According to personal development expert Brain Tracy: The average person actually fears public speaking more than they fear dying!
Whether you’re establishing yourself as the go-to industry expert through high-value video marketing or presenting your ideas as a keynote speaker at major events, public speaking is your most valuable strategy for quickly building your brand and your new client list.
Here’s the great news: It turns out high-impact public speaking is an easily learnable set of skills.
And that means you just need to learn and practice each skill until it becomes a lifelong habit.
But where do you start?
Simple:
Here are the top 30 most powerful public speaking strategies and tactics to help you quickly become a highly effective public speaker and presenter in just weeks:
Just Do it!
What’s the number one reason so many fail at public speaking?
Why are so many otherwise world-class coaches and fitness trainers not taking full advantage of the most high leverage trainer/coach marketing and business development tool there is?
Simple: They never actually DO public speaking in the first place because of fear.
Or they try public speaking and get overwhelmed the first time they try to make a presentation. They give up right then and there because they haven’t quickly and efficiently learned the most basic public speaking skills.
The key to becoming a great pubic speaker is to start reframing the natural beginner’s anxiety and first-time shortfalls as high-value learning opportunities and quickly growing from them.
It’s also a great idea to break down your learning and practice process into short manageable chunks.
Public speaking anxiety is surprisingly easy to master using fast and simple relaxation strategies. And the benefits of learning to manage anxiety will have an amazing positive ripple effect across every aspect of your life.
As far as first-time public speaking failure goes: there are some very simple and easy to correct reasons that make it so common.
I’m going to share a great way to actually a learn from those mistakes so you have a very high level of public-speaking-readiness before you take on your first major public speaking role.
As I mentioned before, the best way to approach how you learn the basics of public speaking is by breaking the process down into easy to digest emotion-management and learning chunks.
As the old saying goes: How do you eat 40-ton elephant? Easy: 1 bite at a time!
It’s all about practicing what you learn step-by-step in a very comfortable and informal setting, one easy-to-master new habit at a time.
If you want to succeed as a highly effective public speaker, it’s essential that you act in spite of any anxiety you might feel at first, and just do it!
And the easiest way to do this is to:
Master Your Public Speaking Anxiety
When it comes to public-speaking having a steady flow of positive energy and enthusiasm is really powerful. But you need to manage your anxiety in order to control that otherwise negative emotion and keep the energy positive.
Public speaking anxiety follows all of the same rules as anxiety in general. And the opposite of anxiety is your relaxation response. They can’t both take place at the same time.
Learning how to quickly turn on your relaxation response is one of the most valuable skills you can learn – period.
Not only is the relaxation response the real key to public speaking excellence, but it’s also the shortcut to emotional intelligence, the secret to extraordinary leadership, the foundation of an amazing marriage and the centerpiece of highly effective parenting.
Here are 2 of the most effective strategies you can use to “turn on” your deep relaxation response in as little as 60 seconds!
Deep Relaxation Breathing
According to the world’s leading stress management gurus, this super easy to learn breathing method can help you become completely relaxed in under 1 minute.
The “4-7-8 Breathing Method” developed by Dr. Andrew Weil, can also be learned very quickly and can be practiced and implemented virtually anywhere.
Check out this great How to Video By Dr Weil: How to Do 4-7-8 Breathing
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
A great complement to deep relaxation breathing is progressive muscle relaxation or PMR.
PMR teaches you how to quickly scan your whole body for muscle tension: the body’s clearest expression of stress and anxiety.
You then learn to replace the muscle tension with deep muscle relaxation through a step by step process of tensing and relaxing the various muscle groups throughout your body.
Here’s a great video guide so you can start practicing PMR today: Progressive Muscle Relaxation.
You’ll start getting really good at PMR after just a week of daily practice. And it’s a great idea to practice at night before bed for an amazing nights sleep as well.
After a few weeks of daily PMR practice many people develop the ability to do a fast, total body tension-scan in just seconds.
They can then take a few minutes to sit and do a highly focused quick PMR session to get rid of unwanted stress and anxiety.
Use 4-7-8 Breathing immediately followed by PMR skills for fast relaxation so you can harness full mental and emotional clarity as you prepare to speak.
It’s also an amazing way set the emotional tone to:
Visualize Your Success
Another great public speaking success tactic is positive visualization.
You definitely want to add this to your pre-public speaking ritual along with fast relaxation breathing and PMR!
Ask yourself: what will it actually look like and feel like to really succeed at your next public speaking event or in your next great content marketing video?
Imagine the feelings of happiness and that deep sense of accomplishment you’ll feel after delivering a world class presentation.
Picture your audience really being captivated and inspired by the high-value tips, strategies and stories you’ve just shared with them.
See yourself seamlessly transitioning from your opening attention-grabber into a state of deep connection and flow with your audience.
Imagine the genuine audience engagement and the authentic, heartfelt applause that will follow your talk or presentation.
Why is it important to visualize success in this way?
Well, it turns out that the parts of your brain that regulate your emotional states and prime you for either positive or negative thinking can’t tell the difference between what’s going on in the real world and what you tell them is going on through your positive self-talk and success-visualization process.
What’s really powerful here is that your actual public speaking behavior then follows your thinking patterns.
You can also use visualization to practice your most high-value public speaking strategies like the proper use of body language and eye contact that I’ll share with you shortly.
Make sure to visualize your public speaking success in as much vivid detail as possible before each presentation, both in your early practice and learning sessions and later before each public speaking event.
Get and Stay Hydrated
The last thing you want before going on stage (or on video) to give a talk is to suffer from dehydration with symptoms like:
Dry, sticky mouth
Sleepiness or tiredness
Thirst
Decreased urine output
Dry skin
Headache
Constipation
Watch video footage of the any world class pubic speaker and what’s the one thing you’ll almost always see close at hand? That’s right, a nice cold bottle or glass of water.
It’s essential that you are hydrated both before and during your presentations.
Be sure to drink plenty of fresh spring or filtered water and avoid caffeine and alcohol as much as possible starting 24 hours before you next go on stage or on video.
Follow Your Bliss
One of the most powerful strategies for connecting with your audience during your speech is by sharing adages, stories, tips and insights that you are genuinely passionate about.
If a particular insight, new piece of research, story, fitness technique or wellness strategy genuinely inspires you and has made a positive difference in your life, it’s going to genuinely inspire and make a real positive difference in the lives of your audience as well!
Give the Gift of Real Value
When you show up to give a talk or presentation, your number one goal needs to be creating real value and benefit for your audience, not to “sell” them or benefit yourself.
Always give away your most high-value tips, strategies and insights for free in your public speaking. This way when audience members actually start to implement your tips and strategies you’ll be the go-to person for them when they need more detailed help getting started.
If you speak as though you are presenting your highest value tips and strategies to a room full of your highest paying clients and customers, that’s what they’re very likely to become as a result.
Expect and Embrace The Gift of Failure
Do you remember when you first learned to ride a bicycle?
Do you remember falling over the first couple of times while learning to keep your balance, pedal fast enough to keep going and steer, all at the same time?
It was inevitable that you were going to fail those first few times without some help from a caring adult before you could ride your bike safely alone.
It’s the same with public speaking. You’re going to make mistakes at first. But those mistakes are actually incredible gifts that will show you where to focus your attention, practice and learning.
The last thing you want to do is stop learning and practicing because of mistakes. Because with a bit of structured practice, great public speaking will become automatic to you – just like riding a bike.
And just like when you first started to learn to ride your bike, I strongly suggest you:
Practice in Front of People You Know and Feel Comfortable With
If you’re not a great public speaker yet, you don’t want to overwhelm yourself through trial by fire in front of a huge unfamiliar audience.
Start off by practicing with a small group of people, even just one or two, who you know well and genuinely feel comfortable with.
It can also be a real bonus for you if you know and feel comfortable with someone who is also a solid public speaker themselves.
There’s nothing like learning with the positive emotional support of family, close friends and even a team member or two from work who really care about you and want the best for you.
Practice In front of the Mirror
If you want zero social pressure and an opportunity to really “over-learn” your new public speaking skills, try practicing alone in front of the mirror at least once a day.
This way you can feel totally at ease with the process of practicing new speaking skills and of making and learning from your mistakes as you grow.
Structure how You Study and Learn from Your Performance
Whether you practice in front of a small group of loved ones or your mirror (I recommend both), the key goal here is to really focus on developing your strengths and identifying and letting go of bad habits.
When practicing in front of a small group, ask them to give you positive feedback for what’s working and corrective feedback for what’s not working.
Work on 1 or 2 speaking skills at a time over small time chunks say 3-5 minutes, and ask your informal audience to rate your performance on each skill you’re practicing on a scale of 1-10.
Scaling your performance in this way will enable you to identify and get suggestions about areas for improvement.
For example, if you get a 2 out of 10 for saying “um” too often during your practice talk, you can then focus your attention on stopping that particular public speaking bad habit.
Later, when practicing alone in front of the mirror, the feedback you get from your small group practice will help you laser-focus on building your strengths, and quickly recognizing and eliminating your weaknesses.
Record Yourself
Another highly effective way to improve your public speaking skill set is to video record your small group and lone-practice sessions.
Being able to see and hear yourself via a video recording allows you to really analyze your progress. It’s so helpful to be able to see yourself directly and to be able to rewind, pause and replay to really tweak your growing skill set.
Emulate Your Favorite Speaker
Have you ever heard a public speaker or seen an interview with a thought leader or popular expert and realized that the way they speak is very similar to someone who’s an even more established public speaker?
Chances are this was not a coincidence!
Great public speakers become great public speakers by carefully studying and emulating public speaking super-stars.
Ask yourself: Who’s your all-time favorite public speaker?
Now do a quick internet or YouTube search to find great video footage of their best TED Talk, speech or presentation.
Carefully study their body language and their tone of voice.
How do they use their hands as they speak? What’s their posture like?
When do they pause or use silence?
How do they use stories to captivate and deeply engage their audience?
For example, you might notice that many world-class public speakers very often:
Open with a Major Attention “Grabber”
The most effective attention grabbers inspire intense positive emotions or surprise. They include moving stories, powerful quotes, deep, thought-provoking questions and even a healthy dose of humor.
The common denominator across all great attention grabbers, is that they fully and quickly capture your audience’s attention and pique their interest for what you’re going to say next.
A great attention grabber also enables you as the speaker to really connect with your audience as a human being.
One of the most amazing examples of opening with a powerful attention grabber was Steve Jobs sharing his personal family adoption story during his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address.
Never Start with An Apology!
One of the biggest and most common public speaking mistakes people make is to actually start their speech or presentation by apologizing in advance for a self-perceived weakness or problem.
They think that admitting they are nervous or inexperienced is a good way of connecting with their audience through honesty.
Don’t set yourself up for failure right from the get-go. Remember that slight spike in feeling nervous in those first seconds of your presentation is totally normal.
And you don’t want to get into negative appraisal mode, since that’s very likely going to shape your behavior as your presentation unfolds.
When you chose to stay positive that nervousness is going to quickly turn into a highly contagious form of positive energy for you and your audience. And that is how you’ll connect with and get into a state of flow with them.
If you really pay attention to the world’s best public speakers, you’ll see that most of them experience that anxiety spike in the first seconds of their speech.
But they’ve learned to see that as just part of the natural flow of public speaking, – easy to overcome, gone with a quick deep breath, and a clear signal that they’re just about to start another highly successful speech or presentation.
Don’t Talk Right Away
In fact most truly great public speakers seem to have mastered the art of starting with a few seconds of silence.
This creates a bit of tension for the audience and intensifies their natural hunger for a great presentation.
Quickly resolving that audience-tension and satisfying that hunger with a fantastic attention grabber after a maximum of 3-4 seconds of calculated silence is an amazing way to build instant connection.
And the strategic use of silence doesn’t stop there. The best public speakers have also mastered the fine art of:
Strategic Pausing.
Pausing strategically at key points throughout your presentation is actually a natural extension of the emotional tension-creation and release pattern that starting your talk with a few seconds of silence sets up in your audience.
Great speakers learn to use strategic pausing to heighten audience attention for the delivery of key pieces of information and shared insight as they move through the beginning, middle and ending sections of their presentations.
A strategic pause can also be a great way to increase the effectiveness of using humor in your talk, by telling a joke or sharing a funny story. You can pause just before the joke and for just a second or 2 before delivering your punch-line.
What’s key here is learning to pause between major segments of your talk and especially just before sharing your most inspiring or surprising ideas and insights.
“Um”… “Like”.. Don’t Use Filler Words..
If you think it sounds normal and natural to use words like “um” and “like” during your public speaking presentations you’re dead wrong!
According to Harvard based public speaking expert Steven D. Cohen:
“Powerful public speakers work hard to eliminate words such as “um,” “uh,” “well,” “so,” “you know,” “er,” and “like” from their vocabulary so that their listeners can focus solely on their message.”
Identifying and eliminating your use of filler words is a great goal to set up when you first start to practice speaking and presenting in front of friends and family members. It’s also a great thing to watch out for when you video record yourself practicing.
Gradually Ditch Your Notes
When you first start out practicing to become a great public speaker, it actually makes good sense to use some basic point form notes to keep your presentation organized. This gives you more “cognitive space” to work on building your other core speaking and presentation skills.
But as you start to get better and more comfortable in your new role as presenter, it’s a good idea to use notes as little as possible.
Why? Well, the most effective speakers have actually mastered the art of deep and engaging informal conversation with their audience.
Each audience member experiences an effective speaker as though they are talking to them directly, one on one.
Think of the last time you heard a great story from a close friend in a really enjoyable conversation.
Can you imagine if they were pausing, shuffling and reading from speaking notes during that conversation? Do you think it would flow as naturally or hold your attention as effectively?
It’s good to use the most basic point form reminders, especially for longer presentations. But you only want to use them as prompts to guide a more natural flow of conversation.
Good Posture is Critical
Another thing you’ll notice when you study the world’s top speakers and presenters is that they maintain great posture. They stand up straight but without being too rigid.
This is true even when they lean forward on their podium or put their feet up on their desks.
Strong, non-rigid posture conveys power and expertise while at the same time exudes a natural aura of confidence and well-being.
And if you really want to make a great impression (on yourself as much as on others) with your body language learn to:
Stand Out Like a Superhero
According to the world’s leading body language expert Amy Cuddy you can actually give yourself an almost instant superhero-like self-confidence-boost by striking what she calls a “power-pose”.
You’ve probably heard that smiling when you’re feeling down can actually help significantly improve your mood.
Well, smiling to improve your mood operates on the same brain-tricking positive psychology principles that the success-visualization process we talked about earlier operates on.
And it’s the same basic idea with striking a power-pose. When we use our body language to act like we’re confident and successful, we tend to actually feel more confident and successful.
This in turn influences our behavior in a way that makes us much more effective at public speaking.
Amy Cuddy’s research is based on studying the body language of some of most powerful and self-confident people in the world.
What she discovered is that our brain and body chemistry changes when we power-pose, to support that resulting positive boost in our mood and increased self-confidence
But the really fascinating part of what she discovered is that power-posing causes others to see us as more powerful and influential, which further boosts our self-confidence and effectiveness based on how they act towards us.
As Dr. Cuddy writes:
“When our body language is confident and open, other people respond in kind, unconsciously reinforcing not only their perception of us but also our perception of ourselves.” – Amy Cuddy
Cuddy’s most popular example of the power-pose is the “Wonder-Woman” pose (or Super-Man for men), where you stand with your chin tilted upward, hands on your hips and with your feet at about shoulder’s length apart.
Make Eye Contact
Making eye contact with your audience members is critical to your public speaking success in three very important ways.
First, eye contact keeps your attention focused. If your eyes start to wander so will your mind. And you need to stay precision focused on remembering and delivering your key points.
Second, eye contact keeps your audience focused too. This brings us back to that natural conversation flow we talked about earlier.
When you’re having a great conversation with a close friend or teammate, not only is there real interest in the topic being discussed but there’s also plenty of eye contact to positively reinforce your social exchange because it’s a natural trigger or cue for active listening.
When you use eye contact during public speaking, focus your eyes on key audience members evenly balanced across the whole room, for around 3 seconds each time. This is the average amount of time eye contact takes place throughout one on one conversations.
Also, turn your body towards the person you’re making eye contact with so your shoulders square with theirs, especially the first time you connect visually with them.
And third, eye contact conveys a sense of trust and authority. Ask any teacher or police officer and they’ll tell you that if someone has trouble making or maintaining eye contact, it likely means that they’re hiding something or being dishonest.
There is an important cultural caveat here. The public speaking value of eye contact is mainly a North American phenomenon. If your next big presentation is in Asia, say in Japan, excessive eye contact can have the opposite effect on your audience.
Palm instead of Pointing
Public speaking consultant and researcher Venessa Van Edwards recently did a study of the most watched Ted talks. What she discovered is that the talks that went viral had the most hand gestures in them per unit of time.
The TED talks that were the least watched had around 124,000 views each with an average of 272 hand gestures.
Viral TED talks on the other hand averaged 7.4 million views and 465 hand gestures over the same period of time.
According to Van Edwards:
“When really charismatic leaders use hand gestures, the brain is super happy,” she said. “Because it’s getting two explanations in one, and the brain loves that.”
And what’s the single most highly recommended kind of hand gesture recommended by the world’s leading public speaking experts?
It’s “making an outstretched gestures with open palms.”
Why? Because outstretched palms are a universal statement of trust. For millennia this specific hand gesture has been used to show people that you are “unarmed” and sharing your complete vulnerability with them and therefore, that you’re worthy of their trust.
One hand gesture you need to avoid like the plague is pointing because it conveys aggressiveness and sends an unwelcoming message to your audience.
And no matter what hand gestures you choose to use as a public speaker always try to keep your hands in “the strike zone” as you speak.
The strike zone is actually a metaphor from baseball that roughly includes the area between the top of your hips and your shoulders. It’s your natural gestural “sweet spot.”
25.Learn to Fidget Less
Nervousness, anxiety and distraction are just as contagious as inspiration and positive surprise.
The fastest way to communicate your nervousness to your audience is by fidgeting.
Some of the most common forms of fidgeting includes playing with your hair, touching your face or rolling an object around in between your fingers.
The top 2 strategies for becoming a calm public speaker who fidgets less are to master your relaxation response as described at the beginning of this post and to target fidgeting for complete elimination in your early small group, mirror-front and self-recorded public speaking sessions.
When you use fast relaxation breathing and PMR to create a complete state of calm before you speak you’ll get rid of the anxiety that fuels fidgeting.
In your early practice sessions, you can also learn to replace fidgeting with some of the body language best-practices we’ve explored so far, like establishing eye contact, sweet-spot palm-gesturing and power-posing.
Smile Genuinely and Often
Remember how we were just talking before about how smiling and power-posing actually trick our brain into super-charging our mood and self-confidence?
And how strong positive changes in how we feel actually shape how we act in a way that positively influences the behavior of the people around us?
Well, there’s nothing more contagious and inspiring than a genuine heart felt smile!
The latest happiness research shows that smiling actually makes you look younger and thinner, in addition to its super-happiness elevation properties.
Not only will smiling add powerful bursts of positive energy to your public speaking for you and your audience, but you can use that positive energy to make your most important points that much more enjoyable to hear and easy to remember.
And a great way to get people smiling and laughing is through:
The Effective use of Humor:
There’s nothing like a great joke or a humorous story to help break the ice as your opening attention grabber.
Using a bit of humor throughout your presentation can also help to keep audience energy levels and attention high.
Humor can also help make things a little more enjoyable on those rare occasions where you need to share comparatively dry or otherwise boring material.
Unless you’re a stand-up comedian, you don’t want to over use humor since that can take away from professionalism.
It’s important to really test and verify the true funniness and universal tastefulness of any jokes or humorous stories you plan to use in advance.
The last thing you want is offend your audience or to leave them imagining the sound of crickets or the dreaded joke failure drum line – dadum-dah –pshhh!
Use Props
Bank in 2009 Bill Gates was consider a mediocre pubic speaker at best.
That was until he did the unthinkable by unleashing a living public speaking prop of live mosquitoes into the audience during a talk he gave on beating the global malaria epidemic.
(See video here: Mosquitoes released at about 4:36)
It’s great to be creative with props but you don’t want to overdo it with too many props the same way you don’t want to overdo it with too many jokes.
You also want to make sure your props are highly interesting and directly relevant to your topic.
A great example of this is another now famous TED talk where Jill Bolte Taylor used an actual human brain as prop to share how she had experienced “a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness — shut down one by one. – An astonishing story.”
It can also be incredibly helpful to use high quality PowerPoints and other exceptionally good audio visual props to help pull your audience deeper into your presentation.
Although great visuals like infographics, short videos and easy to read graphs can be hugely helpful as props, don’t make the mistake of writing out your entire speech on your slides.
That’s a habit you want to ditch just like excessive hand held notes.
Incentivize and Build Engagement By Giving Away Free Gifts
This is a particularly powerful and strongly recommended public speaking tactic for small to medium sized groups. It’s also really good for when you need to make sure your message sticks.
A great example of how to maximize the value of giving free gifts is to set up a special post-talk quiz show activity.
You can do this by letting your audience or group know that you’re going to give away some great free gifts which you can also display before you start your talk to build instant connection, motivation and audience participation.
For example you might want to give a way delicious free samples from your highly profitable healthy coffee or nutrition business.
You could also give away high quality clothing items such hats or sweat shirts (ideally with your logo on them).
Fitness wearable-tech and gift certificates for free access to your world class wellness coaching or personal training services are also great free prize ideas.
The key here is to give a way stuff that people are really going to love and benefit from.
You can let your audience or group know that you’re going to have a Jeopardy! style game show quiz at the end of your presentation based on the information you’re going to share with them in your presentation.
And that’s when you can pull out your notes and act like Alex Trebek!
Again, unless you’re super wealthy, this is ideal for small to midsize groups. You want to make sure that everyone gets a free gift –with top performers getting really good ones of course.
Thank Your Audience When You’re Done!
What is one of the all-time best practices that truly distinguishes mediocre managers from amazing business leaders?
Effective employee recognition.
And what’s the secret to the most effective kind of employee recognition?
Simple, a genuine heart felt thank you and smile from the boss.
Take some time at the end of each presentation to really offer a heartfelt thanks to your audience.
Thinking about how you really value them and making a real positive difference in their lives as human beings will make a genuine smile automatic for you.
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