By Jennie Parker

When it's our turn to present, we don't want to be that speaker, right? So, let's now think about presentations or presenters who are memorable. Can you think of a particularly engaging college professor? A captivating sales pitch? Or an enjoyable lecture or academic presentation? What was it about these speakers that was alluring?
Chances are, you felt that the speaker was addressing your needs and concerns with confidence and personality. The following five public speaking tips can help you do the same:

1. Know Your Audience
Tailor each presentation to your audience. Just as you would adjust what you're saying in private conversation to your conversation partner's needs, craft your presentations to address your audience's needs and knowledge base. To this end, as you organize your presentation, engage your audience at the beginning with a hook, like an amusing anecdote or a question that gets them thinking about the subject matter. Then tell the audience what you're going to say, by way of an outline or agenda. Throughout your presentation, watch the audience for cues and feedback. Are they bored? Confused? If so, adjust. Finally, conclude your presentation with a short summary and call to action. That is, what do you expect the audience to do with the information you've presented?

2. Let Your Personality Shine
I've worked with many clients who seem to be racing through their presentations to get them over with. This results in a rushed, wooden presentation with little connection to the audience. Slow down, take a deep breath, and show the audience who you are. Don't be afraid to connect through body language, tone, and content. Practice in front of a mirror to see how your facial gestures and body language come across.  Unless you're speaking about a tragic or grim subject, smile occasionally. Play with the tone of your voice so that you don't come across as stiff. Get comfortable with silence; pauses allow time for you to gather your thoughts and for the audience to think about your points. Add a few personal anecdotes. Use some humor. Establish trust and credibility with your audience by letting them see your authentic self.

3. Get a Handle on Anxiety
If speaking publicly makes you nervous, you're not alone. Approximately a quarter of adults report public speaking anxiety. Luckily, much has been written on ways to cope with that anxiety. Shifting your focus from a performance orientation to a communication orientation may be helpful. In other words, rather than focusing on how you "perform" in front of an audience, focus on how you will inform or inspire your audience. Another technique is using inoculation messages. With this cognitive reframing technique, speakers acknowledge their worries around public speaking and then follow them up with a refuting point. For example, if a speaker worries that the audience will laugh at her if she mispronounces a word, she reasons that it is more likely that the audience will either not notice or will disregard it. For more, see Overcoming the Fear of Public Speaking.

4. Use Visuals Wisely
Don't use visuals as a crutch for yourself! I've seen it too many times. A speaker crams most if not all of the presentation onto PowerPoint slides and bores the audience by reading the slides to them. Limit your use of slides and other visuals to images that help to illustrate your points. Images, graphs, charts, or realia can engage an audience and make your explanations clearer. But lengthy bullet-pointed lists can put your audience to sleep. An audience doesn't want to be read to. An audience wants to engage with you, ​not your slides.

5. Practice, Practice, Practice!
Practicing your presentation not only helps you to work through difficult spots and increase your confidence; it will help to ease your anxiety. Contrary to most advice I read, I suggest scripting your presentation word-for-word, especially if you are presenting in your second (or third, or fourth...) language. Scripting will help you to work through tricky pronunciation and natural rhythm and intonation patterns. Once you've practiced with a script a few times, you can pare it down to a short outline of keywords. When I've taught public speaking in a classroom setting, I've observed students "practicing" their speech in their heads. While this might help with memorization, it's not going to help with presentation. I suggest, at the very least, audio recording yourself delivering the presentation. Video recording is even better because you'll be able to see your facial expressions, body language, and visuals.

While you can do a lot on your own to improve your public speaking, you may want the help of a coach. At Every Voice, we specialize in assisting clients with both short-term (e.g., "I have a presentation in two weeks! Help!") and longer-term (e.g., "I'll be lecturing next year, and I want to improve my speaking skills.") public speaking goals, particularly for those who speak English as an additional language. See our private coaching and group courses for more information.
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by Jennie Parker

Research on the fear of public speaking addresses three components: the physiological, the cognitive, and the behavioral. Likewise, researchers have developed methods for overcoming the fear of public speaking that address each of these components. The methods below may be helpful:

Practice relaxation exercises: To address some of the physiological aspects of fear – shallow breathing, muscle tension, and rapid heartbeat – try progressive muscle relaxation or deep breathing exercises. One of my favorite relaxation exercises is “pursed lip” breathing. With your mouth closed, take a long, deep breath through your nose. Purse your lips, like a kiss, and slowly exhale. Repeat this a few times until you feel tension decrease.
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Challenge your beliefs: Cognitive reframing approaches help you to challenge your irrational beliefs about your abilities and your fears. Draw two columns on a piece of paper. In the first column, write down all the beliefs that come to mind when you think about speaking publicly. Then, in the second column, write supportive, positive, more realistic counterarguments. For example, 

Shift your focus to communication: Another cognitive approach involves shifting your focus from a performance orientation to a communication orientation. In other words, if you focus on your performance, you feel the audience is judging and evaluating you. This causes more anxiety. But if you shift to your focus to your message and see your role as informing or inspiring your audience, you will be able to communicate more confidently.

Visualize success: Imagine yourself delivering a clear, confident, informative presentation that your audience enjoys. Positive thinking can help decrease your anxiety.
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Embrace silence: Silence does not have to be awkward. If you lose track of what you are saying, take a deep breath and re-center yourself. It may feel like a long pause to you, but it may not feel that way to the audience. They may need time to absorb what you have been telling them.

Practice, practice, practice: A behavioral approach to conquering your fear of public speaking is practice. One of my favorite sayings is the 6Ps: Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. Know your topic. Organize your materials and speaking points. And then practice, practice, and practice some more. Contrary to much advice about pubic speaking, I suggest actually scripting your speech out, word for word, if you are focused on pronunciation and natural rhythm and intonation patterns. By scripting it out, you can mark it for difficult sounds and rhythm patterns. You don’t have to necessarily memorize the speech, word for word, but by scripting it, you can foresee and work out tricky areas. 

Along with practicing, record yourself. Audio recordings are great, but video recordings are even better. You might be surprised that how you think you sound is not how you sound to others. And by watching a video of yourself, you might spot undesirable facial expressions or distracting hand gestures.
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Get support: While you can do a lot yourself to overcome the fear of public speaking, it’s okay to seek extra help. Toastmasters is a nonprofit with clubs throughout the world designed to give people the opportunity to speak publicly and learn public speaking skills. And at Every Voice, we work with clients one-on-one to help them improve their pronunciation and speak English with more confidence.

By Jennie Parker

I often hear the same refrain from clients who speak English as a second (or third, or fourth...) language: “I’m sorry for my poor English. I hope you can understand.”  Or, “My accent is so bad.”
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​But what I have found is that apologizing for your language skills puts a spotlight on pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary errors. Your communication partners will likely know that English is not your first language, but when you point out your self-consciousness, your partners may start focusing on the delivery of your message and not the content. Perhaps they hadn’t given your accent or English skills a second thought, but once you point it out, they begin paying attention to it. So, skip the apology and take pride in speaking an additional language (btw, only 20% of Americans can converse in two or more languages.) 

Second, apologizing can put listeners in an awkward position, feeling compelled to compliment you on your language skills: “You’re doing a good job with your English. I understand perfectly well.” Putting listeners in this position casts you in an insecure or incompetent light. You are confident in your message, so project confidence in your delivery. Remember, your accent is unique and tells a story about you and your experiences. Take pride in it.

Finally, apologizing keeps your focus on you instead of the needs of your communication partners. I’ve had several clients so focused on their accents that when they speak in English, they lose track of what they are saying. Instead of focusing on how you are speaking, focus on your audience. How can you convey your message clearly and concisely to your audience? How can you help your audience remember your points or lead them to action? (more on this below)

How to Focus on Your Audience (or Listener)

I’ve prepared the following tips for situations in which you can plan and rehearse what you will say to an audience or listener. Perhaps you are presenting at a conference or interview, or giving a lecture…

1. What is the overarching message you want to deliver to your audience? Be sure that it is clear in your mind and that you repeat it throughout your presentation. Art Markman writes in the Harvard Business Review, “By designing your presentations starting with the ways you want to affect your audience, you can do a better job of constructing an experience that maximizes your influence.” As you construct your overarching message, think about what affect you want to have on your audience: Will you call them to action? Teach them a skill? Provide them with information you want them to use or remember?
2. Boil your sub-messages down to 3-5 main points. Because most of your audience will not remember a laundry list of points, it’s best to chunk your information around a small number of main points. Think of these chunks as paragraphs within a document. All of the supporting information relates back to the topic sentence (or main point).
3. Draw connections to the audience. People remember things easier when they are related to other things they know. Providing anecdotes, explicit links to experiences your audience has likely had, or information that they know will aid them in remembering.
4. Summarize your presentation at the end. A common saying is, “Tell them what you’ll say, say it, and then tell them what you’ve said.” That is, provide a brief outline of your main points at the beginning, elaborate on those points in the body of your presentation, and then summarize what you’ve said in the conclusion. At the conclusion, too, you might explicitly call the audience to action or help them to understand why they should care about your message.
5. Sometimes even the most animated and personable clients become wooden when they deliver a presentation. Suddenly, it is as if they are reading a script (sometimes they are!) instead of making eye contact and processing feedback from their audience. This is understandable, as nerves can get to all of us, but try to take a deep breath, look the audience in the face, and elicit feedback if you can. For example, if you are presenting your ideas to a small group, it’s okay to pause and ask if there are questions. Rephrase in another way if anyone is having trouble understanding.

Remember, too, that practicing will help you convey your message clearly and confidently, especially if you are worried about specific sounds or the pronunciation of certain words. Get those tricky sounds out of the way with practice so that you can focus on your audience.  And don’t apologize for your English!