What makes a good speaker great?

Pub­lic speak­ing com­mon­ly comes top of the list in sur­veys of people’s fears. In fact, accept­ed wis­dom says that a huge 75 per cent of indi­vid­u­als feel anx­ious to a greater or less­er extent when faced with pre­sent­ing to an audi­ence.

Peo­ple want to feel speak­ers know what you’re talk­ing about, but ‘per­son­al­i­ty’ is the secret ingre­di­ent

But exact­ly what is it that makes a good or bad speak­er and what key qual­i­ties, char­ac­ter­is­tics and skills are required to wow lis­ten­ers?

Is “personality” the secret to a great speaker?

In the view of Bradley Maule-ffinch, port­fo­lio direc­tor for Europe, the Mid­dle East and Africa at event organ­is­er Ima­go Tech­me­dia, it comes down to con­tent and style, both of which are equal­ly impor­tant.

“Peo­ple want to feel speak­ers know what you’re talk­ing about, but ‘per­son­al­i­ty’ is the secret ingre­di­ent,” he explains. “If you can’t make the ses­sion engag­ing, you can have the best con­tent in the world, but you’ll be in trou­ble.”

It also helps if pre­sen­ters are famous in their field, while being con­tro­ver­sial and even some­what opin­ion­at­ed often adds a bit of spice too. More inex­pe­ri­enced speak­ers in the form of young social media influ­encers or entre­pre­neurs are also an increas­ing draw but can be com­ple­ment­ed by vet­er­an sub­ject-mat­ter experts to ensure the pro­gramme is a bal­anced one.

As to what hav­ing ‘per­son­al­i­ty’ actu­al­ly means, Mr Maule-ffinch describes it as “being able to bring your knowl­edge to life in some way”. This is impor­tant because “the abil­i­ty to relate to peo­ple at a human lev­el is cru­cial”, he believes.

Jay Sur­ti, a busi­ness pre­sen­ta­tion coach and author of Ulti­mate Pre­sen­ta­tions, agrees. “You can be the biggest expert in the world in your sub­ject, but if you don’t think about how to put your con­tent across in a way the audi­ence can process, it under­mines your cred­i­bil­i­ty,” she says. “So it’s about being nat­ur­al and con­nect­ing with peo­ple by being your­self.”

What not to do when public speaking

Major no-nos include nev­er look­ing up from your com­put­er screen, read­ing from a slide deck, giv­ing mean­der­ing speech­es that over­run, and doing any­thing that dis­tracts the audi­ence from the mes­sage being dis­cussed, such as ges­tic­u­lat­ing or mov­ing around the stage too much.

More­over, while props can be use­ful, it is cru­cial that they have a clear func­tion and enhance an individual’s pre­sen­ta­tion rather than detract from it. For instance, slides should not be cov­ered in wordy bul­let points that peo­ple will inevitably read rather than focus on what is being said. Instead they should include visu­al images and no more than three words to help illus­trate an argu­ment.

Paul Rus­sell, man­ag­ing direc­tor at soft skills train­ing provider Lux­u­ry Acad­e­my, explains: “It’s about the mes­sage and peo­ple con­nect­ing with the mes­sage, and every­thing else, includ­ing body lan­guage and visu­al aids, should enhance that mes­sage. The aim is to bring the audi­ence along with you on the ride, and to do that involves show­ing you are con­fi­dent in both your­self and your sub­ject – and that you don’t take your­self too seri­ous­ly.”

As a result, he rec­om­mends that pre­sen­ters start with an anec­dote based on self-dep­re­cat­ing humour – rather than a gag, which may prove unwit­ting­ly offen­sive to dif­fer­ent demo­graph­ic groups. Ask­ing the audi­ence ques­tions in a mini-quiz or tak­ing a straw poll of opin­ions relat­ed to the top­ic in hand can also be use­ful tricks to grab people’s atten­tion and engage them quick­ly.

How can speakers beat the nerves?

As for con­trol­ling the inevitable nerves, it is worth bear­ing in mind that obsess­ing about it only makes things worse and a speaker’s anx­i­ety is always more notice­able to them­selves than oth­ers.

Ms Sutri advis­es: “Nerves are just an adren­a­lin rush result­ing from your fight or flight mech­a­nism, so focus on feel­ing con­fi­dent rather than scared as your brain will go where you tell it to and your body will fol­low. Remem­ber to breathe and adopt a con­fi­dent body pos­ture and you’ll start to feel more con­fi­dent – and the more you do it, the more it’ll hap­pen.”

In fact, rehears­ing as much as pos­si­ble to iron out both con­tent and style issues is a must – even for con­fi­dent speak­ers – and event organ­is­ers’ speak­er rela­tions teams have a use­ful role to play here.

“It’s impor­tant to treat speak­ers like skit­tish race­hors­es, which means ensur­ing they feel well pre­pared, con­fi­dent, com­fort­able and ready to go,” explains Mr Maule-ffinch.

But as well as more for­mal run-throughs, Mr Rus­sell also rec­om­mends that pre­sen­ters prac­tise their speech repeat­ed­ly in front of patient friends as doing so means con­stant­ly hav­ing to find new ways of say­ing the same thing so that they remain engaged.

Preparation, planning and practice are crucial

Anoth­er tip is to keep every­thing as sim­ple as pos­si­ble, which includes avoid­ing big words and com­plex sen­tences, in order to make con­tent “relat­able and under­stand­able”.

“The very best speak­ers look as if they’re doing it ad lib while stand­ing hav­ing a chat, but that lev­el of effort­less­ness takes days of prac­tice in front of the mir­ror,” Mr Rus­sell says.

Put anoth­er way, prepa­ra­tion and plan­ning are key to suc­cess. In a con­tent sense, before doing any­thing else, it is imper­a­tive that speak­ers come up with an engag­ing title and sum­ma­ry for their pre­sen­ta­tion as it is these com­mon­ly over­looked ele­ments that act as ini­tial bait for the audi­ence. Event organ­is­ers’ speak­er rela­tions teams can pro­vide invalu­able sup­port here.

It’s about the mes­sage and peo­ple con­nect­ing with the mes­sage, and every­thing else, includ­ing body lan­guage and visu­al aids, should enhance that mes­sage

But they also have a use­ful role to play in help­ing pre­sen­ters under­stand their audi­ence, and what is like­ly to inter­est and, even more impor­tant­ly, con­sti­tute ‘val­ue’ to it in pre­sen­ta­tion terms.

Accord­ing to Ms Sutri, the best place to start when prepar­ing a speech is at the end, per­haps with a call to action or advice point, and to “reverse-engi­neer it from there”. She also advis­es against includ­ing too much con­tent as most lis­ten­ers can absorb on aver­age up to three core mes­sages. This means pri­ori­tis­ing and struc­tur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion around these points, which should be illus­trat­ed with sto­ries and case stud­ies.

But it is also vital that speech­es do not end up being “too reg­i­ment­ed”, warns Chelsea Cox, founder of events organ­is­er, Well Defined. As a result, she advis­es: “Fig­ure out what top­ic is like­ly to have the biggest impact, work out a frame­work for your talk, and plan for flow. Cre­ate a start and an end, but ensure there’s space for flex­i­bil­i­ty in between, so you can change tack if the engage­ment isn’t there.”

Experience and support can help a good speaker become great

In oth­er words, prepar­ing for worst-case sce­nar­ios, which includes tim­ing errors and mal­func­tion­ing tech­nol­o­gy, is imper­a­tive.

But Ms Cox also notes that over time, most speak­ers “evolve through expe­ri­ence, and so it’s impor­tant to cre­ate a com­mu­ni­ty to sup­port that growth”.

To this end, she arranges a din­ner every quar­ter to pro­vide her speak­ers with a forum to dis­cuss trend­ing top­ics and build rela­tion­ships both with her­self and peers. Ms Cox also reg­u­lar­ly attends net­work­ing events, such as launch­es and book sign­ings, to both show sup­port and spot poten­tial new tal­ent.

“Peo­ple feel more sup­port­ed if they have a say and feel involved in help­ing to put a con­tent plan togeth­er or sug­gest an idea for a pan­el they’d like to host,” she says. “There needs to be con­stant engage­ment and if you keep peo­ple close, it all makes for bet­ter events – for every­one.”