Expert:  Tracy Goodwin has received numerous public speaking awards and has been a college professor of public speaking, interpersonal communications, voice and diction, and business speech for over a decade. Filmmaker: MAKE | MEDIA

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The unique, audience-centered approach of this top-selling book emphasizes that success in public speaking depends on how listeners interpret the message. Public Speaking: An Audience-Centered Approach brings theory and practice together. Its distinctive and popular approach emphasizes the importance of analyzing and considering the audience at every point in the speech making process. This model of public speaking is the foundation of the book, and it guides… More >>

Public Speaking: An Audience-Centered Approach

Expert: Don Varney Bio: Don Varney was one of the first 33 members of the US Air Force to receive the Professional Performer Award, an award created in 1974 to honor excellence in the Air Force. Filmmaker: Mark Sullivan

Are they winging it? No. In fact, most successful people know that to really stand out in business you have to be able to stand up in front of and audience and extol the virtues of your company. That takes serious presentation and public speaking skills.

And, for those skills you need to go to a professional. Unfortunately there are not that many professional public speaking trainers around to give you the information you need. So, it’s likely that you’ll have to do a little bit of travel to find a course that will teach you exactly what you need to know.

So, what will these professional trainers teach you? What are the skills necessary for excellent presentations? First and foremost the good public speaking trainers will teach you how to enroll and engage an audience. That means; keeping their attention focused 100% of the time. If they’re daydreaming, sleeping or talking to their neighbor they can’t possibly be paying attention to what you’re saying.

How do you keep them enrolled and engaged? That’s where most public speakers fail. You see, many speakers think it’s all about them and how well they speak, but that’s not it at all. In fact, the best public speakers are the ones that make the audiences the star by asking a lot of questions and getting the audience to respond. When the audience hears a question the mind wants to automatically answer it. If all you do is spew out data and more data, it will go in one ear and right out the other.

Another good way of keeping their attention is to get them to finish your sentences. For example; if I use the sentence, “most people get up every day and go to _____,” the audience would likely respond by saying “work.” When you use sentences that have obvious endings and you leave out the ending and motion for the audience to respond, 99 times out of 100 they will. That means they’re listening, enrolled and engaged.

Now, let’s say you’ve figured out the whole question and response thing, what should you do next? A good public speaker knows how to move about the stage. Standing behind a podium and reading from your notes is a sure path to failure. Learning to move about the stage is an art from which can be learned if you have the right teacher. For example; did you know that when you’re addressing the right side of the audience you should be on the left? Why? Because, if you address the right side while on the right, you’ll lose the left side’s attention.

Also, never move towards a person when they ask a question. Always move as far to the opposite side of the stage as you can and give them the floor. Again, the last thing you want to do is forget about the whole audience and focus on just one person. The question usually applies to everyone anyway.

Finally, there’s the whole debate of whether to use notes or not. I do, but in limitation. I use headlines to remind me of where I’m supposed to be in the presentation. I glance at the headlines every once in a while just to jog my memory about the topic at hand. Never, write your speech out word for word. First of all it looks like you’re reading and second of all it looks like you don’t know your subject, which of course you should.

Next article I’ll speak about the perfect presentation template and how to use it in your next speech, training or even sales pitch.

When introducing other speakers you are aiming to create a favorable environment for them to present. If the right words are chosen you can put the audience into a receptive mood to listen. On the other hand a poor choice can leave the audience bored and restless.

Introductions are as different as the individuals involved. In presenting public speakers, each requires a separate approach, in the same way each hole in golf course is played a little differently from the other seventeen holes. Whether you get a high platform rating or a low golf score depends on the approach you chose.

The following tips will help you choose your approach to boost your platform score:

Plan Your Introductions

Introductions deserve more than impromptu fumbling. Learn about the speaker you are about to introduce. If you don’t know the speaker, discover as much as you can about the speaker by getting to know them. Try to answer the following questions;

• What is their area of expertise?
• What subject are they speaking on?
• What do others say about them?
• What business line are they in?

Plan carefully how you are going to introduce them to their audience and you will put them and their audience in “sync” with each other.

Length of Your Introduction

Be brief like good literature — talk long enough to cover the details but be short enough to leave the audience wanting more. Your job is to build up the speaker not to give the speech or to make yourself the center of attention. A custom to keep in mind is that the more well known the speaker the shorter the introduction needs to be.

Keep It Simple and Sincere

Do not over complicate your introductory speech. By keeping it simple you will not confuse the audience. Mean what you say about the speaker; do not exaggerate the speaker’s experience or ability. You have the opportunity to spur on the modest speaker with a few well chosen words.

Structure of the Introduction — A useful outline to use to structure your introduction:

- Opening remarks – start with an upbeat remark

- Biographical details about the speaker – who the speaker is?

- Topic of his speech – be brief – do not give the speech for him

- Thank the speaker and clearly pronounce his name

The introduction of guest speakers is a very important role. It can boost or detract from the audience’s enjoyment of the speech. It is a great way to build your experience and confidence for your own public speaking. And if you enjoy the role introducing of speakers you could consider the more involved master of ceremonies role for further public speaking experience.

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Expert: Tracy Goodwin  has a masters in corporate communication and ten years experience in professional speaking. Filmmaker: MAKE | MEDIA

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They’re the same thing, aren’t they?

Sure, there are lots in common – both need to be heard, both need to be seen as credible etc. so many of the skills of one are transferable to the other – but on that basis, trucks and cars are the same too: both need to steer, carry things, accelerate and brake. In reality of course, you’d not use a car to carry a few tonnes of rubble and you’d not use a truck to pop down to the shops.

So what are the elements in common, what are those elements which are unique to each and – perhaps most importantly – what happens when you use the wrong tool for the job? Let me say at the outset that I’m not sure there’s a definitive answer to any of these questions and some of the definitions I’m going to use are simply mine, formed to give a handy vocabulary for the discussion.

That said then, (for me) presentations tend to be more likely to be technical and detailed, perhaps to a smaller, more involved audience. Examples would perhaps include things like making progress reports on a piece of research to the agency who has commissioned that research: there’s a specific, detailed agenda, such as whether or not you’re on timetable, over budget, making progress etc. as well as the presentation of the results of the research itself. It’s likely that the commissioning agency will be at least partially responsible for the agenda in these circumstances. In short a presentation is likely to be more technical, detailed and interactive.

On the other hand, public speaking is more akin to speech-making. The audience is probably (or even hopefully!) larger, though the individual members are perhaps not quite so involved: they’re more likely to be there to hear what you have to tell them in your area of expertise, rather than be driving the agenda themselves: the locus of control stays more (or at least more often!) with the speaker. Examples might be speaking at a conference (political or marketing/commercial focused) or a rally/event of some kind. (I might – as an extra point only – suggest that public speaking is arguably more likely to be done without any audio-visual aids such as PowerPoint and so on but this isn’t so clear cut.)

Rather like an elephant, it’s hard to describe but you know it when you see it!

So what goes wrong if you mis-judge things? Well, if you are using PowerPoint etc. then you need to be very careful indeed. I’m largely convinced by the concept of approaches such as Presentation Zen for public speaking. There’s no need to put up hugely technical slides – indeed it’s actually counter-productive because people can’t handle too much information.

Critically, when presented with more information than they can handle, people don’t take on board as much as they can cope with and ignore the rest: sadly, they tend to just ‘panic’ and take on board nothing at all. Tests of ‘recall’ are pretty well unanimous on this. The ideas of three big ideas only; simple, clear concept slides; and fewer words etc.; are critical. For pubic speaking, the speaker sets the agenda and so can dictate what’s presented to the audience.

On the other hand, if you’re making a (business or technical) presentation, you’ve got far less control over what needs to be said to your audience. They come with clearer expectations about what’s to be said to them and if you don’t fulfill those expectations they’re going to let you know, one way or another, perhaps by asking tricky questions or even interrupting. That’s very limiting to a presenter for obvious reasons.

The up-side however, is that they’ll be more knowledgeable (you hope!) and so you’ll be able to present them with much more information in a shorter period of time than in traditional public speaking. You’ll also be able to be more technically detailed without losing them. Indeed it often happens that a technical or business presentation is one of a series and you’ll simply be able to build on the knowledge the audience has from previous presentations. (Don’t forget to recap at the start though – what’s possibly been informing your every waking breath for the month since the last presentation might not have crossed their minds since the last time they sat in the room with you!)

Just like in public speaking, make a point of starting from where your audience are. The three basic questions of designing the structure of your presentation are the same as for public speaking:

what does my audience know?
what does my audience need to know?
what do I need to tell them?

Presenters have a huge advantage here over a public speaker here, because the audience is likely to be both less diverse (relating to question one) and have a higher level of antecedent knowledge in the first place… which probably makes up for the disadvantage a presenter has compared to a public speaker in terms of not controlling the agenda so strongly

Perhaps the best way to take advantage of that extra ’skill’ or ‘knowledge’ in the members of the audience is in the use of PowerPoint. Obviously a speaker shouldn’t use if if they don’t need to but there’s a case to be made that the rules of PowerPointing are more relaxed in presentations.

For example

• you can potentially provide much more information on any one slide (for example by having more text on a slide);
• you can relax a little about the minimum font size and so on (for example to label diagrams);
• you can design the slide with a little more subtlety (such as using two fonts on a slide for psychological or logistic effect);
• you can be much more informal and relaxed about effects and animations (such as to emphasize a key area of a slide or by having “pop-ups”).

Almost inevitably however, there are downsides to such presentations – not least to do with the audience and the fact that they’re likely to ask more probing questions, leaving a presenter with less control over the direction of the presentation: thinking under pressure is harder than it sounds!

Additionally, below are a number of other techniques which presenters have found very useful in the past.

Design your presentation as a Q&A. Make sure you ask yourself any question that your audience could ask you and prepare answers for them. Your presentation should answer the half-a-dozen (use your common sense!) of the questions you think will be uppermost on the minds of your audience with all your other answers ‘in reserve’.

Either use hidden hyperlinks in your PowerPoint deck, memorize the slide numbers for different questions or become familiar with the menu facilities in Keynote so that you can skip seamlessly from material for one question to another.

Use the ‘Leading Question’ technique: design your presentation so that each slide tells the audience something important but has an obvious and unanswered question at the end of it. Then, before the audience can ask it, flip to the next slide which contains the answer. A typical example might be to talk about the advantages of Model Y over Model X by increasing the strength of the materials by 10% for example… which leads to the the question “Yes, but how much extra would that cost to make?”. Your very next slide would provide the answer to that question. The next slide would answer a question raised while talking about those extra costs… and so on….

Have the information you need to provide in front of you in the form of a mindmap or some other, high-speed technique (whatever it is, make sure you’re familiar with the content and the technique – a live presentation is not the time to practice methods!). This means that when someone skips the presentation off track you can find the appropriate information very quickly indeed.

Use formula for structuring your answers to questions: examples include PPF for Past, Present and Future, DDD for Define, Discuss and Decide or PREP for Point, Reason, Example, Point. This means that you don’t have to worry about the form your answer takes and you’re free to concentrate fully on the content, thus halving the amount of work you have to do in your head as a presenter.

Be slightly more formal than you expect to need to be. This will provide you with a small, but potentially significant, greater level of control over proceedings. Examples of how to do this include things like dressing with a tie, even for informal meetings; explaining that you’re going to speak for 15 minutes and that you’ll take questions at the end (or whatever you decide – the point is that you state the ground-rules, not what those rules are); and making a point of asking for phones to be turned off.

Try hard to use Second Position when you deliver, rather than the standard First Position to give yourself more authority. First position is often the default due to the layout of chairs, tables and so on but you should try and get yourself in a position where your audience can focus on you or your PowerPoint but not both at the same time. This gives your presentation a sub-conscious sense of objectivity/independence.

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This early Coronet film takes us through the basics of effective public speaking, with its focus on body posture and gestures. There is some very funny footage here; especially in the scene demonstrating how not to make gestures when speaking (what a forensic geek this dude is!).

The final “live” speech is great in that it is about nuclear energy! The speaker’s motions are so calculated (albeit exaggerated for example), they are counter-productive to the film’s lesson and ultimately distract from what the speaker is trying to say.

Great film. See the complete original print of this film for auction on ebay through 10/23!

Note: The following clip was taken directly from the original 16mm print and has been edited to approximately half the film’s original length.

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