What are the top 3 things I can do to immediately become a better speaker/presenter?

Question

While there are many combined skills needed to be a powerful speaker or presenter, there are three areas that, invariably, everyone can improve on, and which can have an immediate and dramatic positive impact on your delivery or presentation skills. It is important to master these three skills first before focusing on anything else. If your ability in one or more of these areas are lacking, it can be so distracting to your audience that nothing else matters, no matter how amazing or interesting your topic is. You will lose their attention within the first 30-60 seconds!

Answer 1

To grab and maintain your audience's attention, the three key areas to master are, in no particular order, eye contact, body and hand movement, and vocal skills.

Eye contact:

It is incredibly important and effective that your audience feels like you are talking directly to THEM individually, whether you're talking to 2 people or at a conference of 2,000 people! The way you accomplish this is by locking your eyes onto one person's eyes for 3-5 seconds while you talk to them, let's say someone in the front-right of the room, then you randomly pick a pair of eyes in the left-rear of the room and talk to them for 3-5 seconds, then someone in the middle of the room, so on and so forth, making your way around the entire room. The key is to always be "talking to a pair of eyes" - never talk while looking up or down or while looking away from your audience whenever possible.

Body and hand movement:

Your body and hand movements are also incredibly important. If you move around too much, maybe continuously walking while you talk or some people unknowingly rock back and forth or sideways while talking, you come across as nervous and not confident, and this will also distract your audience. If you don't move at all or not enough, you will lose their focus and attention. To be most effective, you generally plant yourself in a "neutral body" position (weight on both feet, arms by your side, no movement) on one side of the room or stage (unless you're at a podium and you can't move) and you speak. After a minute or two you then purposefully move to the other side of the stage or room while speaking, and while locking eyes on someone whom you're moving towards, plant yourself when you get there, and continue talking to that person until you find another pair of eyes. Generally you switch sides like that every 1-2 minutes or so, maybe once per slide, if applicable.

The same goes for hand movement: If your hands don't move at all while you speak, you come across as boring and bored with your own topic. If your hands flail about you distract you audience. Your hands always start from the neutral position, extended downwards along the sides of your body, but then it is important to use appropriate hand gestures while you talk to convey excitement, or to visually show what you mean, etc. This is an incredibly effective tool to help keep your audience's attention. It is crucial that your hand gestures match your words. Imagine if you start out your speech by saying "I am truly excited to be here today", but your hands are hanging limp along your body, or they are in your pockets, or your fingers are interlocked - your audience will not believe your words because your body language does not convey that excitement!

Vocal skills:

There are three sub-areas that fall under this category, and which are all important: Loudness, modulation and "non-words". Unless you have a microphone, it is important that the people all the way in the back of the room can clearly hear you. You need to "project" your voice to accomplish this. The only way to do so is by learning how to speak from your diaphragm, by taking a deep breath in before talking, instead of trying to speak loudly from your throat (you will know if you do that because your throat will start to hurt after a while). Secondly, it is important that you modulate your voice instead of using a monotonic voice. Just like hand motions, which need to match the words that you are saying, your voice must also match. Using that same example as above, imagine if you said "I am truly excited to be here today" but your voice was monotonic like some of those computer-generated voices - your audience would not believe you! On the other hand, if you're talking about a sad or sobering or serious topic, and your voice is "bouncing" high and low and full of "excitement", that would also come across as insincere. Lastly, one of the most distracting things to your audience is the use of "non-words" or filler words. I'm talking about "um" and "ah" and "like" and "you know", which we stick in between our words. We ALL do this to some extent, for example, "When I was, LIKE, walking home one day, I, saw UM this cute dog, and YOU KNOW, I wanted to pet him ...". Filler words can be extremely distracting to your audience while they also makes you come across as nervous or not confident. The key is silence. You need to learn to replace the non-words with silence. Just be silent, take a breath, collect your thoughts, and then continue speaking. Inserting a second or two of silence while you are speaking is an incredibly effective way to give your audience a "break" from listening, and allow them to catch up with you and stay with you, especially if your topic is very detailed or technical. It is also a way to grab their attention for dramatic effect. I know it sounds odd or contradictory, but silence is one the most powerful speaking skills you can master!

I have developed effective techniques to very quickly help you master every one of these crucial skills. Let me know if I can help you!