Public Speaking skills
This is a short collection of tips, tricks, and advice on public speaking that you can use to learn and also teach others some of the basics of public speaking!
The content will teach you how to improve your delivery when you are in front of an audience, or in any situation that requires high engagement like an interview.
| Goal | Description |
|---|---|
| What will you learn | Improve your public speaking skills |
| What you’ll need | An open mind and being motivated to learn a few tips and tricks! |
| Duration | 20 minutes |
| Slides | slides |
Video
Coming soon!
What you will learn
You need to present content and want some advice that will allow you to deliver your content in a more engaging way.
This content will allow you to learn:
- Use simple techniques to keep your audience engaged
- Avoid common pitfalls when in front of an audience
Single idea 💡
Focus on what the single most important idea for your delivery is. No audience can recall several different take aways. Focus on the single idea and tie everything you say back to the single idea.
Always tell a story 📘
Stories connects you and your audience. Make sure that the stories you tell are focused and tied to the “single idea”.
The most important tip on telling stories: Describe the scenario as much as possible, like describing a movie scene.
Find excitement 🤩
When you present about something that is exciting, your voice, stance, and energy changes. Similarly, when the topic is boring, your will sound boring. Find the exciting thing about what you are presenting and use that as the energy for your delivery.
Don’t read 🤓
Never ever read. As soon as you read you will sound robotic and will cause the audience to disconnect and lose interest. Reading from slides, cards, or anything else has one of the most negative impacts in your delivery.
Use the Problem-Solution-Benefit technique 🎯
Try to state the problem, then move onto the solution, and finally emphasize what the benefit is. This technique is also known as “What, So what, Now what”. The use of 3 parts, starting with the problem, continuing with the solution and finalizing with a benefit, is a solid way to keep your audience engaged, and allow you to maintain structure and pace.
Speed, Volume, and movement 🏃🏽
A monotone delivery will bore your audience. It can happen if you are really nervous or if you are reading for example.
Try mixing how fast you’re talking with pauses or speeding up and then slowing down.
Similarly, to volume, try raising your voice for excitement or lowering it for suspense.
Lastly, use body movement to match what you are saying. You can move your arms using gestures to highlight a phrase or even a problem.
Other tools you can use 🛠
Let’s assume you are presenting about the Three Little Pigs story. Here’s how you summarize, repeat, and emphasize at different parts of the story:
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Summarize Use two or three sentences to recap what just happened. For example: the bad wolf had it easy, afterall it only took a few blows and almost caught the piglet. Summarizing allows to keep an audience on track.
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Repeat to Connect Find elements that you can repeat so that the story or presentation connects. For example, you mention at the beginning that the wolf was very hungry. Towards the end, you can say “now this wolf is even hungrier”. This helps chain the events in a way that the audience can relate to.
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Emphasize the single idea There has to be one key takeaway for your audience. Use this key takeaway at every chance you get and emphasize it: “Hard work pays off […]. The three piglets where all benefitting from the hard work in the strongest house”
Next steps
Now that you have a new set of tools for public speaking, try using at least one of them in your next presentation! Keep adding more of the tips in this presentation and mix them up.
Practice
Always practice in front of someone else, or if you don’t have someone to practice as an audience, try recording yourself for a few minutes and then watch the recording to see where you can improve.
Feedback
Be sure to give feedback about this workshop!