Pro Tips on Speech Prep: How to enhance audience experience and make your points stick
Illustration of Bryan Garner by Sam Ward
STAY CENTERED
I’ve been assuming, by the way, that when you’re giving a speech, you’re the center of attention—not your slides. That’s as it should be. Visual aids should enhance your speech, not overshadow it.
An inexperienced, diffident speaker will dim the lights and foreground the slides. The speaker becomes a disembodied voice discussing slides—today, usually PowerPoint slides. In the most abysmal instances, the speaker will read slide after slide to the audience, adding a bullet point at a time and tediously reciting the words to the audience. This travesty of public speaking is known as “death by PowerPoint.”
The better approach is to give the slides supporting roles, not leading ones. Be a minimalist. Put little text on your slides and err on the side of fewer slides, not more. Use evocative artwork in tandem with what little text you use.
Then there’s the issue of manner. You’ve heard the advice that you must look up from your notes. But that’s not enough. An effective speaker looks audience members in the eye. People who “look up from their notes” often fixate repeatedly on a spot on the ceiling—meaning they don’t connect with the audience.
You want to be conversational but polished. That means curbing all sorts of bad vocal habits, from “um” to “er” to “you know” to “like” (you know the “like” I mean) to the sentence-starting “So ... ” when the meaning isn’t “Hence ... .” You must carry yourself appropriately—as if you’ve done this before (even if you haven’t). You should seem entirely comfortable with what you’re doing.
As in oral argument, you must welcome questions and avoid assuming that they’re hostile. You mustn’t answer defensively, and especially you mustn’t assume an air of omniscience. If you don’t know the answer to a question, say so.
BEYOND THE BASICS
Introductions—if they’re to be given—are really important. Among the most dismaying things a speaker can hear is being asked, two minutes before the start time: “Would you like an introduction? What would you like me to say?” The proper answer to any such query is: “No, thank you. I’ll introduce myself.”
An introducer must be prepared. That doesn’t mean prepared to read a printout from a website. It means giving some thought to the occasion, the audience, the speaker and the subject of the talk. It means being pithy and generally upbeat, so that you whet the audience’s intellectual appetite. Prepare well in advance—not moments before going onstage.
But if you’re asked to do an introduction right beforehand and, unavoidably, you must make it impromptu, do what you can to learn something quickly about the speaker. Think of some interesting but general facts about the topic. Make it short, and bow out.
Remember that as the introducer, you’re there to support—not to undercut—the speaker. So nothing you say should be in the nature of laying down a challenge. You’re there to urge the audience to give its full attention and to derive knowledge and enjoyment from what’s to follow.
Frequent speakers are among the best audience participants. Five rules: (1) Sit toward the front and center—you won’t have to fight for a seat. (2) Listen attentively. Neither whisper (or pass notes) to your neighbor nor check your cellphone. (3) Don’t interrupt. Make notes if you have questions to ask when the speaker invites them. (4) Look at the speaker. As a listener, don’t constantly avert your eyes. (5) Wait for a break before getting up and walking to the back of the room.
Approach the talk with a genuine willingness to learn. If you do that, you’ll definitely learn something.
Another suggestion: Project yourself into the speaker’s position and think critically about the speaker’s technique. What’s good and what’s bad about the presentation? You’ll be honing your own speaking skills while observing someone else’s.
One last thing: Don’t clutter your mind with worries up to the point of delivering a speech. Give yourself a mental rest beforehand. Proper preparation lets you relax.
Bryan A. Garner, the president of LawProse Inc., has given more than 100 speeches a year for each of the past 26 years. He is the author of many books, including
