3 Tips for Public Speaking

Here's my "secrets" of public speaking.  Like my favorite board game, Othello, this takes a moment to learn and a lifetime to master.  The only way to really improve is to get up and do it. With all the nerves and adrenaline I'm lucky if I remember to do one of the three, but that's OK.  I know that I'm getting better each time I present, and that's my goal: Improvement, not perfection.

1. Breathe. Take your time, take normal breaths. Pause after you make your points, it will seem like an eternity to you, but its just a couple seconds and people need that time to process what you just said. The pause is key. Own your pause.
    
2. Focus. As you are talking, find people in the audience and look them in eye, stay on them like they are the only person there. Finish a thought with them. You look in control when you do this. Don't look at the back wall, and don't pan and scan. Stand still, and focus.
    
3. Make statements, not questions. Use downward inflection in your voice.  Raise your pitch in the middle of the sentence and end your sentences on a low and firm tone.  Have energy, change your pitch, no mono tone.  Think of it like a roller coaster, you start off level, go up and down the hill, and land level.

Show vs. Tell

It was a circus of self promotion. The first day of business school, and everyone was eager to showcase who they were, and assert their position in the pecking order. I went into it knowing it was going to happen. I’m told it always happens. I vowed that I would excuse myself from this exercise. My abstinence lasted all of 20 minutes, I jumped in with everybody.

What I realize now is that it wasn’t really everybody.

It was most of us, but there was a minority of folks who did more listening than talking. More learning about the rest of us than teaching us about them selves.

Further, I see clearly now that those people who sat back and watched the circus were the more established, higher profile, more powerful students in my class, and I was able to figure that out without them telling me.  Their position in the business world became clear in the way they collaborate, in the way they think and respond to questions, in the way they treat others and the way they treat themselves.

These people realized a huge advantage over the rest of us.

We never saw them coming.

We didn’t know who they were until they started acting, making decisions, responding to situations. It wasn’t that the bar was low for them, we just didn’t know where it was.

So when they did act—with no pressure to perform (recall we didn’t know what their expertise was; the rest of us had written big checks that would all be cashed) they all casually and confidently performed exceptionally.