5 Powerful Public Speaking Tips to Captivate Any Audience (in 18 Minutes)

Good morning, Believe Nation. Today we're going to talk about how you can improve as a public speaker.

Let me first make it very clear that everyone in this room is a speaker. You guys get that? Do you have an idea that you want someone to get at times? You really want them to get you? Yes? You're a speaker. You got a project you want someone to understand and get on board with?

You're a speaker.

You have a business you would like to succeed? You're really a speaker. Let's not mention platform speaking. It's just any business, you're a speaker. Anything. No one can market make it you and your project better than you. And you've got to do it through your language.

I'd like to suggest that there are 4 really powerful cornerstones, foundations, that we can stand on if we want our speech to be powerful and to make change in the world. Fortunately, these things spell a word. The word is "hail," and it has a great definition as well. I'm not talking about the stuff that falls from the sky and hits you on the head, I'm talking about this definition: to greet or acclaim enthusiastically, which is, I think, how our words will be received if we stand on these 4 things. So what do they stand for? See if you can guess. The H: honesty, of course. Being true in what you say, being straight and clear. The A is authenticity. Just being yourself. A friend of mine described it as standing in your own truth, which I think is a lovely way to put it. The I is integrity, being your word, actually doing what you say, and being somebody people can trust. And the L is love. I don't mean romantic love, but I do mean wishing people well. For two reasons. First of all, I think absolute honesty may not be what we want. I mean, my goodness, you look ugly this morning. Perhaps that's not necessary. Tempered with love, of course, honesty is a great thing. But also, if you're really wishing somebody well, it's very hard to judge them at the same time. I'm not even sure you can do those two things simultaneously. So, "Hail." Also, now that's what you say, and it's like the old song, "It is what you say, it's also the way that you say it." You have an amazing toolbox. This instrument is incredible, and yet this is a toolbox that very few people have ever opened. I'd like to have a little rummage in there. With you now and just pull a few tools out that you might like to take away and play with, which will increase the power of your speaking. Register, for example. Now, falsetto register may not be very useful most of the time, but there's a register in between. I'm not going to get very technical about this for any of you who are voice coaches. You can locate your voice, however. So if I talk up here in my nose, you can hear the difference. If I go down here in my throat, which is where most of us speak from most of the time, But if you want weight, you need to go down here to the chest. You hear the difference? We vote for politicians with lower voices. It's true. Because we associate depth with power and with authority. That's register. And we have timbre. It's the way your voice feels. Again, the research shows that we prefer voices which are rich, smooth, warm. Like hot chocolate. Well, if that's not you, that's not the end of the world, because you can train. Go get a voice coach. And there are amazing things you can do with breathing, with posture, with exercises to improve the timbre of your voice. Then prosody. I love prosody. This is the sing-song, the meta-language that we use in order to impart meaning. It's Route 1 for meaning in conversation. People who speak all on one note are really quite hard to listen to if they don't have any prosody at all. That's where the word "monotonic" comes from, or "monotonous," "monotone." Also, we have repetitive prosody now coming in, where every sentence ends as if it were a question, when it's actually not a question, it's a statement. And if you repeat that one over and over, it's actually restricting your ability to communicate through prosody, which I think is a shame. So let's try and break that habit. Pace. I can get very, very excited by saying something really, really quickly, or I can slow right down to emphasize. And at the end of that, of course, is our old friend silence. There's nothing wrong with a bit of silence in a talk, is there? We don't have to fill it with ums and ahs. It can be very powerful. Of course, pitch often goes along with pace to indicate arousal, but you can do it just with pitch. "Where did you leave my keys?" "Where did you leave my keys?" It's a slightly different meaning in those two deliveries. And finally, volume. I can get really excited by using volume— sorry about that if I startled anybody— or I can have you really pay attention by getting very quiet. Some people broadcast the whole time. Try not to do that. That's called sodcasting. Imposing your sound on people around you carelessly and inconsiderately. Not nice. Of course, where this all comes into play most of all is when you've got something really important to do. It might be standing on a stage like this and giving a talk to people. It might be proposing marriage, asking for a raise, a wedding speech, whatever it is. If it's really important, you owe it to yourself to look at this toolbox and the engine that it's going to work on. And no engine works well without being warmed up. Warm up your voice.

I'd like to share with you one of the little-known secrets of the top professional speakers, and it is called the power of the pause. Now, in speaking, the drama and power of the speech is contained in the silences that you create as you move from point to point. And this is an art that you can learn with practice. Many speakers are nervous when they stand up in front of an audience. As a result, they speak faster, with a higher pitch to their voice, and without pausing. When you are more relaxed, you speak slower, you pause regularly, and you have a deeper and more authoritative tone of voice as either a man or a woman. Now, there's nothing as attention-grabbing as a pause. When you pause, you bring people up short. They mentally trip and fall into the silence that you have created. They immediately give you back their full attention. Each time you pause, go silent, smile, you get them to recenter themselves on you and what you are saying. For instance, the dramatic pause is used to make a particular point stick. In the minds of your audience. You can use a dramatic pause immediately before delivering an important point, and you can use a dramatic pause immediately afterwards to allow people to absorb the importance of what you just said. For example, I would say, "There are 3 keys to your doubling your income in the next 6 months. If you practice these keys, nothing can stop you from earning more money than you've ever earned before. Key number 1 is this, and you start and at the end you stop. Key number 2 is this, and then you start and describe it and then you stop. And at the end you just stop and allow people to absorb. Another pause you can use is called the sentence completion pause. This should be illegal because it's so powerful. And this is where you make a statement or quote a line that everyone has heard before and knows the words. When you give the first half of the line, or even 9/10 of the line, the audience mentally leans forward to complete the sentence with you. This causes them to engage more closely with you and to listen with greater attentiveness to what you're saying. Now, whenever you use this technique, you must discipline yourself to stop and wait until the audience speaks up and completes the sentence. You then repeat the words to finish the thought. You'll have the total attention of the audience. Here's an example of what I do. I'm talking about selling and running a business in competitive times, and I say, "But you're not afraid of that because when the going gets tough, the tough get..." Going. Everybody in the audience completes the sentence. They lean forward and they go, "Going." always saying it. They don't necessarily speak aloud, but they finish the sentence in your mind, their mind. So it's a very powerful technique you can use.

Most people, Vishen, when they're telling a story, they don't want to take a risk. So the story has its limits on how high it'll go or how deep it'll go. And when you have that, then you're really not at that part that's going to touch my soul. So being willing to take a risk, being clear and concise with your stories. A great story is a show-me story, not a tell-me story. Now, this is the distinction that's the game changer for most. Most people are telling a story. They say, um, so let me just share with you a little bit of my story, and I'll tell you and then I'll show you. So as I was building my life, there was a time in my life that was very difficult. It was very challenging. True story. Very difficult, very challenging, very uncomfortable. I didn't have a lot of money, I didn't have a lot of hope, and things just looked dismal. At some point, I had to turn my life around. At some point, I made the decision that life had to get better. I'm telling you that. It's decent. You learn about me. Then if I were to show you that story, I would say 6 days a week I had to eat beanies and weenies. I had to find money in the crevices and the corners of my couch so that I can get my son milk. There were times when my heart would beat fast just at what am I going to have tomorrow? At some point, I got sick and tired of my own story. Is this going to be my future? No, I can't handle it. Notice the difference in that second story. Wow, I completely see that. I just painted a picture, same story. Now the second one, when you show a story, it's going to require more of you. It's going to require you to find the colors. What were you thinking? What were you experiencing? What was going on in your head? Instead of telling me You look for money, turn and point. Now, this is anywhere. This is anywhere you are doing anything. I promise you become a great storyteller and you will captivate your audience no matter what you're doing. I've captivated investors. I've captivated students. I've captivated educators because I was willing to show the story. I call it unpacking the story vision, being willing to tell me, what were you thinking? What were you feeling? What were you seeing? Think about a story as an an oral movie. And so in an oral movie, think when you're looking at a movie, the first thing they do is they identify what state of time it is. Is it futuristic? Is it in the now? Was it back in the day? You notice that based on what people are wearing, how they're talking. So paint that picture for me. Take me to that environment. Set the backdrop up for me. Show me what you're going through. Instead of saying, I was angry, you can tell me you were angry. But when you say, the hair on the back of my neck was standing up, I felt the fumes exiting my nose. I thought that my chest was going to pop and I was going to say something that I'd regret forever. Ooh, you just showed me you were angry. Take that extra time to unpack it. Why will most people not do that? Because it requires a level of vulnerability that we're not willing to share.

We all know the maxim that practice makes perfect, but what's most important is that we're practicing in specific ways. What we want to do is actually speak as much of our presentation as we can. We actually want to speak in front of a mirror or in front of a webcam. That way we can see ourselves succeeding. Moreover, we can also be attentive to what we do well and what we can improve. One of the most important parts of the presentation to practice is the introduction and the conclusion. The audience will be drawn in by the introduction and hopefully will be left with something to think about to think about when it comes time for the conclusion. I want to emphasize that there's a real joy in stepping out in front of an audience, a real excitement that comes from sharing one's passion with a group of people. So we can't let the fear of public speaking paralyze us and inhibit our abilities to get to the next step, to get to the type of positions that we want and that we're ready for.

Would you have fun? Show some enthusiasm. Show some passion. In the 2007 presentation, Steve Jobs was having fun. He was laughing. He had a big smile on his face, animated body language. It was really wonderful to see. He even played a prank on Starbucks. He was demonstrating the new maps feature on the phone. Ironically, it was Google Maps, and I know there's been some controversy since then, but he was showing off Google Maps, and he was demonstrating just how easy it was to find a location and contact that location. So he looked for a local Starbucks, a coffee shop around the venue in which he was speaking.

He actually found the number, called Starbucks, a woman on the other end answered and said, "Good morning, Starbucks, how can I help you?" "Yes, I'd like to order 4,000 lattes to go, please.

No, just kidding, wrong number, thank you, bye-bye." I actually called the number that I saw flashed on the screen. Sure enough, it went to a local Starbucks in San Francisco. He actually pranked a Starbucks. Now, I'm not suggesting you prank anybody in your next presentation, of course not, but you get the idea. Would you have some fun? Most presentations are really, really dry and boring. Steve Jobs had passion, enthusiasm, and he showed it.

So I have two quick thoughts on this. The first is You need to practice. You need to practice. You need to practice. You need to practice. You need to practice.

You need to practice.

I think a lot of people, they see the challenge of— they look at a Tony Robbins, they see a Les Brown, they see an Eric Thomas, and you see how great these guys are, and you know what a good public speaker looks like because you've watched their videos, you've been to their events, you've seen them live. And then you get up on stage and you know that you're nothing like them. You're nowhere close to being like them. And it's an fair comparison because they've spent decades practicing and you might be just getting started. And so the way to get there is to practice and practice and practice and practice. And I think too many people look to those other people, and it's great to look to them for inspiration, it's great to look to them to model success. I love it, it's the name of this channel. But don't let that be a discouragement. The flip side is people see how great somebody else is and they feel like, I can't get there, because you're comparing your start somebody else's middle. And so practice, practice, practice. Just make sure you are better than you were yesterday. The second thing is going in with the intent to help them and know that you can provide value. I think it's easy to get on stage and be so locked into your presentation and memorizing the exact words that you're going to say and worried that you're going to make a mistake. For me, it's just going up— and I just came back from Madrid recently— is going up on stage and having the intent to give them value, to know that what I have, what's in my head, can help them. Like, to genuinely feel like I have knowledge that can help them. All I need to do is get it out and not be so worried about saying the exact thing that you have written down, but just letting it feel Through you leading it with intent, leading it with emotion, and if you can get on the stage and just feel like you want to help these guys instead of memorize your presentation, you're going to have much more success as a public speaker. And one quick tip that really helps me with that is I always try to talk to people before, so it's not some cold audience that I know nothing about. I try to meet people, ask them what they're up to, I talk about their business, I talk about challenges they're facing, and so I imagine that person. I'll try to find them in the audience too when I'm speaking. It makes it a lot more personal for me, and when I know that it's personal, I'm much more likely to be able to connect, not with just with them, but with the whole audience. So thank you guys so much for watching. I made this episode of Believe Life because my videos asked me to. So if there's a topic you'd like me to cover in the next edition of Believe Life, leave it in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love to know One, what your favorite clip was from here that you learned the most from, and two, what are your fears or concerns or thoughts about public speaking that maybe I can help you with, and the rest of Believe Nation can join in the conversation as well. Leave it in the comments below. I'll join in. Thank you guys so much for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.

Your ability to speak effectively in every business or social situation can have an extraordinary effect on your life. It can bring you to the attention of people who can help you and open doors for you. It can get you better jobs and get you promoted faster. Most of all, your ability to give effective presentations, both to small and large groups, will increase your your own feeling of self-esteem, self-respect, and personal pride. When you know that you can influence and persuade others in a variety of ways, you'll have a tremendous sense of personal power and accomplishment. You'll feel like a master of any situation. And the best news of all is that these skills are learnable with practice and repetition. And because they're learnable, it means there's no limits on how good you can become.