In this video, Caroline Goyder, author and voice coach, gives her top tips on how to give a clear and memorable speech, and look confident the whole time.
How to be confident whilst public speaking. The first thing to know about public speaking is that in an American study, most Americans said 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 is 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 run away or fight. And what you have got to do if you are going to make a good speech is overcome that fear.
And, as someone who has made a few speeches in my time, I could not do it with 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, which is the Air Force in Britain, which is: tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them it, tell them what you have told them.
People think, ?Oh, well that sounds like you are repeating yourself?. Well, actually, you do need to repeat yourself when you are speaking because people will not remember what you are saying unless you say it two or three times. The other tip that was taught to me by news 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 tell them, then you have your first point connected to a story, second point and a story, and finally, you sum up with a good concise wrap. And that gives people a very nice structure.
It is called sign posting and the reason it matters because if people know where you are going, it is much easier for them to listen. They do not wander off thinking, ?Oh, this is going to last four hours? because you have told them what is coming next. So, remember to sign post, keep your structure simple.
The next tip really is 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, ?They are terrified, they do not 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 and 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 1,000 people, you would have 10 sections of 100 people.
And you would look at one section at a time and it is a bit like a bumble bee landing on a flower. So, you look at the left, the back of the room, then you look front, the right of the room, then you look at the right at the back of the room and it just means that your gaze travels around the whole room and that 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.
Do not think you have to rush through lots of paragraphs of text. You just go one clause 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,
