Your message must resonate with the audience. How you say it—your delivery—is important. It often takes a dynamic delivery to get people to pay attention, listen, and fully consider your ideas. For a more effective delivery, follow the principles outlined below:
General Guidelines
- Confidence: To boost confidence and decrease anxiety, prepare well and make an intentional effort to focus on your audience, not on yourself. Remember that your primary role is to serve your listeners, not to impress them. When your priorities are straight, you’ll accomplish both.
- Posture: Good posture projects energy and confidence. Plant your feet shoulder-width apart and stand tall.
- Enthusiasm: Enthusiasm is contagious. If you’re excited about your subject and show it, your audience will get excited, too. If you just won the lottery, you’d probably exclaim, “I won!!!” If you simply said, “Oh, by the way, I won the lottery,” people would think you’re strange. When you’re enthusiastic, your gestures will be more natural and animated.
- Eye contact: Mentally divide the room into quarters or thirds, and make eye contact with individuals in all sections. Connect with a person in one part of the room for two to three seconds; then move on and connect with a person in another part of the room.
- Gestures: In everyday conversations, virtually everyone uses gestures. When speaking to a group, the gestures need to be exaggerated. The larger the group, the more pronounced the gestures need to be. Increase the force of your gestures by holding them for several seconds before releasing them, or by standing perfectly still for a few seconds before gesturing.
- Pauses: Points hurled at your audience in rapid-fire succession will be as hard to catch as rapidly thrown baseballs. Pause from time to time to allow your listeners to assimilate what you have said and prepare for what you are about to say. Study how professional comedians use pauses to set up punch lines.
“To summarize where we are at this point…”
- Colorful words: Use specific nouns and verbs to create word pictures that engage your audience.
“The black BMW convertible roared….” is more descriptive than
“The car went….”
- Show your emotions: The audience connects with speakers who are willing to reveal their gut-level feelings about personal issues and problems they have faced.
Contrast
One of the most powerful ways to increase the impact of your presentation is through the use of contrast. Look at YouTube videos of some leading professional speakers, such as Craig Valentine, Tom Peters, Zig Ziglar, and Tony Robbins. Notice how they vary voice levels, gestures, postures, speed of delivery, and other speaking characteristics.
To increase the dramatic effect of your delivery, learn to vary the elements below:
- Posture: Stand straight > lean in toward audience
- Gestures: None > expansive
- Movement: Stand still > walk about
- Tone: Serious > light-hearted
- Volume: Loud > soft
- Delivery speed: Fast > slow
- Format: Statements > questions
The more contrast you have in your delivery, the more likely you will keep the attention of your audience.
Visual Aids
Effective visual aids can add punch to your presentation and help your listeners understand your message. PowerPoint, videos, and other new technologies have made visual aids more accessible and effective. Use them whenever you think they will enhance your talk.
But remember that visual aids are meant to be just that—“aids.” They should support your presentation, not call attention to themselves. Make sure your visual is clearly visible to all members of the audience. Poor visual aids are worse than none at all.
Pictures are better for conveying emotions than words, and graphs and charts can be much more effective for communicating data. Use videos that are short but entertaining. I try to keep my videos to around two to three minutes long. Before showing a video, tell the audience what you want them to focus on.
Keep things simple. Many inexperienced presenters put too many words on a slide. I recommend no more than 10 to 12. Use font size 32 or larger. Make your slides dramatic, and use words and pictures that are fresh and original. Introduce each major point with a unique but consistent slide design.
Maintain eye contact with the audience when you are showing your slides. Explain the information on the slide before discussing its significance. Listeners need to understand information before they can process it.
Practice
Rehearse your presentation until it is polished and you are confident. Practice isn’t a lot of fun and it takes time and effort, but it will help you avoid embarrassing mistakes and increase the probability of a successful talk.
Some managers procrastinate out of laziness. They hope everything works out, and it seldom does. Others fail to practice out of fear. They’re nervous about the upcoming talk, and a rehearsal is the next worst thing, which is to be avoided as much as possible. If this is your situation, push through the fear. Practice actually will decrease your anxiety, because it will increase your confidence.
Practice your delivery in front of a mirror and in front of colleagues. Record or videotape your rehearsals for especially important talks. Review the recording to evaluate how you look and sound. Ask colleagues for feedback.
As part of your practice session, check your visual aids. If you have data to distribute to your audience, put it into a separate document. Don’t use your slide deck as a data repository.
After your talk, take 10 minutes to write down what you could do better the next time. There’s always room for improvement.
You’ll Like It!
Public speaking is one of the most important leadership skills and one of the most neglected. The very thought of giving a presentation strikes fear in the hearts of many people. But it doesn’t need to be so. With a reasonable amount of effort, you will be able to deliver effective talks with confidence. And you’ll even grow to enjoy it!
The principles outlined in this article will get you started. Read some of the other excellent books that are available. Seek out opportunities to speak in public. Consider joining Toastmasters International. Practice. Practice. Practice. Your career will thank you for it!
Paul B. Thornton is speaker, trainer, and professor of business administration at Springfield Technical Community College, Springfield, MA, where he teaches principles of management, organizational behavior, and principles of leadership. His latest book is “Management—Principles and Practices,” 5th edition; he’s also the author of “Leadership—Off the Wall.” He can be contacted at PThornton@stcc.edu.
