How To Nail Public Speaking

Yes, it’s terrifying – but there are tricks to make addressing a crowd a whole lot easier.

- Clare Thorp

Michelle Obama has it. Theresa May, not so much. Oprah inspires the globe with it, while Gwyneth Paltrow has been known to cry. Confidence in public speaking may seem to be something you are born with but, actually, all those people who appear to be ‘naturals’ tend to have a secret. They’ve had training. So says Imogen Butler-Cole, a tutor at RADA Business, who, through a course on improving communication in the workplace, has trained some of the best business minds around. We asked her for some advice – get ready to make your TED Talk…

PEAK PRACTICE

Martin Luther King Jr practised his history-defining ‘I Have A Dream’ speech eight months beforehand in front of a small high-school audience. It’s a technique we can all learn from, says Butler-Cole. While you might not have a group of students to rehearse in front of, you can make the most of what you do have on offer. Mirrors, the recorder on your phone and friends can all make for a back-up audience. If you’re going to video or record yourself, do it more than once – you’ll become less self-conscious, and can watch for key falters in how you speak (‘ums’ and ‘ahs’) and spot passages that you tend to stumble over.

Knowing your stuff doesn’t necessarily mean slavishly following a script, though. ‘There are dangers in learning something word for word – if you forget one word, it might throw you completely,’ says ButlerCole. Write out what you want to say, but extract key messages to make a separate bullet-point list. The ideal is to speak without notes, but if there’s even a slight chance you might forget something, take them with you on small index cards (not a big flappy piece of paper). And those key points? Repeat them three times in your speech. It’s a powerful technique: it highlights information that you want your audience to remember.