Dear Dana Advice: 3 Tips for Good Speech Delivery

Dear Dana, I always thought I was an ok public speaker but my boss recently asked me to cover for him at a large conference, where I think there will be over 100 people in the room and I am suddenly losing sleep. The biggest group I’ve ever spoken to is 20 people! Can you give me some tips for good speech delivery? I know you’ll tell me to take a deep breath, but I’ve already done that and I’m still freaking out. Help! – Nervous in Nevada

Dear Nervous,

Congratulations! I know you’re uncomfortable, but this is actually a golden opportunity for you to take your personal brand up a notch! Not everyone has the chance to speak to larger groups like this and the confidence your boss is showing in you is not to be dismissed. If he believes you can do it, then you can too!

I find working with people on public speaking strategies awesome because it gives me a chance to help them bolster their internal voice of confidence, which pays off beyond the speaking opportunity itself. Here are the three tips I give my clients who aren’t content with “good” speech delivery and want to shoot for “great” speech delivery!

Public Speaking Tip #1: Decide to Be Visible

A lot of your discomfort around public speaking is a very human reaction to gaining greater visibility among strangers. When you get this kind of opportunity you realize how comfortable you’ve become with your general level of invisibility and the idea of more people “seeing” you makes you feel vulnerable to judgement. It brings out whatever level of risk aversion you have and tends to make you want to run away and stay under the radar. The problem with this is instinct is that it’s bad for your career! People who are visible get ahead. They get more offers. They get more opportunities. So learning to be comfortable with greater visibility is a skill you should learn if getting ahead and new opportunities are important to you.

So you’re feeling a lack of confidence. Let’s break that down. Confidence is a feeling you get when you have enough experience to feel like you know what to expect, and to feel like you’ll know how to handle all the possible situations you might encounter when you get there. If you’ve never spoken to 100 people before there’s only one way to truly get that experience, but there’s a lot you can do to help you lower your general feelings of risk.

First, you have to decide that you want to be visible. To do this you need to have a visibility objective for yourself which something less than “everybody loves me and gives me a standing ovation.” Don’t set yourself up for failure by thinking you need to wow 100 people to their feet to be successful. Here are some manageable objectives that will help you focus and manage your expectations,

• I want to learn how to keep 100 people’s attention
• I want to find out what I like about speaking to larger groups
• I want to learn more about my subject so I feel more confidence discussion it in other contexts

Develop a list similar to this, which you feel is achievable and which doesn’t require you to “be perfect” to still achieve success and gain experience.

Public Speaking Tip #2: Get Clear On Your Bottom Line Message

Everyone, myself included, starts preparing for a speech or presentation by writing out a bunch of ideas and then sorting them into an outline and some kind of structure that can be put in slides or crib notes. Too many people get stuck at this slide and information dumb stage. Their talk ends up being a spew of information with very little structure or take-away. This results in the very definition of “poor” speech delivery. So don’t stop there.

What I suggest is that you do a brain dump onto slides or bullet points to try to get your ideas out. Go ahead and organize them a little bit. Then put a title on them that says “background information” and put them aside.

Get out a blank piece of paper and write down the answer to these four questions in large letters so you can fill the page in letters you could read from 5 feet away. Think of your audience as one person, as though they were standing in front of you.

1. Bottom Line: If I only had time to tell you ONE THING today, what would that be? Can you get it down to 15 words?
2. My Why: Why do I personally care about this ONE THING?  What does it mean to people I care about?
3. Their Why: Why should your audience care about this ONE THING? What does it mean to people they care about?
4. My Ask: What will you ask your audience to do after hearing this presentation? (for themselves, their family, their employees, their industry, their community etc.)

Why ask them to do something? If you’re not giving them information they can use to do something differently, whether it’s think differently, act differently or ask others to take action, why are you there? People will be engaged when they know you expect them to act. Whether they decide to act or not is secondary. First you need to get and keep their attention, so put a choice on them and they’ll immediately engage with the decision to act, and thus they’ll be more engaged with you.

Why should people listen when you give a talk? If you don’t know the answer, neither will they. <=CLICK TO TWEET

I suggest you share these four points with them at the beginning at a high level. That’s how you get their attention up front. Then you can break it down and share more details, based on how much time you have. At the end, come back to these four points and summarize them. Leave them with the question.

Public Speaking Tip #3: Practice. Practice. Practice some more.

Now we get to the delivery part. Just like most people stop at the info dump stage, too many people practice once quietly to themselves, find the experience very painful and dread the actual event. When they get up to deliver their talk, they bring with them all this negative experience and give a lackluster presentation.

Here’s what most people miss, you have to make all your mistakes verbally out loud before you can get them behind you. You have to verbally edit yourself and you can only do this out loud, in the speaking of it. Your ears have to hear you say it a few ways until the most natural way flows out more authentically.

Public speaking tip: make your verbal edits and mistakes before you stand at the podium. <=CLICK TO TWEET

I recommend you practice, out loud, at least 3 times, keeping the ONE THING clear in your mind (write it at the top of your notes to help you stay focused on it.)

1. The first time you look at your notes a lot. It will be super painful. Don’t look in the mirror, just listen to yourself. You’ll find yourself wandering into bunny trails and going over time. You’ll want to quit and you’ll feel like this is a waste of time. Do it anyway.
2. Give yourself a break and do it again. Try to look at your notes less. This time pay more attention to the clock and cut yourself off when you start to wander off. If you need to tell a story a new way to get it down right, redo it, but focus on making it shorter.
3. Do it again. This time pay more attention to how you’re standing. Look around the room as though you were catching people’s eyes. When you’re done this time, rewrite your notes in much simpler form so you can glance at them and they’ll prompt you to remember the flow of the talk. You don’t have to write every little thing you’re going to say. You’ve said it out loud to yourself a few times so it will flow more easily.
4. If you’re still not feeling confident, keep practicing. Do it in front of a sympathetic audience. You literally can’t practice too much.

Finally, when you go to give the speech itself, smile and focus on physically relaxing (this is when that breathing really comes in handy). Remember you’re here for the experience, not perfection. Focus on your ONE THING. Remember that “good” speech delivery is about communicating this key point, and “great” speech delivery is about communicating why it matters. At the end of it all, if you manage to communicate that one thing, you win.

Good luck!

Dana Theus
Executive & Career Coach

P.S. Need help figuring out how to trust yourself and be authentically you in your personal brand? That’s what executive coaches help you do! Let’s talk.