A Short Guide to Effective Public Speaking

By: Stephen D. Boyd

Delivering an effective presentation to 20 or to 200 people is difficult. Because listeners have better access to information since the internet became commonplace, audiences expect more content from speakers today. In addition, because of the entertainment slant of most media today, audiences want a presentation delivered with animation, humor, and pizzazz.
If you would rather spend your time preparing your content than reading a book on public speaking, this is an article especially for you! From my experiences in delivering over l500 speeches during the past 20 years, here is a quick guide to giving an effective and interesting presentation your very first time.

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Just for fun

Just in case you are sitting at your computer with nothing to do –

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More items like this, and others that you can use in your speeches and poweroints, at the Pivotal Just for Fun pages

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How Power Point Killed Public Speaking

The origins of the use of Power Point were solidly grounded in good intentions. Remember slides? People put pictures on them, or graphs -- visual aids. They were intended to act as accompaniments to lectures and presentations.

The whole idea was that the speaker would talk for a while, and then occasionally show a slide that illustrated a point with a picture or a striking image, or made a set of numbers clear with a bar graph or a pie chart.

Slides were time-consuming to create, and difficult to change. So most people used them sparingly. I once saw a speech by a National Geographic photographer that included a hundred slides, but each one was a uniquely wonderful picture he had culled from thousands, literally. He was entitled.

Then came Power Point.

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More on Using Powerpoint on the Pivotal PowerPoint Pages

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Seven Key Ways to Gesture Effectively

Gestures are reflections of every speaker's individual personality. What's right for one speaker may not be right for another; however, if you apply the following seven rules, you can become a dynamic, confident speaker who uses gestures well.

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Concluding Your Presentation: End With A Bang, Not With A Whimper

Your conclusion should do much more than simply tell your listeners that your presentation is over. Your entire presentation, in fact, can hinge on the final impression you make. It's that last impression that can linger the longest. So preparing a strong ending to your presentation is every bit as important as preparing a strong opening.

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The PowerPoint of no return

A FRIEND RECENTLY joined a multinational company where she was required to undertake several business training courses. In one particular course, she emailed her assignment as a Word attachment. The assignment was promptly
returned ungraded because she didn't "effectively answer the question".

She was, however, invited to resubmit the assignment, which she did and shot straight to the top of the class.

It was a remarkable turnaround by any standard - all the more so because, aside from the addition of two or three extra sentences, the content of the resubmitted assignment was identical to the original. The only significant change she had made was cutting and pasting her assignment into a PowerPoint template. Unless PowerPoint makes you more intelligent - and it's a safe bet that it doesn't - the lesson of the course was that form trumps content any day.

Loved by some, loathed by many more, PowerPoint has become a byword for much that's wrong with contemporary culture.

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More on how to use Powerpoint

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Don't.Read.Your.Dumb.Slides

From the Shameless Self Promoter

I suspect some folks do put up the charts and bullet points and text-dense slide for the simple reason that they believe the information will speak for itself, so they won't have to do all that pesky work of presenting it in an interesting and useful way.

Here's a hint: IT WON'T.

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Public speaking FAQ

This is your cheat sheet to making public speaking easy and painless. The book distills the knowledge of three top-notch speakers into an eminently readable question and answer format.

The FAQ Book On Public Speaking

The authors, Eric Feng along with his colleagues Irene Ang and Kelvin Lim, has aimed to answer all of your most burning and nagging questions on public speaking. Straight to the point with no fluff...just stuff that works!

You can download a complimentary chapter of the book right now. Be relieved that your days of being fearful about speaking are coming to an end...

And when the book is launched look for the great bonuses you will receive when you buy your own copy.

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Preparing for your presentation

There are so many ways a room and its set-up can affect your presentation. It is so important to make sure it works for you - your position, the audience's position, the equipment, the sound, the heating ...

Graham Jones used this gret example in his tip : Check the room layout for presentations

I was at a meeting the other day when a woman was invited to speak. She stayed where she was in the room to deliver her five minute talk. However, this meant that some people in the room couldn't see her; others couldn't hear her. As a result, about half her audience had five minutes of their time wasted. She also wasted much of her time because she didn't get her message across to half the room.

Where you sit, where you look and how the audience feels is dependent upon room layout. You need to seriously consider all the options before you talk. Get the room layout right and your presentation will be much better. What this means is you should never accept the room as it is - unless it is perfect for you and your audience. Almost every room needs changing in some way so that the audience gains the best from you.

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Using Computer Presentation Programs Effectively

"Are you still doing speeches in the stone age?" This was the question a participant asked of a presenter at a recent conference I attended. The presenter had lugged along a box of transparency slides to show during his half-day seminar, and I admit, I was a little doubtful at first about the lack of modern technology. The presentation went well, overall, but could have clearly been enhanced by a good Microsoft PowerPoint, Lotus Freelance, or Aldus Persuasion program. Additionally, it would have been much easier to present for the speaker, and definitely lighter to carry on the airplane.

Later in the month, however, I got a different perspective when I spoke a participant in one of my seminars after the rest of the class had gone. She told me that when she first walked into the room, she was very disheartened to see a computer-generated image being shown on the screen. She confided that although she had enjoyed the presentation entirely, and that I had overcome her initial apprehension, her first reaction was:"Oh no! Not another PowerPoint Presentation"

This reaction is not unique, I've found. When talking to people in my seminars and social settings, the message I get is clear; People are tired of worn-out power point presentations! Does this mean we should jettison the technology and go back to the "stone age", as one person put it, in giving our presentations? No more than we should ban television because of the likes of Jerry Springer and Temptation Island. The medium itself is not to blame, it is how that medium is used that falls short.

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