Need Help Giving a Speech?
Toastmasters to the rescue! Perhaps you are asked to give a toast, speak at a memorial service or make a sales pitch to a potential client or corporate board. Speeches like these are important to your life and career, and you must perform them well. Toastmasters International has spent the last 80 years helping people with their public speaking needs, and we can help you too!
This site offers practical tips to guide you through almost any event involving an audience, including business presentations and various special occasions. In addition, you’ll find advice on managing your stage fright and finding speech topics. When you’re ready for more, visit a Toastmasters meeting. Meanwhile, read more for urgent, on-the-spot help:
10 Tips For Successful Public Speaking
Feeling some nervousness before giving a speech is natural and healthy. It shows you care about doing well. But, too much nervousness can be detrimental. Here’s how you can control your nervousness and make effective, memorable presentations:
- Know the room. Be familiar with the place in which you will speak. Arrive early, walk around the speaking area and practice using the microphone and any visual aids.
- Know the audience. Greet some of the audience as they arrive. It’s easier to speak to a group of friends than to a group of strangers.
- Know your material. If you’re not familiar with your material or are uncomfortable with it, your nervousness will increase. Practice your speech and revise it if necessary.
- Relax. Ease tension by doing exercises.
- Visualize yourself giving your speech. Imagine yourself speaking, your voice loud, clear, and assured. When you visualize yourself as successful, you will be successful.
- Realize that people want you to succeed. Audiences want you to be interesting, stimulating, informative, and entertaining. They don’t want you to fail.
- Don’t apologize. If you mention your nervousness or apologize for any problems you think you have with your speech, you may be calling the audience’s attention to something they hadn’t noticed. Keep silent.
- Concentrate on the message — not the medium. Focus your attention away from your own anxieties, and outwardly toward your message and your audience. Your nervousness will dissipate.
- Turn nervousness into positive energy. Harness your nervous energy and transform it into vitality and enthusiasm.
- Gain experience. Experience builds confidence, which is the key to effective speaking. A Toastmasters club can provide the experience you need.
Introducing a speaker
Based on the Better Speakers Series by Toastmasters International An Introduction:
- Makes a transition
- Sets the tone
- Gives authority
- A two-way effort
Always include:
- Speaker’s name
- Topic
- Title
- Assignment
- Objectives
- Delivery Time
Thou shalt not:
- Upstage the speaker
- Reveal the contents of the speech
- Surprise the speaker
- Praise the speaker’s skills (you can build the speaker up higher then they can live up to)
- Use clichés
- Save the speaker’s name for last