Smile
Smiling is one of the most intriguing of human expressions. It’s the most important facial expression you can make. Here’s why: when we smile – the broader the better – we use specific facial muscles that send endorphins and serotonin – the happy chemicals – to our brains, making us feel positive emotions. Fascinating studies have been done over the years also connecting frequent smiling to longer life expectancies4 and as a treatment for depression that’s equal to the effects of antidepressant pharmaceuticals. How is this relevant to communicating with authority? You want to look relaxed when you speak, and you want your audience to be relaxed and ready to listen to you in a positive frame of mind. Being relaxed in front of an audience shows your confidence. If you think about it, wouldn’t you rather listen to a speaker who’s relaxed and enthusiastic than one who is stone-faced and you can tell just wants to get it over with? Begin your talk with an honest, broad smile, showing how happy you are to be there. Your audience will smile back at you, creating a positive feedback loop in the room.
Of course if your topic is a serious one, it may not be appropriate to smile during your talk. Smiling where it’s not congruent with your words will not make you look authoritative, but as if you are nervous or seeking approval. The same is true with giving fake smiles. As humans we are programmed to spot a fake smile. A real smile involves the muscles around your eyes. Even if your talk has been a serious one, make sure you smile at the audience when you are thanking them at the end. This is your final point of connection, when you transmit your feeling of warmth and appreciation towards your listeners.
Sitting
When we are nervous, we tend to try to take up as little space as possible in a seated position. It’s important to sit up straight and take up all the room in the chair, instead of making yourself smaller. This puts energy into your delivery. Slouching lowers your energy. Do not lean to the side, as this can make you look awkward and tilted. Put your arms and hands on the arms of the chair, or if there is a table in front of you, apart and on the table. Avoid crossed arms or hands clasped in front of you like a student. When you are saying something that is particularly important, lean forward for extra impact. The audience will pick up the movement and pay more attention.
Standing
Stand straight with both feet planted on the ground. Do not weave, wander too much, or lean against a table or podium. Some women have a tendency to put one foot behind the other in a “ballerina” pose when they are nervous. This will make you look unsure and unsteady. You should move if the context allows it, but too much movement can be distracting.
After watching countless speakers for many years we have spotted three clear styles to avoid:
The Professor. This style is one we see often in those who have spent a lot of time in academia. This speaker spends most of his or her time speaking either to the floor as they watch their feet, or to the ceiling while pacing slowly about, as if musing aloud to a passive audience waiting to accept the pearls of wisdom.
The Statue. This speaker never moves. At all. They stand frozen in one place for the whole talk. Perhaps their neck moves around to look at the audience, perhaps there are one or two gestures, but otherwise they don’t move.
The Mick Jagger. This speaker has graduated from multiple presentation courses and has been told that you need to move to generate energy and keep your audience entertained. They cover as much ground as possible, as dramatically as possible; they are a moving target, and it is exhausting just to watch them. After sitting through these presentations it is hard to remember anything about the actual content of the speech.
So how much should you move when delivering a talk? It’s best to finish a complete thought in one place, and then take a step either to the side or towards the audience to deliver another thought.
Things to watch out for:
• When you move across a stage, notice where audio and power cables are on the floor, so you don’t trip.
• Avoid setting up a regular pattern of swaying from side to side – which may hypnotize your audience, and it looks as if you are comforting yourself.
• Don’t start your talk so close to the audience that the only movement you can make is backwards.
The Podium
It’s best to avoid a podium if possible. Anything that puts a barrier between you and your audience – even a table – is not optimal. If you must use a podium, make sure your gestures are larger than they normally would be, so you are extending your space beyond the boundaries of the podium. For instance, place your hands on the sides of the podium’s surface, where the audience can see them. We find that when standing behind a podium, many presenters tend to keep their arms close to their sides, and their hands close together on their notes, with little movement. Remember to be bigger than the podium.
Eye Contact
Eye contact establishes credibility and raises your level of authority with an audience. Avoiding eye contact can make you look nervous or aloof. Research has shown that leaders make more sustained direct eye contact than those in non-leadership positions. During a talk, it’s important to make strong eye contact with everyone in the room. If it’s a large audience, mentally section the audience into quadrants, and rotate your eye contact among these areas equally. It’s best to try and pick out specific people in each quadrant if you can. Speakers are at their best when they are connecting directly to individuals, instead of an amorphous group.
Resist the temptation to only make eye contact with audience members who are smiling at you or nodding enthusiastically. While their positive body language gives you great energy, you may alienate those you never look at. They will feel you are ignoring them. Even if people are not nodding or smiling, you must connect with them. Also keep in mind that the outgoing, smiling audience members may start to feel self-conscious if they feel you are paying too much attention just to them.
Avoid panning or scanning the audience, which means swiveling your eyes around without making real eye contact. This is obvious to those in the room and does not signal confidence. Also avoid looking up at the ceiling when you are speaking. This is a normal pattern when one is thinking and talking at the same time, but it conveys the impression that you are not certain of what you are saying.
A final eye-contact habit to avoid is looking down too much at your notes. If you are reading from your script the whole time, the audience unconsciously thinks that perhaps you don’t know your subject that well, or that someone else wrote the script you are delivering. Make sure your notes are in very large font and have lots of white space in between. This way when you look down at the page you can find your place immediately.
This simple technique helps you minimize time spent looking down so you can make lots of eye contact as you speak.
Energy
Let’s face it. Most speakers are boring. You don’t have to be perfect to be better than most. One of the best things you can do for an audience is pay attention to the energy you are putting into your delivery. Harness any nervous energy you have and use it to push it outwards and speak passionately about your idea. Emotions are contagious and riveting. If you are excited about your topic, display that excitement and your listeners are more likely to be influenced by your words.
Boosting Your Confidence with Body Language
The latest research shows that practicing open body language is not just good for your audience; it’s good for you too! Apparently you can derive measurable psychological benefits from keeping your arms open and your chest pushed out. Researchers measured subjects standing in so-called “powerful poses” – a Wonder Woman pose with legs apart and hands on hips, and the Victory Pose, with fists thrust up in the air and chin lifted. They found that after only 2 minutes, levels of the stress hormone cortisol had lowered significantly, and levels of testosterone – the hormone that gives you energy and confidence – had risen. These subjects then performed dramatically better in simulated job interviews than those who had no
t stood in the power poses before the interviews.
Similarly, when researchers had their subjects sit in “powerless poses,” making themselves as small as possible on chairs with arms crossed and one hand covering their necks, the opposite happened: testosterone levels plummeted, and cortisol levels shot up. These subjects did the worst in the subsequent job interviews.5 So, by sitting or standing in a protective posture, you are actually making yourself more nervous, instead of being comforted.6
So, before an important talk or meeting, charge yourself by standing in one of the power poses for 2 minutes. Of course, you don’t want to do this where your audience can see you, so find a private place like a nearby washroom where you won’t be observed.
Chapter 5
Enhance Your Voice
The best speakers are those who can be heard and can speak with clarity; that’s obvious. Learning how to do so if you are not naturally gifted is not so obvious. The good news is there are specific techniques you can follow to get the most out of your voice.
Projection
Learning to project your voice is one of the most important things you can do to improve your delivery. Teresa was a radio broadcaster for 17 years, but when she first began working in radio, her voice was very soft and she was not projecting at all. Her voice coach pointed out that when she spoke, in effect, her words were dropping at her feet, or being blown back inside her chest. He told Teresa to visualize her breath actually pushing her words out towards an audience. The bigger the room, the more energy that pushing would require. That one visualization worked. She was able to project her voice clearly in 1 week.
A large part of voice projection is breathing. Learn to take deep breaths into your diaphragm, not shallow breaths into your chest. Your stomach should expand if you are breathing deeply correctly. Most people speak like this: they breathe into their chests, breathe out, and then talk. At that point, there is not enough air to support the voice to the end of a sentence, or for proper projection. Singers and broadcasters learn to use their voices like this: breathe deeply into the diaphragm, then speak (or sing) as you are exhaling – not afterwards. This technique will give you enough air to support your voice without quavering until the end of your sentences.
It’s useful to tape yourself delivering your talk, or even just reading a few paragraphs in the newspaper. We all sound different inside our own heads than we sound to everyone else, and it’s imperative that you listen to yourself as your audience will hear you. When Teresa first heard herself on tape, she realized she did not fully articulate her words. “To” would come out as “tuh,” for instance, and the ends of her sentences often trailed off. Once you know what to change, and practice, it’s amazing how quickly you can improve your vocal patterns. Teresa went on to become a senior broadcaster with fan clubs all over the world.
Pause. Pause. Pause.
Just as important, and much quicker to master, is learning to pause. Listeners need extra silences to absorb what you’ve just said, mentally process the meaning, and then get ready for what you are going to say next. Without those pauses, it’s very difficult to recall content. The best speakers know these pauses are crucial to sounding relaxed and in control. Remember that pauses always sound longer to you than they do to the audience.
Resist using filler words like “Soooo…” “you know,” “basically” and “like…” Eliminate “ums” and “ahs.” These words are verbal clutter that diminish clarity and authority.
We recommend that speakers actually add the word “PAUSE” to their scripts or speaking notes. It’s also why we advise lots of white space in your notes. That white space not only makes it easier to find your place in your script; it also reminds you to pause.
Short Sentences
Speaking in short declarative sentences improves clarity and retention. Listeners must hold in their minds all of the words in a sentence as it is being spoken, and only get the full meaning of a sentence at the end. The more words there are, the less will be recalled.
Modulate and Vary Your Speed and Tone of Voice
The ear craves variety. Speak naturally, as if engaged in an interesting conversation. A dull monotone bores people, while unrelenting intensity can tire an audience very quickly. Emphasize important words; in fact, if you are reading from a script, underline the words to emphasize, to remind you during your delivery. Without emphasis, it’s difficult for an audience to stay connected and interested. If you speak passionately about your topic, that enthusiasm will be reflected in your voice, and your audience will naturally be excited too.
Voice Patterns to Avoid
High-pitched tones. Shrill, high-pitched voices are extremely difficult to listen to for any length of time. Margaret Thatcher famously learned to lower the pitch of her voice, in order to come across with more gravitas. A high pitch can often be lowered just by relaxing your throat muscles and feeling your voice resonate from deeper within your chest. Your diaphragm, not the back of your throat, should be the source of the energy of your voice.7
Voice pitch going up at the end of sentences. Avoid using a rising tone, or uptick, at the ends of your sentences. This turns your statements into tentative questions, and makes you sound less convincing. If every statement sounds like a question? It means you are using your voice the wrong way? Your sentences should end with your pitch going down.
Sounding rushed. If you speak too fast, with few pauses, you will come across as nervous, and eager to finish.
A constant loud voice. Some people think projecting your voice means shouting. A constant stream of high energy and high volume is exhausting to listen to after just a few minutes. Vary your tone and add warmth as well as excitement to your vocal energy.
Mumbling. Enunciate your words clearly. Tape yourself to ensure you are speaking with clarity. Your own ears are not the best judge of this; the audio recorder is a neutral party.
Swallowing the ends of your sentences. Some speakers are quite clear at the beginning of their sentences, but end in softer tones that cannot be heard. Use shorter sentences to make sure your voice is as strong at the end as it is at the beginning.
Handling Nerves
If you tend to get nervous before you speak, it may affect the quality of your voice. Take slow deep breaths before going on; this will slow down your heart rate. Be aware of any tightness in your throat and jaw. Relax these muscles. It helps to smile broadly for a few minutes before you go on; this will release endorphins and serotonin to your brain. If you have time, practice delivering your speech by over-enunciating the words. This will loosen up your jaw and mouth. Drink something warm, such as herbal tea, instead of cold water. Warm liquids will relax your vocal cords and give your voice more resonance. Do not drink coffee or highly caffeinated beverages; they will dehydrate your mouth.
Chapter 6
Choosing Powerful Words
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
– George Orwell, Politics and the English Language
As we have stressed earlier, communication is about impact, not about output. Yet most speakers we encounter seem to think communication is all about what they say, rather than what the audience will remember. It’s as if they think, “I have written my presentation, I will deliver the speech, I have given my interview, and my communication job is now done.”
No one will remember every word you say. You have to think about these questions: What will they remember? What will you say that will motivate them to act, or to think differently? Are you choosing the right words? Are you delivering them in the best way to make an impact, and influence others? Language is such a powerful tool, and yet most of us don’t pay enough attention to strategically choosing the right words for the impact we want to make. Let’s look first at language that can immediately detract from the perception of you as an authority
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Language Patterns to Avoid
Self-diminishing qualifiers
Many people are conditioned to prefacing their remarks with statements that weaken what they are going to say next. They do this out of some desire not to seem too assertive with their opinions. But the effect often backfires and makes it easy to discount the value of their words. At worst, it signals to the audience that this person is not worth listening to, so they tune out. For example:
I am not an expert on this, but… Our clients often feel compelled to start this way – even if sometimes they are the expert. They feel extreme discomfort eliminating what they see as an important qualifier the audience needs to hear. The issue with these qualifiers is that speakers think the qualifiers attach to the information. However, listeners attach the qualifiers to you. What your audience actually hears subliminally is “I’m not really an expert on anything, but anyway, here’s what I think on this subject I know very little about…”
In contexts in which you believe you truly need to explain the limits of your expertise, there are ways to qualify your remarks without eroding credibility. Instead of saying, “Now, I’m not an expert on social issues, and haven’t read deeply on the social pressures this country is facing…but it seems to me…” you can say, “While my expertise is on macroeconomic issues, I can tell you this about what I see are the societal forces affecting economic performance…” Pointing out where your expertise does lie is better than saying you’re not an expert.
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