12 tips for great speaking

Photo by Tup Wanders on Flickr

In my previous post, I reflected on 18 years of keynote speaking in academic conferences. I mentioned that I had spoken at over 250 international events in more than 35 countries. In nearly two decades, I guess you learn quite a lot. If you are lucky enough to be invited to address an audience of your peers at a conference, a lot will depend on what you say and the manner in which you say it. You want your speech to be memorable, inspiring and thought provoking. You'll also need to be convincing if you want to put your arguments across effectively. So I'll share some of the top tips I recommend for keynote speakers. Here are a dozen:

1) Start out with a humorous story or funny remark. It gets your audience on your side and relaxes everyone. If the story or joke are relevant to the talk you are giving, all the better. Don't force the humour, but some lighthearted sections within your presentation are often a great way of keeping people interested in your talk.

2) If you're using slides, make sure you minimise the text on them. It's a horrible experience to sit in a conference session and see slide after slide containing lines of text. Better still, use images and other evocative visuals to support your presentation. Images almost always evoke better memories than text.

3) In relation to 2), if you do have to use text on your slides, don't be tempted to read straight from it. People have come to hear your ideas, not listen to you read text from a screen that they can read for themselves.

4) Engage with your audience. Maintain eye contact, by sweeping your gaze across the group as you talk. Move around a little rather than standing stock still (make sure you have a lapel mic or headset though, otherwise your audience may not hear you). Use your entire body to perform your presentation - hand movements and facial expressions can convey a lot of meaning.

5) Don't speak too quickly, but do speak clearly - this is difficult if you're nervous, but do your best. Slow down when you need to, and vary the tone of your voice as you speak, to emphasise key points. Pause for dramatic effect if required. These techniques may need some rehearsal if you're not used to public speaking, but practice helps.

6) Repeat key points if you think you need to. You can do this in various ways, by reinforcing your points with images, video, sound, or repeating important words or phrases.

7) When planning your talk, find out how long you are required to speak, and stick to it. It's difficult sometimes, but prior rehearsal of your talk can often highlight where you can remove some points, or reduce images or text to improve your timing.

8) Try to stick to a maximum of three main points. These can be arguments you wish to make, emphasis on key findings, or even interactions of previous points.

9) Leave time for questions at the end of your talk if you can. Discuss with the organisers what they want in terms of discussion with, and questions from the audience.  Receiving feedback from your audience often gives you pointers about how to improve next time. The dialogue you have with audiences can also be very valuable in advancing your own ideas and theories.

10) In relation to 9), if you are asked a question and you don't know how to answer, be honest and say so. Then promise to explore the question and get back to them later. This will usually mean exchanging contact details.

11) In relation to 10), your last slide can contain your own contact details such as email address, social media accounts, website URL, and even your phone number if you feel brave enough!

12) Think about sharing your slides after the event. I use Slideshare.net to share my slides with my audiences. Do it properly, and you'll find that your audience numbers are far greater than the number who were present in the room! Share them under a Creative Commons license and you'll be surprised how far, and how quickly, your ideas will spread.

I hope the above points are as helpful to you as they have been to me.


12 tips for great speaking by Steve Wheeler was written in Liberec, Czech Republic and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.