How To: Public Speaking Tips

I am going to give you some public speaking tips. The first thing to know about public speaking is that in an American study, most Americans said that they were more frightened of public speaking than death. So if you have a speech coming up and you are feeling a bit nervous, really, you are not alone, it's human.

And the reason we find it so scary, is that as human beings, the thought of being stared at by lots of people triggers the oldest part of our brain which basically says runaway or fight. And what you have got to do to make a good speech is overcome that fear. And as someone who has made a few speeches in my time, I couldn't do it without the tip that is get your content really clear and simple in your mind.

If I have to make a speech with a script in my hand, I would find it utterly terrifying. So, what I do is I make a mind map of my speech and I keep the points really clear and simple so that I can go from point to point in my mind without having to worry about exactly how to say a precise sentence. So investigate mind maps for public speaking.

There are lots on the internet about it. There is another really good structure which comes from the RAF in Britain which is the Air force and it says "Tell him what you are going to tell him, tell him it, tell him what you have told him." People think- Well, that sounds like you are repeating yourself.

Well, actually you do need to repeat yourself when you are speaking because people won't remember what you say unless you say it two or three times. The other tip that was told to me was by new reporters is that you can use a structure which is introduction, point one, point two, point three and wrap. And that can give you even a thirty minute speech.

You do a good introduction which tells people what you are going to sell them, then you have your first point connected to a story, second point and a story, third point and a story and finally, you sum up with a good concise wrap. And that gives people a very nice structure. It's called Sign Posting and the reason it matters is that if people know where you are going, it is much easier for them to listen.

They don't wander off thinking this is going to last for hours because you have told them what is coming next. So remember to sign post, keep your structure simple. The next tip is really about what happens once you have done your structuring and you are in the room.

The big thing to remember is that people really want you to do well and a lot of the time people look out at the faces of the audience and they look quite serious and people start to think Oh, they are terrified, they don't like me, I am not doing a good job here. What you have got to do is see them as friends, because if you do, your face relaxes, you look conversational, you look friendly, you look warm. The audience suddenly starts to warm up too and the room is suddenly a nice place to be.

There is another trick which is called the Bumble Bee technique which is about eye contact. You divide up the room into a number of different groups and they are like flowers. So maybe if you had a thousand people, you would have ten sections of hundred people.

And you would look at one section at a time. It's a bit like a bumble bee landing on a flower. So you look at the left, the back of the room, then you look at the front, the right of the room, then you look at the right, at the back of the room, and so on.

And it just means that your gaze travels around the whole room and then you start to really have a conversation with all of those people. And the other big tip which really helps is to speak in short thoughts. Don't think you have to rush through lots of paragraphs of text.

You just go one close at a time. And I like the Winston Churchill example which is "We will fight them on the beaches, we will never surrender". And you can hear that he was breaking up that speech into very short thoughts.

And if you do that, it