Here's a SUMMARY of the points covered in this article:
How to talk like ted
What makes great public speakers stand out? What are the speaking skills you need for a successful presentation? Whether you are a bestselling author who has presented their book to TEDx events a million times or this is your first presentation, you cannot inspire others unless you know some very basic speaking secrets that can teach you how to give talks like the best speakers in the field.
The first piece of advice you have probably been given so far is to practice relentlessly, and although this is good advice, you need to know what to practice, or you may be not advancing your skills in the right direction.
If I were to ask you to introduce yourself in front of an audience of strangers you most likely would feel not especially comfortable to be isolated from the crowd and to be alone and kind of stranded with lots of pairs of eyes staring at you. For most people this is the kind of situation that makes the fight or flight or freeze responses start to be activated.
So if that's you, don't worry about it. One of the things that I will be teaching you is some fundamentally simple techniques that you can use so that you're a little bit more in the driving seat so that you can ride the crest of those hormonal shifts rather than be at the mercy of them.
Although the essential learning for this needs to be embodied so you can understand how it feels in your own physical form, in your own voice, in your breath, in your sense of yourself in the space, it can be useful to also point out the principles that underlie transformation in this area. In this article we will be focussing first of all on the body.
Make your Audience Pay Attention: How to Make a Great Entrance and Speak like Ted
When speaking it is important you are as comfortable as you can in a stationary position. If you are used to doing large events, it's great to be able to move but what I encourage you to do is to be conscious about when you're moving and when you're not. So for example, if you wanted to say something dynamic, you might choose to move, but then you would want to return to your still place. So whenever you move you have a place to return to so that you don't end up with a random way of moving, but instead you have a fundamental connection with the ground under your feet.
EXERCISE 1: GET GROUNDED
Stand with your feet hip distance apart. Let your feet spread and let your knees soften. Be careful not to lock your knees. To understand what this mean consider this: if you push your knees back as far as they can go, they won't go any further and you will feel then the tension in your thigh muscles build up. Now let your kneecaps soften. This doesn't mean you have to bend your knees, it's just about having a softness and flexibility in your knees. Spread your feet as much as you can.
See if you can feel the surfaces of your feet against the floor, your toes, your backs of your toes, the balls of your feet, the sides of your feet in your heels. Standing at your full height, imagine that there is a string and that string comes up from the centre of your head and it's coming up to the sky and dropping down like a line all the way through the centre of your body and entering the ground between your feet.
Open the shoulders, allow the arms to be as soft and relaxed as they can. Close your eyes and have a real strong sense of the attention being in your feet, bringing all your attention to your feet. Get a sense of the distribution of your own weight. Do you feel your weight is even between your left and right feet? Try to distribute your weight so it's a little bit more on the ball of the foot rather than on the heels.
Imagine your foot is like a three pin plug where the two pins are on the ball of the foot and the single pin is in the heel. The three pin plug goes into a socket and the grass in the ground under ground underneath your feet. So you've got a very strong sense of a connection with the ground under you. If you want a natural image you can imagine instead that your feet are like the roots of a tree.Have a sense of your body weight and the ground under you supporting you because to create a sense of authority, of personal presence, of sense of gravitas, it starts from the ground up. So balancing your mental energy with the energy that goes into the earth is really helpful.
Trying to keep your body as straight as possible take your weight forward onto your toes and then around onto one foot, the on the other. And then try to go around the back. You can't do a very big arc of a circle when you go onto the heels without your toes lifting off. See where your own edges are and notice where your heels start to lift off. Take yourself on a little exploratory journey. Play with gravity and your balance. Make your circles like a corkscrew, smaller and smaller until you feel you have come to your center.
Open your eyes and have a little look around. Drop your chin very slightly. Have a look around the room having a look around at everybody. Check that you are not on your back foot because it comes across as under energised. It comes across like you're not ready. Be on the front foot, get a sense of readiness and enthusiasm.
EXERCISE 2: PREPARE BY PRACTICING DIAPHRAGMATIC BREATHING
To create the conditions in which people want to give you their attention you need to know how to make an entrance. First of all it is important to be as calm as possible. You will always experience a bit of nerves but to avoid getting into a panic it is essential you spend some time before your speech or presentation taking a few diaphragmatic breaths.
When you do this you stop the panic response because you switch on the parasympathetic nervous system. The diaphragm is a big dome shaped muscle that cuts us in half. It moves out and down and it causes the abdominal muscles to rise on the inhale and fall on the exhale. Lots of people are so used to taking the breath into the upper chest that only the chest moves. So place your hands on your abdomen and see if you can soften around the belly a little. Now, as you inhale through your nose make sure your belly moves out, as if you were inflating a balloon. As you exhale slowly push all of the air out of your lungs until there is no air left. Make sure your out-breath is longer than your in-breath.
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EXERCISE 3: THE ENTRANCE SEQUENCE
Breathe in to Prepare
Stand up straight with your eyes on horizon rather than your feet. Breathe in to prepare.
Breathe out and Walk into the Space
Breathe out and as you do, take a few strides forward into the space. Stop in the middle of the space.
Land, and Breathe in to Ground
Ground yourself. Put your three pin plug in the ground or root your legs into the earth like a tree. Breathe in. This breath in is the one that is the most challenging because that's the one that says: 'I'm here. I have a right to be here. I'm taking you all in. I'm comfortable in my own skin.'
Breathe out to Introduce yourself
As you breathe out, introduce yourself and your topic.
Remember: One breath, One Sentence. Give your audience a chance to take in what you have to say by taking a pause and breathing in between sentences.
The single greatest skill of top minds in public speaking : MINDSET
You cannot inspire others and give ted presentations or ted talks like the great ted speakers without the right mindset. As you land in the space and make eye contact with the audience you need to remember that you are there to connect with each member of the audience one at a time.
Whether there are two, twenty, two hundred or two thousand people in the audience what is important is forming a meaningful connection with each one of them one at a time. So do look at your audience before you even begin your speech and be curious about them.
Your job is to take care of your audience. The more comfortable you are on stage the more comfortable they will be. You are their permission slip to be themselves because the more you are authentic the more you give them permission to do the same. So switch your focus from yourself to making your audience feel good. This will also help you feel a lot more relaxed and help you distract you from any anxiety you may be feeling.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Your job on stage is to take care of your audience. Speaking is not about you. It is about sharing your knowledge and making your audience feel good.
The 10 common mistakes to avoid during a speech
A lot of people when they get centre stage do not command attention. Your body says more about you than your words can ever do. Get your body in the right space and it will help you get your mind in the right space too, build rapport and make you and your audience more comfortable. Here's a list of common habits people engage in when introducing themselves or the subject of a presentation.
Do's
Don'ts
Conclusion:
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Feel Confident on Stage
Overcome Performance Anxiety and Discover how to feel Authentically Confident in 10 Easy Steps
