How to speak so that everyone listens to you

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Before the performance, knees shake and palms sweat, even in cool speakers. But they know how to calm down and make the listeners fall in love with them. Find out, too.

Speaking convincingly is a useful skill not only for those who are going to speak at a conference or dream of becoming a stand-up comedian. In ordinary life, there are many situations where it all depends on your ability to gain the attention of the public.

It is difficult to convince investors to invest in a project if your thoughts are confused during the presentation. Even beautiful slides won't help. Sincere congratulations are unlikely to work out if you cannot connect two words when the microphone reaches you at the holiday. Colleagues will not listen to you if your solution is the coolest, but you described it in a crumpled and chaotic way.

Failure to speak in public can be a big drag on you in a dozen other areas. But fear of performing is completely normal. Even the cool TED speakers before going on stage, and the journalist Irina Shikhman in one of the recent videos, that she feels nervous before every interview. For a second, there are already about 100 recorded conversations on her channel.

Practice and special exercises will help prevent fear from shackling yourself, not hiding behind your backs or running out of the room when it is your turn to speak.

1. Learn to better control your voice

The voice is the main instrument of the speaker. Being good at it means choosing the right intonation, a convincing manner, the right volume. Practice voice control and record exercises with audio to listen to yourself from the outside.

• Timbre. Say the same phrases in a low, then in a high voice. Feel how their meaning changes. Speak "through the nose" - one tone higher, "through the throat" - in your usual voice and "through the chest" - more enveloping and sonorous. A chest voice helps you sound more convincing. It is known that voters are more willing to vote for politicians with deep chest voices.
• Prosody. This is the teaching about stress. Practice stressing a specific syllable, a word in a sentence, or part of a phrase. Learn to put precise accents and emphasize with your voice exactly what you want to emphasize.
• Speed. Consciously alternate the pace of speech, speak faster and slower. Learn to pause and don't be afraid of silence - not every second needs to be filled with words. Pauses can be very ambiguous.
• Volume. Practice adjusting the intensity of your voice. Try to charge people with vigorous and loud sound, switch to a mysterious half-whisper that makes you listen to you.

If you don't know how to get started, you can work with a voice and speech coach to better understand which way to go.

2. Get rid of some habits

Sound expert and business coach Julian Treger says that certain social habits get in the way of building convincing speech - he calls them “the deadly sins of communication”. Here's what the specialist advises to refuse:

• Gossip. Don't talk badly about people behind their backs. They don't listen to gossips because they know that in five minutes they will be gossiping about those they are talking to now.
• Condemnation. Don't judge others for their choices. People feel in condemnation an encroachment on their freedom and close themselves.
• Negative. Try not to boil it down to negative connotations. A speaker who sees everything in dark colors does not evoke the desire to listen.
• Complaints. You should not grumble and complain about everything around. Complaints do not provide inspiration to solve the problem; they make you sink deeper into it.
• Making excuses and finding someone to blame. Few people want to listen to a person who makes excuses or is looking for someone to blame.
• Exaggeration. Do not try to over-embellish, save special words for truly outstanding phenomena. Exaggerations can sound like a lie, and people don't want to listen to those who deceive them.
• Dogmatism. Do not position your point of view as the only correct one. Let others choose facts, not opinions.

3. Follow the HAIL principle

This principle will earn you the attention and trust of other people. Check if your speech meets these four criteria:

• H - honesty - honesty. Speak truthfully and do not suppress anything.
• A - authenticity - authenticity. Be yourself, don't pretend to be who you are not.
• I - integrity - integrity. First of all, follow your own words, live what you say.
• L - love - love. Sincerely wish people well and love them.

4. Learn to create pictures with words

When you speak, images appear in other people's heads. If your speech is full of abstract concepts, the picture will not add up. An idea that is difficult to visualize will not be remembered by the audience or interlocutors. Use speech to convey visual images. For example, look at two descriptions of the same situation.

• It's hard to imagine a picture:
• It is easy to imagine a picture:

5. Clearly highlight the main idea

TED Curator Chris Anderson, who helps speakers prepare for their talk, clearly highlight one thought. This is the message you want to leave in the minds of your listeners. Concentrate on it and do not try to cover everything at once so that the audience's attention is not scattered.

If you give different examples, each of them should reflect the main idea in one way or another. Circular storytelling works well. When you first touch on a question, move away from it and talk about its various aspects, and at the end, bring the speech back to the question and give an answer that follows from your reasoning.

6. Build on ideas that are dear to the audience

Other people will listen to you if they are close to the problem you are raising. If your audience doesn't understand your topic at all, put it in a meaningful context and describe it with familiar metaphors.

For example, geneticist Jennifer Doudna, that her invention allows us to make changes to DNA in the same way that text editors give us the ability to change already typed text. And speaker Tim Urban, how the brain of procrastinators works, with the help of drawn little people. This made it easier for his audience to understand what neurotransmitters are.

7. Create a soothing ritual

Risk and Leadership Specialist Tyler Tervuren has come up with his own sedation technique. For example, he himself, a few minutes before the performance, straightens his back, breathes deeply and represents success.

You can have your own ritual - write a message to someone close to you, hold a pendant that brings good luck, mentally transfer yourself to a place you like. Don't be afraid to look stupid: many speakers have strange calming techniques.

8. Learn body language

Experiments by social psychologist Amy Cuddy that body language can change consciousness. For example, when we are happy, we smile. But this also works in the opposite direction: when we force ourselves to smile, we become happier.

Make it work for you: Express your authority with your body if you don't feel it in your brain yet. Demonstration of confidence and power - an open pose, arms spread out to the sides, filling the space with oneself. On the contrary, a closed posture, folded hands, clenched fists are a lack of control, fear, a desire to hide. If you force yourself into an open pose, your brain will receive a signal that you are feeling confident.