- In this video, I'll share public speaking tips
for beginners.
So if you're just getting started
in your stand-up speaking experience,
this video is for you.
So let's unpack the details.
(gentle music)
Hello there and welcome to this channel,
Communication Coach.
If you've never tuned in yet,
this channel is here to help rising leaders
increase your personal impact
so you can lead the people around you
with more excellence.
And today we're talking about communication skills
specifically.
If you haven't had a lot of experience
doing stand-up speaking,
I'm going to give you some dos and some don'ts
that'll help move you in the right direction.
And as we talk about these dos and don'ts,
I want you to pick out which ones you think
would help you the most and feel free at any point
to comment in that section below the video.
So when I said do's and don'ts,
we're actually going to start with the don'ts
and then give you the do version of it,
so that's the way we'll organize it.
So the first pair goes like this.
Don't ramble and get long-winded.
Anytime a speaker is disorganized,
and weaves all around,
it's very hard to follow what he or she
is talking about and instead what you want to do
is give a nice organized and concise message.
That means you have to take the time beforehand
when you're preparing to create a nice introduction,
body and conclusion,
make sure you have clear main points
and there's a transition statement
between each main point.
Your audience is really going to appreciate
an orderly presentation of your ideas,
and it's much more likely that they'll remember
what you said and really that's the whole point
of speaking to them in the first place.
The next don't is don't look with your eyes
in the wrong places.
You want to not look over people's heads
or not look at the floor,
and not stare at the ceiling
or scan around like that.
What you want to do is look directly
into a person's eye long enough to finish a thought
and then move on and look directly
into the next person's eyes
long enough to finish a thought.
One public speaking teacher told me
one thought, one look.
In other words, about a sentence or a half a sentence
and then move on to the next person.
Now, this is very difficult to do
if you're not used to it.
It can feel very awkward looking right into someone's eyes
but you have to gear up for this
because that's what audiences want.
We want people to connect with this.
If you're not looking into our eyes
and making us feel like we're part of this,
then you're not going to have much of an impact.
The next thing you want to do is don't,
rather, this is a don't,
don't clutter up all your notes
with too many details.
A lot of times we're tempted to jam our notes
or our powerpoints with everything we want to say.
But the result is when we're nervous in the moment,
we end up just locked in to our notes
and looking down the whole time and reading
and sounding really stiff, really wooden
and you're not going to again connect with people.
So what you want to do instead
is pare down your notes
so that you can just have a conversational style
with your audience.
And again, as you're practicing,
you have to whittle down those notes
so that all you have is like talking points
like a little grocery list of items
that you're going to talk about.
And it almost forces you or at least frees you
to connect with people to look up,
and to have a nice, normal conversation with them
in your natural personality.
The next don't is you don't want to load up your slide
with all complicated animations and text.
And one of the reasons is you don't want
to stare at it and read from it.
The other reason is that it's very hard to follow
what's going on if your slides
are jam-packed with the detail.
What you want to do instead is to make sure
your slides are nice and clear,
and simple and help you make whatever point
you're making in that particular moment.
A rule of thumb that I like to use
is if you're spending more than about two or three minutes
on each PowerPoint slide,
then you're probably wasting your time
and I don't recommend using more than a couple of slides
for a presentation anyway if you're a beginner
because people tend to over rely on the slides
and load up each single slide with way too much.
The next don't is don't fidget.
Don't fidget with your hands.
Don't fidget with your feet.
Don't pace back and forth aimlessly
because you're nervous.
What you want to do instead is have nice confident posture
where you stand in one place for a little while
and then if you want to move with a purpose move,
stand in another place for a while
and then share another part of your message.
Move for the purpose, stand still,
share some of your message.
Don't just pace,
have nice confident posture.
Same thing with your hands.
You want to use gestures
and emphasize your ideas with your hands.
You don't want to fidget and put them in your pockets
or play with a pen or do anything else weird
or distracting like that.
That's a big part of how you come across non-verbally
and I recommend to you when you're practicing,
you work on this as well.
And the last don't undo is how you use your voice.
What you don't want to do is speak too softly,
use a lot of fillers like um and ah and so.
What you want to do is have a confident voice
where you speak loud like to the back of the room
with a nice clear volume.
Aim for the back of the room because just think about it,
you have to reach those people.
The other thing you want to do is emphasize
your key words with the sound of your voice
and also pause after you share a key idea
or a key thought.
Pause for a minute, silently.
Don't fill it up with an um or an oh,
the pause is much more effective.
So here are some dos and don'ts,
some tips for beginners.
Again as I mentioned,
where do you see yourself in here?
Which one you think would help you the most
in this list?
I would love to hear your comments
in that section below.
So thanks, God bless
and I will see you in the next video.