Nervous about public speaking? Here’s how to #FindYourVoice
This month’s Girl Geek Scotland event was hosted by Wood Mackenzie who not only provided pizza, but some cake too, as we listened to professional speech writer Laura Westring giving us hints and tips on how to #FindYourVoice.
I’ve created a wee summary of Laura’s talk yesterday at Girl Geek Scotland for all of those who didn’t manage to come along, and I don’t think she’ll mind me sharing them. As she said, these are not super secret tricks that only those in the inner circle of speech writing are allowed to know!
(Laura also runs public speaking courses which are accredited if you want to learn more — and the accreditation means you could even get your work to fork out?)
Some (not all!) of the main takeaways from Laura’s amazing talk are:
Start with the audience
Who are they? What are their interests? How can you connect with them?
Instead of taking the same talk from place to place and just pumping out the information, think about the audience you are speaking to and what they care about, and adapt from there.
Vary your evidence
Don’t quote number after number — it’s boring and people will question the study they came from. Switch it up — add an anecdote, a human element, ethical evidence, an analogy etc.
Connect to shared beliefs
Maybe you are speaking to a range of people, with opposing views, but there has to be something to connect them. Laura’s example was: maybe half the audience believe that climate change is real and half believe it to be fiction, but all want their kids to have access to food.
Know your point
Seems obvious right — but if you know the point you want to make, you can forget everything and still keep going.
Keep it simple
We’re lucky as English speakers, it’s a far easier language to make a speech in. Other languages rely on increasingly complex language to show ‘intellect’ and make a strong point, but not us. You don’t need to use fancy language to make an impact, and it’s the simple phrases that are remembered the best.
Keep it short
We have ridiculously short attention spans. 18 minutes is the longest your speech should be, otherwise we start filtering the info, and dumping all the ‘rubbish’.
And ultimately, just put yourself out there. Getting a little bit cheesy here, but people are just people at the end of the day, and everyone chokes or blanks on occasion.
One final pearl of wisdom from Laura that might calm your nerves — no-one remembers what you said anyway! In 24 hours pretty much anything you’ve said will be wiped from the brain, and what will be remembered is how you’ve made someone feel.
Published By
Erin Donnelly
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.