15 Tips for Powerful Public Speaking

1. Get out from behind the podium whenever possible. You feel protected behind there, but the podium turns you into an immobile talking head, and that’s a sleeping pill for your audience.

2. Tell stories. Real stories with a real point to them (not one-liners) to bring your material alive and show your audience how they can move what you’re saying into their lives.

3. Practice your talk in front of a full-length mirror, with particular attention to your facial expressions and your body language. Stand with both feet apart, knees bent just a little. Stiff legs can interfere with circulation and make you feel faint.

4. Record your practice presentations so you can really hear how you will come across. Yes, I know, you don’t like your own voice. Almost nobody does, but don’t let that stop you.

5. Be aware that we speed up and our voices tend to get thin and shrill when we’re under stress, so make a conscious effort to slow down, breathe, and keep your voice full and low, while maintaining a strong, consistent volume. Enunciate clearly and don’t mumble.

6. Make eye contact with your audience. Don’t just focus on the people directly in front of you. Divide the room into four quadrants, then keep moving your attention around the room as you briefly rest your eyes on a different person in each quadrant while you talk.

7. Finish strongly, with a call to action or a series of statements that tie everything up. End things with a real finish.

Speech-killers you should avoid:

8. Don’t fidget, avoid eye contact, or use sentence extenders like, “er”, or “uh”.

9. And, like, don’t keep using the word “like” in front of everything, and don’t, like, use any other word that will make your audience wish they could, like, kill you and leave. Good grammar and clean sentence structure count.

10. It’s OK to have a folder or some cards in one hand, but don’t ever read lengthy passages from anything; your audience will feel cut off and get restless quickly if you do.

11. Try to avoid reading, word-for-word, what’s right up there on the Power Point that everyone has already read, or can read for themselves. It’s b-o-r-i-n-g.

12. Don’t tell jokes unless you are very comfortable with them and have a great delivery. It’s also easy to offend with jokes. This doesn’t mean you can’t use humor – I recommend it – just don’t tell jokes.

13. Don’t ever go beyond your allotted time. It’s rude and unprofessional, and it will subtract quickly from whatever value your program had.

14. Don’t let your ego get in the way. Unless you’re Bill Cosby or Julie Andrews, those people in your audience are not there to see or ‘buy’ you personally; they want the information you have that can help them. Don’t get in the way of your information.

And here’s the final big thing to know: Don’t take this public speaking thing too seriously. Go out there and have fun! If you’re having fun, your audience probably is, too.