s why they came along in the first place. So for the duration of your speech, you are not unimportant at all. They’re looking forward to a confident performance, full of interesting revelations about your speciality - strongly personalised to yourself. If they wanted a purely factual digest, they could go to a library or the web. At a live show, they’re expecting to learn new things, and be entertained along the way by a speaker who can strike up rapport, and make each of them feel that you’re addressing them personally.
That leads to the second inhibition - individual or collective appeal?
On one level, you are addressing them individually, as on TV, where first-time speakers have to be reminded that they are not addressing a crowd of five million but just chatting to that couple on the sofa. So for example, you learn not to say “I expect some of you have been to Mexico…”. You personalise direct to the listener: “You may have been to Mexico…”
But on another level, you cannot act as though you’re just greeting one individual stranger, starting with small talk about the weather and nice to see you. Up on a platform, the warm-up chat is a sign of fear, almost appeasement, an apology for what is to come. Up there, you’re the showman in charge of an audience, and you have to master them with extreme confidence, possibly even verging on arrogance - the right mix of cheek and charm. And you have to start at once.
Four basic drills to remember
1. Come out punching
Your opening statement should be the opposite of small-talk, which is everything people expect to hear. It should be everything they don’t expect to hear (short of a pure gimmick based on no substance.) It should astonish, challenge or intrigue - definitely leaving them wondering what’s coming next.
2. The so-what factor
It’s worth taping your speech and screening it for any statement that fails to say something new or interesting. It is all too easy for a single so-what remark to lose the whole attention of an audience. You should even avoid “Nice to be here in Nottingham”. Analyse that, and you’ll find it’s a complete so-what.
3. Humour - that two-edged sword
Strictly, your speech ought to be strong enough to work without humour. Also there are many speakers whose personality simply doesn’t suit humour, so the comedy then sounds forced. Yet audiences find it unnatural not to laugh now and again, so the odd (new) joke could help flavour the mix.
4. Dramatising your career as the subject
If they want to hear about your career, tell it like a proper story with a beginning, a middle and an end, tracing the course of your progress. Remind them how humbly you began. Tell them about the people who influenced you. Describe the turning-points in a dramatic way. And reassure them how they could excel too.
Public speaking skills are only one area of Empowerment and Personal Development in which keynote professional speaker Carole Spiers has acquired during her enviable niche on the professional circuit in the UK and abroad.
See Carole live at London Ecademy – lst November 2006
http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=meeting&mid=12163
Carole Spiers – inspirational motivational speaker occupies a special niche as an expert in Personal Development. She brings together the separate cultures of individual empowerment and executive management - proving to corporate business that empowered employees improve performance and output. Carole’s keynote presentations have educated and inspired audiences all over the world. She is also a high profile broadcaster, journalist and President of the London Chapter of the Professional Speakers Association.
Our publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. To sign up for our FREE success quotations http://tinyurl.co.uk/yhgv, or for more information email info@carolespiers.com to telephone +44 (0) 29 8954 1593 www.carolespiers.com
# posted by Carole Spiers @ 9:17 PM 
