Inhalt : Top tips for public speaking

• Presenter: Ian Gibbs
• We need to express our ideas no matter which sectors we are working in.

Nine concepts to make it better:

1. Message:  the key message can easily get lost under all the other information
   • Think what is the message you are going to give
   • 12 words or less
   • Helps you to get mentally prepared
2. 4M?: “Why listen?”
   • Get the audience to listen: in the beginning, give a reason for attention
   • Explain in the beginning “what’s in it for me?”
   • Then they know why it’s worth listening to the message
   • Engage their curiosity
3. Curiosity:
   • Anticipation and curiosity increase the attention level
   • Generate curiosity: Give them something to be looking for during the presentation, may be in form of a question that is going to be answered during the talk.
4. Structure like a tree: keep the structure connected (tree format)
   • If you have a structure, the audience can follow easier
   • You can have different types of structures during 1 presentation:
     • Story and key message
     • Q&A
     • Past-future
     • Problems in the past/now

   • but keep them connected:

     • The presentation is a tree:
       • Trunk: your key message.
       • Branches:
         • Different kind of structures (mentioned above)
         • They must be connected coherent to the key message (trunk) else the audience will get lost
         • They contain more interesting information to support your key message
5. Story:
   1. Set the scene: the best way to open up a speech is by telling a story
   2. Tell an interesting story
   3. Easy to do: a story is much simpler to learn and remember as a chronological order of words and sentences
   4. Calms you down: and as you calm down, the audience will see you are calm and will settle down too. And if the audience see that the speaker is nervous they won’t trust him
   5. Examples and anecdotes help people to understand
6. Paint a picture:
   • Any presentations has 3 things to achieve:
     • Have people to pay attention to you
     • Have them understand what you want to say
     • Want people to remember the presentation
   • Give people a visual image (easier to remember)
     • Give a brief description (e.g. about the bar the man walked in): smells, feelings, sounds -> to let the people to be able to paint a picture about it
   • Mental images stay with us
7. Engage emotions:
   • Facts and figures are good, but what you take home are emotions
   • Engage people on the emotional level, not just on the rational level.
8. Ending: summary + call to action
   • The 2 most important parts are the beginning and the ending
   • Preparing an ending is very important: lead to an end - prepare the message to lead to an end
   • Don’t just end it by saying “Any questions? Thank you for your patience”.
   • e.g. with a summary of the talk.
   • Good way to end:
     • Summary: a good way of the whole presentation is:
       • Start the presentation with what are you going to talk about
       • Then talk about it
       • Summarize what you just talked about
   1. • Call to action: say “so now…” what is the change that will happen
9. PPP: practice – practice – practice
   • Most common mistake that this is not done
   • Standing in front of people decreases at least 15% of the mental capacity
     • The more you practice the fewer obstacles are to give the presentation
     • The more you practice the more you remember
   • Practice out loud - speak it: 20-25-30-40 times (e.g.: Steve Jobs practiced 2 weeks every day before each presentation)
   • The issue is that if you stop practicing when you can remember all the words and gestures you want to make, then when you will be on the stage, due to the decrease of the mental capacity, you will be only focusing on the words, but not on the tone, the body language and the meta communication.
10. +1: change
    • If the talk is always the same you lose value: it should always be unique
    • Change the talk to fit the audience and circumstances