Last weekend was quite busy for me, as I joined the 2-day long training for speakers-wannabes 😉
The first day was oriented on delivering knowledge about various areas of giving an exceptional speech, and the second was meant to use what we’ve just learned in practice – and speak!
Both days were invaluable for me, however, the first one is far more worth sharing with people who didn’t join, so let me focus on this one today.
Vocal pedagogy
The first half of training was concentrated on vocal pedagogy. Monika has shown us what exercises we can do to make our voice more audible. What has surprised me, it was tightly coupled with the way that we stand – not only the way how we modulate our voice/larynx. I learned that there is the cycle of cause and effect how our voice is generated. It starts in your mind, in your head. How your head works, is how your body looks like, how you stand and react to stress. The position you stand determines how you breathe – which is the fuel to your voice. So the cycle once again is:
Mind -> Body -> Breath -> Voice
Presentation technics
The second half of training was delivered by Rafał and it was more focused on the technicalities from the presentational perspective. Three things that weren’t obvious to me and I think are worth sharing are:
Share the “big idea“. You’re on the stage now. You came here for some reason. What do you want to share? Have you experienced/learned/discovered something that may change you/the way you work or the way you think? Show your perspective, explain why people who listen to you should actually care about it, and why it concerns them.
Demonstrate Call to action. It is very important to leave your listeners with something that can make their lives easier, better, more valuable or so. The worst thing for you as a speaker is having your audience asking themselves after the speech a question: “What in the world it was for?”, “What was the purpose”, “What can I do with that”?
Give them a solution they may apply to their way of working/living/sleeping – whatever you talk about. Deliver value.
Don’t use ‘thank you‘ slide at the end. You will probably remember to say thank you at the end. And you probably have more valuable content to show on the last slide which statistically is being displayed for the biggest amount of time. It is there during the Q&A session and maybe even during the time when the next speaker is preparing to his turn.
Use this opportunity!
You have your big idea to share! You have your call to action, haven’t you! You have your website address, shop to engage to or anything that your listeners should know, to do what they need to do after that presentation. Show it there, on the last slide, to kindly indoctrinate the thought you’re sharing!
You’ve got a powerful tool, utilize it!
Acknowledgements
This two paragraphs I shared with you now are only the minor part what I learned during the weekend. These two days were really productive in terms of learning how to speak, how to approach the audience, how to use our best instrument – the voice and how to organize the presentation story.
For this, I would like to say big thanks to organizer – Maciej Aniserowicz, and our two great teachers: Monika and Rafał who did a great job to kick off our speaker’s adventure 🙂
Many thanks also to each one of participants – it was great to meet you all.
I’m really grateful for this event.
Thanks!
