The first two steps — confidence, transparency — are the foundation of your performance. You need these basic principles to climb up further.
With the third step — your first sentence — you’ll create that indispensable link of tension between yourself and your audience.
Steps four through seven — eye contact, voice, body language, visual aids — keep that tension high and guarantee that no one in your audience falls asleep.
Steps eight to eleven — structure, rhetoric, anecdotes, quotations — gives your audience the impression that what they have heard was more than informative, but has actually been profound.
To make your speech truly memorable, though, you need to continue with steps twelve to fourteen — humor, enthusiasm, passion. And the final step, both the simplest and the most difficult, the most obvious and the most important, is your smile.
Once you’ve climbed up all 15 steps, you’ll be standing on the stage ready for the spotlight. For seven minutes you’ll feel like a star. Indeed, you’ll be a star, and it will be unforgettable.
So what are you waiting for — let’s get started!
STEP ONE
The Cat And The Dogs
Imagine you’re a cat. Imagine also — you’re giving a speech to an audience of 500 Rottweilers. The term “hostile audience” would have to be redefined! Yet you take on the challenge. You are even thrilled to do it. You step up on stage. The snarling and barking crowd down there might cause you some concern, but rather than being scared, you feel inspired; you’re even more enthusiastic, because you know what you have to say is important. You cut through the sound of hostility with a roaring “Meow,” and with a firm voice you begin to purr. You are the cat’s meow! You can do it because, from your whiskers to the tip of your tail, you are filled with a wonderful essence, the most important quality any public speaker can have: confidence.
Search your memory — remember the last time you saw someone speaking in public. Can you picture the scene? Good. Now, how did the speaker look? Nervous? Tense? A little coughing? Did the speech begin with a long and disturbing “Aahhh — Ummmm” before an “OK, well...” got added, for variety? Was the room still noisy when the speech began? Did the speaker look at the floor, or off to the side, or over everybody’s head?
That Darn Stage-Fright!
Stage-fright is one of those things, like fleas, that nobody really needs. Where does it come from? When I was in college, why couldn’t I sit in a group of students and just say, “Hi, I’m Florian, I study Business Administration, and I’m here today to find a great employer, ” without suffering from a dry mouth, sweaty palms and high blood pressure?
Once I attended a seminar about moderating discussions given by my friend Bernhard Pelzer from Hamburg. He explained that, when you’re leading a discussion in a larger group, you should always focus on sub-groups of five. This is because a very long time ago we would be sitting in the trees in groups of - you guessed it - five! So, when we were still covered with fur, five was the crucial number. This is now written deep in our brains, in our cerebellum.
But, thanks to Charles Darwin, we did climb down from the trees; we evolved. From that moment on, down from the trees and out in the open, our cerebellum learned to distrust any group of strangers — especially those larger than five; it tells you: “Those guys over there most likely want to kill you. Shut your mouth and get outta here! NOW!” So the last thing your cerebellum wants you to do out there in the meadow is to open your mouth and say, “Hey guys, how are you doing?”
This hasn’t changed. When I was thirteen, I had to perfom a clarinet concert before a large, intimidating, and (to me at least) even menacing audience of 300. I almost wet my pants. I can still hear my cerebellum yelling: “Run away — NOW!”
Dear Future Master Speaker: Although this feeling may be real, even hard-wired in, surrendering to it Does Not Work — not for you, not for anyone! Audiences don’t want to look at a fearful, anxious creature nearly overcome by nerves. That is exactly what they do not want to see.
You Are The Star
Most of the times we speak in public, there is some sort of stage. You, as a speaker, will stand on that stage, standing up above everyone else, who will be looking up at you. Do you know why stars are called stars? Because we look up at them in the sky. And your audience will be looking up to you. While you are speaking, YOU ARE THE STAR!
Practice, Practice, Practice
I may not be a cat, but sometimes I have felt rather like that cat up in front of an audience of 500 Rottweilers. But now I feel that I can gather up all their leashes into my little paw and pull on them. It establishes a sort of tension between my audience and myself. It puts me in control, and gives me an exhilarating feeling of confidence.
This feeling, confidence, is what has let me say good-bye to stage-fright, so today, I consider every speech an opportunity, not a threat. I love to deliver my personal knowledge to my audiences. I am thrilled to go up there both to educate and to entertain people. Sometimes I even start a speech with a little rapping — and I am definitely not Eminem.
The river of my life has flowed unbroken, from the time I played the clarinet, past my time at the university, all the way through to today. Sometimes it’s been torrential, other times calm, sometimes threatening to overflow its banks, sometimes nearly dried up. This river of time is really experience. And if you want to move beyond your fear and gain confidence, then you must jump right in. Practice, practice, practice! Whenever you can, whenever you have the chance, just speak right up and say: “Here I am! I will speak. Let me speak — NOW!”
Go ahead and sing in dark, shady karaoke bars — and do the best possible thing for yourself: join a nearby chapter of Toastmasters!
STEP TWO
Diving Into Ice-Cold Water
Jack Lemmon once said: “If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. You must reach the emotional and intellectual level of ability where you can go out stark naked, emotionally, in front of an audience.”
$15 For Crying
I love this quotation. I believe that at some point great speakers automatically become actors. The speaker, just like the actor, evokes emotions in the audience. When Leonardo DiCaprio froze to death in the ice-cold water of the Atlantic, people all over the world cried waterfalls. They paid up to 15 bucks just so they could have a chance to cry. Positive or negative emotions, happiness and sadness: it’s all about connecting with your audience on an emotional level.
Your Weakness Is Their Weakness
Now let me ask you a question: How can you expect to touch your audience’s heart if you do not, yourself, open up? An emotional refrigerator will never evoke any reaction in the audience. Yes, they will say, it was an OK speech, technically — but that’s not even close to the Wow! effect.
Many people have a great deal of difficulty with transparency. Too many times I’ve heard someone say: “Yes, yes, but I can’t open up too much — it could be dangerous for me.”
I say, they’re only afraid it would be dangerous. When they say this, they’re giving in to their fear — and if you live in fear, you’ll never get anywhere.
Look, what kind of people do you think are sitting down there in the audience? Exactly! Human beings, normal people, just like you and me, fearful people, positive people, anonymously alcoholic people, good people, funny people, bad, sad, and mad people, all kinds of people you could ever imagine, and a few that would never even occur to you.
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