Excerpt from a YouTube talk by Eric Edmeades offering practical advice on public speaking: prioritize authenticity and comfort on stage rather than adopting overly formal or artificially rhythmic 'presentation' styles. The speaker criticizes training that enforces a hypnotic, rehearsed cadence and urges speakers to 'speak like you.'
Chapters
So the first thing I want to do is talk a little bit about how to make yourself feel more comfortable about speaking. Because one of the most important things you can ever do on stage is be you. Most public speaking training tries to train you into a particular style or behavior. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and fellow toastmasters. This evening I will be giving you a presentation with a perfect cadence and rhythm. I will walk from the left to the right of the stage perfectly. And as I continue to speak like this, you'll wonder if one day I'm planning to work on the airline. Because in case of a cabin depressurization, oxygen masks are going to drop from the ceiling. Recommend that you put your mask on before helping others around you. I go to conferences and people talk like that they don't like. You would never speak to your friends like that at the table. The only time you should speak like that is if you've been trained in hypnosis. Then you can speak like that. Yeah, you can do that. If you're going to talk in hypnotic tones, it makes sense. But if you're actually speaking with somebody and you want the information to go in, you can't speak like that. You can speak like you.
