Whether speaking to a group of employees or a room full of industry peers, there’s always room for assessing one’s skills and improving on what’s improvable. Just don’t count on others to tell you the truth about your public speaking ability – most people will shy away from telling someone he’s long-winded so as not to ruffle any feelings.
You’re better off practicing part of a presentation at home, video recording it and playing it back for the most brutally honest person you know. If that’s yourself, give it a go.
Practicing a presentation ahead of time brings two benefits:
- you’re liable to correct an issue, such as rushing when you speak, once you’ve practiced, and
- the future presentations and speeches you give to groups will be better as a result.
In addition to practicing and looking and hearing how you sound, here are a few other tried-and-true best practices to keep an audience’s attention:
Don’t read from the PowerPoint or spreadsheet
If possible, don’t use a PowerPoint presentation during a presentation at all. It bores people to tears. They can read what’s on the screen – no need to repeat out loud what’s right in front of people.
Presenters continue making this same mistake in every venue despite public speakers warning against it for going on 20 years now. Resist the screen-reading crutch, it detracts from the points you want to make.
Pause more often
Many speakers fill in pauses during speeches with “umms” or “OK.” Or they rush into the next point instead of letting what they just said sink in with the audience.
Pausing after making your points gives the audience time to digest the info and makes them pay greater attention.
Make eye contact
Keep your focus on the audience. Try to make eye contact at least briefly with everyone in the room who’s looking at you.
Looking down at your notes occasionally or pointing to your screen periodically is OK. But “reading” straight from them will lose your audience.
Make it personal
You may ask, How do you make a discussion on nitty-gritty Finance topics exciting?
Easy. Inject some personal observation or, if you have one, personal experience about the topic into your speech.
Spend a couple of minutes thinking about why the topic matters to you and you’ll come up with something. Personal observations help you connect with the audience and get them thinking about their own experiences and opinions too.
Be heard
The best speakers vary their volume. They deliberately get loud when they’re making their key points and want the group’s full attention.
In general, you’re better off amplifying your voice. Louder speakers convey confidence. Soft speakers are soothing … but they eventually soothe their listeners to sleep.
