PUBLIC SPEAKING: Confident Delivery Skills

1. Welcome & Course Overview: Hello there, and welcome. I'd like to tell you about my public speaking course on delivery skills. This course is all about helping you stand up and speak. So you look and sound more confident in the moment, the courses for anybody from a beginner to intermediate level. If you have any kind of message coming up that you would like to share, this course will help you be at your best. We will work on improving your delivery style, eye contact and facial expressions. I'll show you what to do with your hands and how to gesture. Will take a look at how to stand and move with a purpose, and I'll show you how to eliminate those filler words like, um and, uh so you sound much more confident with your voice. The course includes 12 content videos, and we'll take you about 45 minutes. If you went all the way through. There's an optional action step that you can take at the end of each video. Or you could just watch all the way through and pick and choose what you want to work on the most. In terms of my background, I am a college professor in communication, and I have been speaking and consulting for over 15 years. I also have a successful YouTube channel and other online courses. I think you'll find the tips in this course are extremely actionable and practical and will help make a difference in your speaking right away. So if this course sounds like a good fit for you, I encourage you to jump into the first lesson. That explains what delivery skills are and how to set some goals and how to get the most out of this course, So I hope to see you in the next lesson. 2. "Delivery" and How to Get the Most out of the Course: The word delivery refers to how you come across in the moment while you're presenting. If someone looks nervous, fidgety or insecure, that's part of their delivery and contrasts. If you come across is confident and composed and convincing, that's usually because of the way you are delivering your message. And so the next several videos we're going to look at, how you can work on your eye. Contact your volume, your gestures and so forth to come across like that nice professional presenter that you want to be a couple of recommendations before you move forward. I would like you as a homework assignment to identify the top two or three issues that you would like to work on the most. So look at the list of topics that we're going to cover and figure out which ones you need the most work on, and that way you'll see dramatic improvement right away. You can't really fix 10 things at first. You have to work on just one or two or three things at a time. And keep in mind that any time you working on one issue but say you're working on eye contact for a while, your other skills will seem to diminish temporarily, and that's totally normal and natural. When all your focuses on one thing and you're trying to improve it, the others you forget about. But in time and with repetition, the's skills will all start to become strong. And so keep that in mind. And as you move forward, the more repetitions you get in, the more confident and composed in convincing all of your delivery skills will become so your homework assignment again. Identify the top two or three things and don't worry about the others for now. See you in the next video. 3. A Conversational Delivery Style: hello and welcome in this video, we're going to talk about the style that you used to present its called a delivery style. And there are a few options here, and the one that I'm going to advocate is called an extemporaneous style of delivery, which means really just a conversational style of delivery where you speak from very limited notes, you're prepared. But in the moment you only have a bare bone structure of notes and that you're engaging in a structured conversation with your listeners that comes across as authentic. It shows your personality and you have a high level of comfort, and that's why I want to push you in this direction. Now. There are a couple of other ways you could do this, and I've seen many speakers try and some succeed, but most don't when they try to memorize everything, word for word. So we're not talking about memorizing everything. Word for memorizing means that you have extensive notes and you read over it so many times when you're practicing that you have it burned into your brain and, you know, you see people lose their plays or someone has a question and they can't really pause the answer because they don't know how the other style is related. And that's where you read. Or it's called manuscript delivery style, where you read all of your extensive notes. Word for word. You've probably seen people do this where it's almost like they're reading a paper in front of everybody and they're looking down at their notes almost the whole time. They might try to look up, but again it comes across as very robotic, very wooden. Now they might say everything just right, but they're sacrificing that connection and that engagement. And if you ask yourself, Do I really want to see a speaker in a totally memorized presentation? Word for word? So I want to see them read their paper. Audiences don't like this. They like to have a connection and a conversation with this speaker. So that's what we're going to shoot for. So this is really a mindset video where I want you to think in terms of how can I create ah feeling where I'm having a one on one conversation with each person instead of talking to an entire group? How can I maximize my comfort level with the material so I've internalized it and I really know it. And part of that, by the way, is preparing great speaking, notes, speaking notes that push you in that direction. And we're going to break down how to do your speaking notes in the next video here we're just talking about mindset and that this conversational style allows you to adapt, and it feels a little bit more spontaneous and more authentic in the moment. And I've seen speakers move away from this manuscript style where everything's written out to these limited notes and speaking conversationally, and it's totally transformed the way they come across when they're presenting. And it's gotta be. The number one tip for how to present more effectively is you have to break away from his extensive notes into more limited notes. So you're practical action Step. Your homework for this video is very simple. I want you to imagine that you're sitting across a small table at a cafe or having a cup of tea or a cup of coffee with a friend and your friends, sense says to you, Could you tell me about one of your favorite childhood memories and I want you to think of one of your favorite childhood memories. It could be anything. It doesn't have to be an amazing, great story. But in about 30 to 60 seconds, I want you to talk in a conversational way to your friend about this favorite childhood memory. And as you do this, you might do it 2 to 3 times. And then on that third time or so, that's probably the kind of conversational tone that you want to shoot for. It shouldn't sound overly polished and memorized. But of course you know what you're going to say. There's some coherence in some continuity to this story, so that's your practical action. Step in the just the big take away from this is you want to shoot for a conversational approach, where you maximize your personality, your authenticity and your comfort level with the material. So go ahead and work on that 30 to 60 seconds. Story about a favorite childhood memory now, and I will see you in the next video 4. Preparing Your Speaking Notes: Welcome back in this video, we're going to talk about how you can prepare and use your speaking notes to maximize that conversational approach we talked about in the last video. So the basic point I want to make here is that you are going to prepare limited speaking notes, bare bones talking points that are on a limited set of notes in front of you that you can use so that you just bounced down to see what you were going to talk about next. And then you immediately get your eyes back up and you connect with your listeners. So the first thing I want to point out here, though, is I'm not talking about your power points. I'm not talking about whatever slides and other visual aid you're using. There's a separation we have to make in our minds that will free us unbelievably, to do a good job as presenters. And you have to separate this idea that your visual aid are is what you're going to look at when you're presenting. Your visual aid is for your listeners. You're speaking. Notes are for you, and you're gonna make much better visual aids that express your message visually, if you break off from that and you're going to be a much better presenter if you just speak from notes. And in fact, in many cases you can't even rely on the technology to work. I've seen a lot of speakers for some reason, and the power points not working, and then they don't know what to do because they were just gonna look back and read that the whole time. First of all, no one wants to see you looking back and reading your slides the whole time. And also you shouldn't rely on technology. So you're going to prepare a separate set of speaking notes that you're going to speak from . In the moment. They might be no cards. They might be on a note pad. It might be a tablet of some store, and those were going to be your speaking does. So, having said that, here's what you want to do. You want to start when you're practicing with lots of notes. That's totally fine. Everything that you want to say. You're crafting your presentation overall and you've created a set of speaking notes. It's probably pretty detailed and likely multiple pages and then you want to practice. Your presentation about 2 to 3 times is behind the scenes. Start a couple days before practice the presentation 2 to 3 times and then you sleep on it . Wake up the next day and you cut your notes in half. So if you had a page now it's down to 1/2 a page, and then you practice another 2 to 3 times, and every time you practice, you try to keep your eyes up a little bit more so you're not looking down the whole time, but you're glancing and you're bouncing up, and then you sleep on it and you wake up the next morning and your cut your notes in half again. And so now you end up with just about 1/4 of a page instead of a full page that you started with you for about 1/4 of page, and you practice another two or three times, and the goal is to cut your notes in half. Three times you want to practice about 10 times and then cut your notes and have three times throughout that practice and you spread it out over a few days and By the 10th time, your notes should be just a fraction of what they were. So he started with a whole page and really, what you end up with for the whole page of content that you're gonna talk about, you end up with just a couple of bullet points, a couple of little lines in your notes, and that's the goal. And once you're there, all you need to do is glance at whatever is there, and then you bounce right back up, glance and bounce right back up so that you're connecting with everybody. You're looking them in the eyes, you're engaging them and that nice, comfortable conversation that we talked about. This is where your personality comes out because you are freed from having a huge, detailed manuscript. You can take your time connecting and presenting and expressing yourself in an authentic way. Really, that's the whole secret. So a couple of tips, though, went on practicing. I don't really try to memorize much at all, but if they were about five sentences or so that I would really have down pat, I would want to know exactly what comes out of my mouth first and last that first sentence in last sentence. I want to have it down Pat. I also want to be really sure about my feces statement. That bottom line in the introduction, I want to say that nice and concisely. And then I usually have a pretty good sense of what I'm gonna say for my 1st 2nd and third point those topic sentences for each of those points, if there were any five or six sentences or so that I was gonna have memorized, those would be the ones and I wouldn't get hung up on it. But that's where I would put a lot of that energy, and then the rest of it. I say it differently each time. So here's another tip. Say it differently each time you present. If I'm practicing 10 times and I have a story that I'm telling someone that president, I'll tell that story in 10 slightly different ways. I don't try to say it exactly the same way. When people try to say everything when they're practicing exactly the same way, you're moving toward memorization and you don't want to go in that direction. So I even very how I say things on purpose when I'm practicing, because that will train me to adapt for any situation that comes up. I'm training my brain to follow multiple pathways to express the message that I want to express. If I only learnt it one way and try to memorize it on Lee one way, then something might come up and I can't adapt to it. And it will end up sounding both stiff and and mechanical. But it'll also it'll also throw me off. It will be hard to get back on track. The other thing you don't want to do another tip is to Don't start over if you make a little mistake in your practice sessions. So I practice all the way through. And even if I make a mistake, I keep pushing forward because it's training me for recovery. You know, I'm training if I fall down, it helps me get back up. I've seen people practice this way and we'll watch them present this way. They make a mistake and they just stop and they don't know how to recover. And then sometimes they even do like something really unprofessional. They say You know what? I'm just going to start over, and it's very difficult moment there. If you're starting over and stopping, it doesn't look like your You know what you're talking about and so practice, and it's okay to make mistakes. Just push through it. And so you learn how to recover your training yourself, how to recover. The other thing already mentioned. You want to break up your practice. Don't do it all in two hours, right before a presentation. You want to break up and do it Over a few days, I practice to three times and I sleep on it. Reduce my notes, practice two or three times, sleep on it, and then I am ready by the time I'm going to present as long as I practice starting a few days out. And by the way, if this sounds intimidating, practicing 10 times, let's say you're doing a present. I want to assure you it's It's a little bit of work, but it's the payoff is huge, so I break it up over a few days and it really doesn't feel that hard. And if I have a 10 minute presentation and I practice it 10 times, that's hour and 1/2 2 hours worth of practicing. That's an incredible investment and how I come across in the moment and how I'm connecting with people. The other thing I want to recommend is that when you are practicing, you hold your notes. In other words, you have them in your hand and your practicing like this. So you practice that glancing down and bouncing back up glance and bounce. And if you hold your notes, you know you'll have a level of comfort switching pages. You'll feel organized and comfortable now. You might end up with a podium or a table that you can just put your notes on, and that's fine. But at least you've practiced handling your notes. So you're familiar. I've seen people lose place, lose no cards, and you can tell they really haven't worked with their notes very much when they're presenting. So you want to make sure you practice that way. Okay, in terms of your practical action, step your homework assignment, if you will. What I want you to do is revisit the story about a favorite childhood memory that we talked about in the last video, and I want you to take whatever notes you had and I wanted you to cut those in half. So let's say 1/2 a page worth of notes. I want you cut it down to about 1/4 page worth of notes or just a few lines, so that if the story is 30 to 60 seconds, you only have to look down once or twice to remind yourself of what you're going to say next. And then look up. And this will train you that you don't need a lot of notes to speak for 30 to 60 seconds. You just need a bullet point or two. So reduce those notes by half whatever you started off with, and then practice that story a few more times again, glance and bounce and practice that conversational style of delivery. I'll see you in the next video. 5. Confident Eye Contact: Hello there. And welcome back in this video, we're going to talk about how you can make direct eye contact with your listeners. I contact is one of the best ways to establish a connection with your listeners and to make them feel like you're talking directly to them. One on one. People love it now, in this day and age, we don't live in an era where people make a lot of eye contact day to day, and I realized that this is a barrier for some people. But if you can get good eye contact, you will instantly separate yourself from most of the presenters around you. So we're going to talk about some do's and some don't of making eye contact is some bad advice out there. We're going to start with the Don't and let's see if you see yourself in any of the items on this list. First of all, you don't want to look back at your power point. Oh my goodness, if you have too many notes in your PowerPoint, then you're going to be tempted to turn around and look and read. A lot of times you don't even need to do this. But out of nerves, people will turn their back practically on their listeners. And they look back at their power points the whole time. And you don't want to do this. It looks really bad. You should never just turn your back on your audience. It breaks so much connection out in a different video. We talked about how you're speaking. Notes should be different than your power points. And make sure you remember that tip. The other thing you don't want to do is just stare off into nothing. You see, a lot of times people have that stunned look on their face like they're a deer caught in the headlights of a car, and they just sort of stare off into nothing. You don't want to do that. You have to look directly at people. Another thing that people do is they look up either directly up with their head or their eyes. They kind of look up above to the ceiling, or they might get nervous and looked down toward their feet the entire time. Sometimes people turn half sideways and look at the wall on the side. One of the worst pieces of advice, though I have heard from people. Even sometimes people teaching public speaking is, Oh, don't if you're nervous, don't look directly at people Look over their heads because then you won't be as nervous. Well, okay, maybe you won't be is nervous because it's hard to make eye contact, but it's not going toe. Look to anybody like you're looking directly at them. If I'm looking over your head, you're going to be able to tell that you want to look directly at people. So those are some of the don't. Let's unpack some of the Duce. Here's what you should do to make direct eye contact. You should look directly into people's eyes. That's the goal. It's hard and it takes practice. But you should have that as a goal. Yes, I want to look directly into people's eyes, not over their heads, not wherever else. I tend to look directly into people's eyes, and here's another tip. You want to look about as long as it takes to finish a thought. A friend of mine, a friend of her friend, actually said, like this one thought one look, that means you look directly at a person for about 3 to 5 seconds and then finish a thought and then you move on to the next person for about 35 seconds. Finish a thought and then you move on to another person for about 3 to 5 seconds. Finish a thought, and this is essentially the pattern that you used throughout your entire presentation. You're connecting with each individual person that's listening to you long enough to finish a thought and you're moving on. So at the end of the presentation, everybody feels like, Wow, he was looking directly at me or while she was really connecting with people. And that's the goal. And by the way, one of the reasons why we talked in another video about reducing your notes down to just some basic talking points is so that it frees you to connect with people. And I contact is one of the best ways to connect. So those are the basic tips, one thought one look. Keep your eyes locked in and try to look at every single person. Now, if this sounds hard, think about it this way. If there are 10 people in the room and you're only looking at each person for 3 to 5 seconds. You're going to look at every single person just in your introduction of your presentation . If there are 30 people in the room, if you look at the mall for about five seconds, then within the first couple of minutes you have will have looked at every single person. And so, in a 10 minute presentation, you are going to look at every person in room numerous times. So by the end of this, that really going to feel quite a bit of a connection with you now in terms of your homework. First of all, you have to identify Oh my one of those people that just stares off into nothing. Or what do your bad habits like? If you look over their heads, you look at the ceiling, do you look down, identify your bed habits. And the next thing I want you to do is take that story that we talked about that 62nd story about a favorite childhood memory, and I want you to actually draw on a couple of pieces of paper. Ah, little face. Now, I'm not sure if you can see this quite right in the camera. A little face of a person and tape three or four these onto the wall and then practice looking directly into these drawn eyes of your drawings for a thought and then move on. Finish a thought and then move on. Finish a thought. Put three or four up on your wall and then look at them while you're doing the presentation . Now, let me tell you, if you can do this. If you can scare at a goofy looking, hand drawn face while you're practicing your presentation in this case, your homework is just a practice through this 62nd story. It will be much easier for you in the moment to connect by making eye contact with your listeners in the room, because staring at a blank faces hard. But staring at people in the room is a little bit easier. Trust me on this. I've seen many people who try this, And by the way, if you're getting a little tired of that story about a favorite childhood memory, then put in a different story. The content is really not what we're working on here. What we're working on is just anything that gets you talking for about a minute where you can practice your high contact. So that's your assignment. Go to it and I will see you in the next video. 6. Good Facial Expressions: hello again in this video, we're going to talk about facial expressions now. This facial expression video goes hand in hand with eye contact if you think about. In other words, if you're making eye contact with someone but you look like you have that super serious game face on, it's not really going to establish the kind of connection that you're hoping for. So the idea here is that you want your facial expression to match the emotion off your message. Ah, lot of time speakers will get nervous and they get overly serious when they're nervous. So sometimes you see this like they're sharing what could be a normal emotional message. But they have, like a stone face on, and they lose all their personality. But what you want to do is have your facial expression match your message, and a lot of times the message could be lighthearted. Could be good news could be encouraging. And you want to make sure that you show that in your face and don't give into nervousness. Now there are a couple of ways to go here, right? So let's say you have some good news, then you want to make sure that you show that with a good news expression. And if you have something serious, then of course you want to have more serious look on your face. So I know some people. For example, when they get nervous, they actually smile, like all the time or the even laugh. And if you're giving ah, bad news message or some something serious, you don't want to do that. So the idea here is that you have to match your facial expression to your message and with your eye contact so that you're connecting with people. I have found, overall, that people look much too serious when they're delivering a normal message. They have, like this weird look on their face, like there tough guy, or that they're at what they're saying is absolutely epic and a lot of things. It's just not the case. There are ways that you can connect with your audience beyond that super serious look. Now, there may be a time in a place where you have to look serious and that I get that That's totally okay. But there's much more room to connect with a warm, engaging facial expression than most people realize it helps you come across its likable and helps you connect with your listeners. So your homework is simple. I want you to think of some good news, some bad news and some in between news that you might share. Let's pretend for this scenario that you are a supervisor and you're talking to a team of about 10 people in your professional setting. Think of whatever good news, bad news and in between news item that you could share like one or two sentences each and then share that with a facial expression that matches it. And the goal here is not to worry about the content. The goal here is to see if you can naturally get to the place where your facial expression is matching your message. So go ahead and work on that now, and I will see you in the next video. 7. What To Do with Your Hands: Miss video, we're going to talk about what you can do with your hands while you're presenting and the next video. We're talking specifically about how to gesture with your hands during a presentation, But here, we're gonna talk about some of the distracting mannerisms that people do with their hands when they get nervous. And it's really going to distract your audience a little bit if you do these. So that's the first thing to realize yes, when you get nervous, you were going to start to notice your hands as like a foreign object in the situation. Like all of a sudden, you're like, What do I do with my hands? I never thought about that, but now that I'm standing in front of people, what do I do with these things? So here, a couple of things that I don't think you should do and see if you can identify any of these distracting mannerisms in your own speaking habits. The first thing you're doing is if you're using a podium, you don't want to clutch onto the podium for dear life like you're going to crash and you're holding onto this thing up to the last second. It doesn't put you in a great body posture, and it's also a very difficult position to break out of. If you happen to be using a podium, you want to just rest your hands loosely on the front edge, the edge closest to you, and that's a good place to be. But again, you don't want to hold on to that at any point. Now. If you're not using a podium than that, won't matter. But here's some other things you shouldn't do. Let's say you're not using a podium. You should not hold onto weird parts of your body. And you see people like holding onto one of their arms like this, and they're and they're just sort of clutching onto it out of nerves. They might hold on to their wrist. I've seen a lot of people do that. They might actually fold both of their arms, which can look a little weird and defensive. You don't want to stay in that posture for very long. They might also even put their hands in their pockets, and sometimes people do this deliberately because they think, Oh, I just want to look informal on and I get that, but it's not going toe. Look how you think it's gonna look. It's going to look like you're hiding something or something weird is going on. And the other thing that will happen is Ah, lot of times if people are nervous and they're putting their hands in their pocket, they'll start moving their hands around in their pocket. Maybe there's some keys that might make some noise or some pocket change that makes a noise Or they might just start moving in here is like gesturing nervously and believe me, this is not the kind of attention that you want to draw in a presentation. It looks a little bit weird. Another thing that people will do is they sometimes have a pen, and I've seen very skilled presenters whole dependent. It could look very polished professional, But most of the time when people have a pen, they'll start doing like this. By the start of nervousness, they start clicking the thing, and then that becomes an incredible distraction. Maybe you're getting bothered by it right now. You don't want to hold on to a pet. Yes, it can feel good to hold on to something, and we'll talk about that in a second, but you don't want to hold onto the wrong objects because it could be an incredible distraction here. A couple of other things I don't think you should hold on to. I personally think a phone looks a bit young and informal, and I know a lot of people say, Oh, but I have my notes on my phone. I don't think you should put your notes on your phone. It's probably not gonna be a useful as you think. It's gonna be hard to see because it's relatively small compared to paper notes or even know cards. And it also gets distracting, so you might have to scroll through a lot and play with your phone. And it doesn't look polishing professional experience. Professional presenters don't generally speak with their phones in her head. The other thing you don't want to do in general is use a laser pointer. Now some people are crazy about the laser pointer. They absolutely love this thing, and there might be a reason for you to use it. If you're a surgeon, right and you're teaching a group of surgeons how to operate in a very specific part of the anatomy, and you want to make sure they don't cut in the wrong place. You have your laser pointer or some detailed schematic, then you might use it. But only in rare circumstances. Have I seen that a laser pointers actually necessary? In most cases, people just want to have a laser pointer because they think it looks cool. But in fact, I think it looks the opposite. Any time I see a laser points or using a presenter using one, I start to think, Oh, my gosh, Give me a break. Who they think they are. And I look around and people sort of roll their eyes when they see the laser pointer come out, and it's almost always completely unnecessary. So this is something you don't want to holding it. So what could you holding it? Well, first of all, you should hold your notes. I always recommend practicing when you're practicing at home practice holding your notes so that when you actually stand up to present, you have ah lot of comfort holding your notes. The other thing that sometimes people will hold is the quicker the power point advancer. So when they want to advance to the next slide, especially if they have a lot of slides. They can just click, and as long as you don't play with that like it's the pen and start clicking on and doing weird things, that's fine. I personally prefer to advance the slide and then put the clicker down so it's not in my hand the entire time, but you can hold it. That's an appropriate, acceptable object toe hold in your hand. And then, of course, if you don't want to hold your notes, you can put them on the podium. Then that's fine, too. So homework assignment for this video, the first thing I want you to do is identify any bad habits that you have when it comes to weird, distracting things that you do with your hands. Do you put them in your pockets? Do you tend to use the pen and click it a lot? What's your bad habit or two that you do with your hands? First, identify that and think of a way to avoid that, so it could be quite simple. You could just put the pen down. You could put the laser pointer down, etcetera and the next, you're gonna work on gestures specifically, so I'll show you what you can do. And right now, I wanna I admit that I have a bad habit. I'll just tell you what mine is. I tend to put my hands down in front of me like, um, adamant eu for a soccer player who is defending himself against a penalty kick. Like, I don't know, some protective defense mechanism that doesn't tend to look too good, but I have broken that habit, and I don't do that anymore. I did that years ago when I first started presenting. So what's your bad habit? I want you to identify that and really know what it is. So then the next video, we're gonna work on gestures and what you can do to emphasize your message. So see you in the next video 8. Using Confident Gestures: this video, we're going to talk about how to gesture with your hands during a presentation. Gesturing is one of the best ways that you can add emphasis, color and expression to whatever you're sharing verbally. A lot of times, people don't gesture enough for they get nervous. They're not sure how to gesture. So we're going to work on how you can establish a home base with your hands that you can naturally gesture from any time you want to emphasize the message. Show home base is very simple. You're gonna take your hands and you're going to loosely clasped them at about belt level, just like this belt level, loosely class. So you don't want to tighten your hands up because you might start ringing them and looking nervous. You also don't want to interlock your fingers because that's hard to break away from. Once you're nice and tight in there. What you want to do is just loosely clasp your hands at about belt level. We'll call this home base now if you're holding notes and in this case, I'll just hold a book because I'm gonna use it later in this video. Just hold a book So if you have your notes and your just gesturing, and that's like a home base, just like that's the same thing home based you just loosely holding your notes at about belt level. Now, from this position, you want to make little small gestures as if you're catching a ball. Someone passed your ball and you're catching it. That's all it is, that's that's the way to start practicing your gestures. So when you're talking and you want to emphasize a word or a phrase, you add a little volume to your voice. You just break your hands apart in a gesture, you congestion with two hands At the same time, you could just just with one hand. It doesn't really matter, because what'll happen is as you practice this behind the scenes when you're preparing your presentation. If you practice with gestures like this in the moment whether you're holding your notes or you're just in your home base, you will begin to gesture naturally like this. So here's a question. How big should your gestures be? Well, depends on the size of the audience. It just depends upon the emotional intensity of your message. If you having a little small audience, like five or six or 10 people, then just small little gestures, really, all you need. If you're presented to a whole huge room of people to communicate effectively, you probably need to gesture a little bit larger. How often should you gesture? I just You're almost constantly during presentations, and I never get accused of using my hands too much. As long as your gestures are small like this, and every once in a while big, then that's fine, I would say about once per sentence should be a good goal is always a phrase or some key word in a sentence you want to emphasize, and that's when you gesture. Sometimes people get accused of talking with their hands. Well, in a one on one conversation that might be a little distracting. But if you're presenting to a group of 30 people or 40 people or more, you want to use your hands. But still, if you know already that you're one of the people that just are constantly talking with your hands, and it's really distracting that, just dial it down a little bit gesture right around here. Just about once per sentence so really the tips of the same and you should be fine. And so that's what you do with your nervousness. You put it into your hands. So a lot of times in the last video, we talked about what not to do with your hands. When I get excited, I call it excitement. I don't call it nervous. This was what I present when I get excited. I just communicate that excitement into my hands, and it adds a lot of emphasis and color and expression to my message. Now, a couple of other tips. People often ask these questions Well, what if I don't want to have the loose steeple position, the loose class peer of my belt level? Do I can I do other hand positions? Some people prefer, for example, to have their hands by their sides. They just have their hands down by their sides, and any time they want a gesture that is, bring their hands up and you can do that. I personally don't like that because I feel like there's such a distance. Every time I have my hands finally relaxed down there, I tend to slouch, first of all, but also it seems like a big effort to gesture like, Oh, I've got to put a lot of energy into this new gesture. But some people looking and feel normal gesturing from their hands by their sides of you can communicate that way and present that way than wonderful. Other people will insist what I like to have my hands behind my back, sort of like I'm a philosopher and I'm walking on the platform and I'm thinking about something deeply. You can do that. You have seen that look. A lot of people do that professor type, look where they're thinking about and they've got a lot on their mind and them a gesture from that position. If that fits your style, then go ahead and do that. I personally don't do that because I think that it can be overdone, and within a few moments it can look like you're hiding something behind your back like you're a prisoner of some sort. I don't think it's nearly as effective as the home base now, once in a while, if you want to be delivered about and give people that thoughtful pose and you can, But in general I would either have my hands in this belt level, home based loose class, or I might have my hands at my side. So that's the main tip that you want to take away from this as faras your homework. What can you do to practice this? I want you to practice two different ways. I want you to first practice just in this home base and talk about anything you'd like to for about a minute. Just tell me what you've done so far today in about 30 to 60 seconds and just gestured from here about once per sentence from home based, nice and loose. And then I want you to do it again with a book. The book can seem simply filling for your notes. So let's say you have some kind of notes or a note pad that you would use when you present . Just grab any old book and just mimic what it would look like for a home base from here. Just gesture nice and loose from home base with your notes or with the book, in this case, in practice for about a minute. Doing that so that's your practical assignment as your homework for this video. So get to work on it and I will see you in the next video 9. How to Stand with Good Body Posture: this video, we're going to talk about your body posture. In other words, how should I stand when I present? And just like with our hands and our gestures, a lot of times when we're nervous, we tend to do weird things with our feet and weird things with our body posture. Now your body posture is one of a great way for you to open yourself to your audience, to look confident and composed and relaxed. And so you want to pay attention to some of the bad habits that you might have, and also make sure you stand in a posture that's gonna communicate the kind of confidence that you want to show. So first of all, let's look at some bad habits that people have when they present, and I want you to see if any of these apply to you. So first of all, some people, instead of standing with a nice posture, will begin to shuffle their feet back and forth. And so it looks like they're doing a little bit of a dance, and you can get away with a shuffle or two. But if you start doing this throughout your presentation, it's going to look quite distracting. Another version of this is where people they don't actually pick their feet up, but they sway back and forth, so they're nervous and they move their hips back and forth and they tend to look again like they're a pendulum going back. Import that it could be very distracting over time. Another bad habit people have with their feet is they sometimes cross and uncross their legs. Repetitive Lee, typically in a presentation, there is never a need to really cross your legs like this. But you especially don't want to do that pattern when you cross and uncross your legs repeatedly again. This is obviously nerves kicking in, and it's what happens when you're not sure what to do. The other thing you don't want to do and this is my bad habit. By the way, from the past, I would tend to sort of lean on one hip, if you will, as I presented, and it was, ah, looked a little bit informal look like a little bit like wasn't so confident. So maybe that you maybe you do that one. The other thing you don't want to do is another kind of leaning. It's not on one hip, but sometimes they'll be a table or a desk nearby. And presenters will sometimes like lean against are almost sit on a desk. And this is really not a great look. You might feel like, Oh, I just want to kick back and connected be more conversational, but this is not the way to do it. It's not going to come across the way you think it's gonna come across. It tends to limit year your presenting skills and put you in a position where you don't want to really be in the long run. The other thing you don't want to do as I mentioned in another video about what to do their hands is you don't want to get stuck behind a podium in a way like your trap. So if you're leaning over a podium and you're clutching to like I mentioned in the video about what to do with your hands, it could make you sort of slumped forward, and it can affect your posture, and you don't look nearly as confident and composing as comfortable as you want to do. You also don't want to do that thing with your posture where you're kind of looking up the whole time or looking down in slouched over. It's like this phone position. People don't usually phones generally when they present, but you don't want to kind of have your head slumped down like that, either you wanna have. And so here's Here's the position that you want to be in, by the way, the first thing it starts with your feet. You want to have your feet about shoulder with a parts tiny bit of an athletic reference, but you're not gonna look athletic when your feet about shoulder with the parts that starts in bottom you want your whole foot is touching the ground both feet or touching around, but you have a slight pressure on the balls of your feet and your heels, even though you use their touching. Your heels are a little bit light on the ground, so you're heavy on the balls of your feet, a little bit light on your heels. But your whole foot is touching, and then when you work your way up to your knees, you want to have soft knees. You don't want to have your knees completely locked because people have been known to pass out because of nervousness. And when their knees airlocks something, I don't quite understand it, but physiologically, you sometimes see people fainting and falling over when they have locked needs. So you wanna have soft knees now, working your way up, you wanna have your shoulders back a little bit, and you want to keep your body posture open toward your listeners so you don't want to really be turned to the side or certainly do want to be turned around, But you want to have open body posture toward the people that you're speaking to. You don't want to just look at them with your eyes, but you want to look at them with your body, your upper body, and so that's the what I call the ready position. Your feet are about shoulder width apart, your feet or heavy on the balls of your feet, a little bit light on the heels. You have soft knees, shoulders back, open posture that's called the ready position, and from there you can certainly move around a little bit and walk on the stage a little bit of the platform, but we'll talk about that in the next video. The first thing I want you to do, though your homework is very brief, and that is I want you to identify any bad habits that you might have. So do you shuffle your feet? Do you sway back and forth? You clutch onto that podium. Do you want to lean on the desk? What are the bad habits that you might have that we talked about earlier in the video? And then, of course, you can practice this ready position where you stand with your feet about shoulder width apart, a little bit heavy on the balls of your feet, light in heels and nice soft knees and open shoulders. So try that now have to return this video off. So thanks, and I will see you in the next video. 10. How to Move with a Purpose: Welcome back in this video, we're going to talk about what you should do with your body when you're presenting specifically, should you stand still in one place, or should you walk around your platform your stage a little bit as you present. Now, in a couple of other videos, we talked about gestures and what you can do with your hands, and we all saw talked about posture. So add this video to that mixture of the others. And the basic tip here is that you don't want to move because you're nervous. You don't want to move because you don't know what to do. You don't want to pay surrounded me a distraction because you just think I don't to do a soldier start moving around. The idea here is that you want to move with a purpose. Everything you're doing when you're presenting is done with a purpose. So here is the basic tip. In terms of movement, it's okay to stand still. It's OK to walk around. You just want to do it with a purpose. So here's what I mean. Any time you're saying something important, you wanna have your feet planted and you want to have your body connected to your listeners . You wanna be looking at them and your shoulders are oriented toward them. You wanna have your feet planted when you're moving, it can be a distraction, and people are less likely to remember what you are saying. So I always stand still when I'm sharing things like my bottom line. I stand still when I'm sharing an important fact or statistic or quotation that I want people to remember. But then I might move to another place on the platform, another place in the room when I'm sharing less important material. Like if I'm transitioning to 1.2 the next. If I'm re capping or explaining something a little more detail, if I'm sharing a small example, those air times I might move around and get to new location. But then once I'm saying something important again, like explaining what my next main point is, I wanna make sure my feet are planted and I'm connected nonverbally to my listeners because that's when they'll remember it. About a year ago, I saw a very well known presenters names John Maxwell. If you ever get the opportunity, watch John Maxwell, you'll be watching a public speaking master, I can remember very vividly. He was about to share his main point and he took a couple of steps forward, planted his feet, look directly out. And then he gestured really big to. And he said most of us have up hill goals. Then he had this long pause. Then he put out the other arm. He said, But we have downhill habits. I can remember thinking Wow, you know, right when he was sharing his main point, what it all boiled down to, he stepped forward, planted his feet, look directly out. And then he even used gestures to enhance it. That would never have had the same impact on the audience if he had just been walking across the stage as he said it. In a somewhat distracting way, he made sure nonverbally he showed us. This is the main idea. This is important, and you can show that by planting your feet and orienting toward your listeners. So you want to move with a purpose and say something important, and then you can move to the other part of the stage, maybe even just a couple of feet when you're saying less important material. That's the basic tip. I don't want a pace. You don't want to do it for nervous reasons. So here's your homework. Your homework's very simple. I want you to wherever you are after this video, stand up and pretend that you're talking to me. But like you're practicing a presentation, but it's one on one, but you're standing and you're presenting to me, and I'm gonna give you a very brief assignment here. You're going to tell me about your three favorite movies and why. And any time you're saying something really important about that movie, I want you to be planted and I want you to look or pretend to look directly at me and explain the why. And then you could move when you're telling me something not quite is important on the second movie, but right when you get to, especially the why, like why is it so important to you? Make sure you're planted and then emphasize that point nonverbally and then move to the third movie and you can transition there and move to a different part of your room. Maybe even just a couple of steps. Plant yourself and then explain why you like that third movie. You might want to practice that a couple of times. I think what you'll see is as you practice this when you're planted and you're all in nonverbally, that's when an idea is going to stick with your audience. So go ahead and practice that now and I will see you in the next video. 11. Using Pauses to Sound More Confident: Hello and welcome back And this video. We're going to talk about how to use pauses in your live presentations to help you come across as more confident, composed and comfortable. We don't have a lot of positive examples in our culture nowadays, in terms of how to use pauses because we don't have a ton of experience speaking live. It's very different when you're listening to the radio watching a movie or a YouTube video . But when you're speaking live in front of people, the way you pause is very important. And by the way, when I say pause, I'm only talking about a 1 to 2 second pause after you say something important. In fact, the overall tip for this video is that you want to pause about once per sentence. So you say a sentence, and wherever there would be a period, you just pause for one or two seconds. Now one or two second pause might sound like not that long, but in the moment it can feel like it's much longer than that, because your adrenaline is going and you're excited. So even a one or two second pause can make it feel like, Oh, my gosh, They're gonna think I lost my place. But believe me, as a listener, when people are in the audience ah, one or two second pause is about what they need to process whatever it waas that you just said. So you say a sentence, you pause and then they have a moment to listen. So what you said and accept it, and then you say another sentence and you pause and then they accept it. Say sentence and they accepted. And you want to establish this rhythm in this pace where you're bringing them along in the presentation and giving them time to hear in process what you said If you just have one continuous sound, none of your ideas will stand out, and it becomes very difficult for them to pick out what the main points are. So you want to pause after each sentence and especially I even had a little bit of a longer pause after my bottom line and after any key main point adds a little bit of emphasis to those key ideas. So that's the tip pause after each sentence for about a second or two. The proof, however, will be when you practice this, so I'm gonna give you a practical action step that I'd like you to take when you turn this particular video off. And we already talked about your three favorite movies and another video about how to move and use your body during the presentation. I want to revisit that. So I want you to say what your three favorite movies are and then between each movie, Add a pause for about one or two seconds and I want it. Hear how it sounds to you so you can do it without the pause. If you want to record this, you might do it this way. Record it once with no pauses. Just tell me about your three favorite movies and why, and then do another version where you say what you're first favorite movie is and why add a wanted to second pause, say the next movie and why 1 to 2 second pause, say the third movie and why? And make sure you pause at the end of that one and then listen to the two signed by side. And I think you will be instantly convinced that when you're pausing after each sentence after each key idea. Those ideas are going to stand out more, and as a result your listeners will be able to hear them and accept them more. And that's really the whole point of presenting to people in the first place. We want people to get something out of what we are saying. So pauses will help you get there. So go ahead and do that homework now and I will see you in the next video. 12. Eliminating Filler Words: Hello again. And welcome back in this video, we're going to go after a bad habit that you may have. We call them vocal fillers any time you're saying, Um oh, you know, and like, sort of kind of whatever filler you're using. What you're doing is you're filling in what should be a silence. What should be a pause? Essentially Now, I just did another video for you on how to pause when you're presenting. So you want to make sure you look at that one for those tips. But in this video, we're going to figure out how you can identify what you are. Fillers are, and then how you can get a pause in there instead. So the first step is for you to figure out what bad habits you have. And I have no way of knowing what your vocal fillers are. The way I learned what my vocal fillers were was I saw myself on video a couple of times and I noticed that I was saying kinda and sort of all over the place, and I really had no idea, and no one had ever pointed it out to me. So you may be using vocal fillers that you're not even aware of the easiest way to do this . If if you have any kind of presentation recorded, you can look at this or listen to yourself and see if there any vocal fillers in there. You might also ask a friend that if they have seen you present a couple of times, they might be aware of some of those bad habits. Now, if you don't have that already handy, then you may want to just record yourself one more time, even talking for about a minute. Try to express yourself and see what your vocal fillers are, usually within about 30 seconds to a minute. You'll start to do this. Then the second step in this process is really a mindset step, and that is to get comfortable with silence. Get comfortable with the idea that it's okay to not fill up the sound with words the entire time. It's OK to have beats of silence, and as we said in the video about pauses, it's desirable. You want to give your listeners a chance to hear your idea stand out and to accept what you just said before you move on so pauses can be your best friend in a presentation. You should not avoid them, so get comfortable with it now. The third step in this process is how can I actually get rid of it? I know what it is. I'm comfortable with science, but I have a habit. How can I break that habit? The way to break the habit is you have to replace the filler with the word pause or with the word period. So you actually will say this out loud. When you're practicing at first you'll say it out loud and then you'll get rid of it. But it'll sound a little bit like this. A first. Instead of saying a filler, I'm gonna replace it with the word pause. So when I add fillers, I would say my three favorite movies are Rocky. Ah, the Avengers and ah, good will hunting. So there is where I put my feelers. So then I replace it with the word pause or period, and it sounds like this. My three favorite movies are Rocky Period Avengers, period and good Will hunting period. So then, over time I hearing I'm hearing myself say period, and then I can simply say it in my mind, I don't practise out loud anymore. And then it sounds nice and clean. So it sounds like this. My three favorite movies are Rocky, the Avengers and Good Will hunting. And that's how it should sound. No filler, and you're no longer saying the word pause or period out loud. So by saying out loud, that's a bridge, too, being able to allow yourself simply to say it in your head, and then your audience will never know you did this. Your audience will just your nice, confident, composed pauses where they're supposed to be. So that's the basic tip. Now this is your homework. Your homework is to tell me again about your three favorite movies, and any time you hear yourself using a filler, I want you to train yourself first to say the word, pause or period. And then, after a few practices through that, just say that in your head. So there's a nice pause insurgent into those places where you used to use fillers. Record yourself if you need to, and I think you will notice an immediate difference in how this sounds. You're going to sound more confident, more composed and more comfortable almost instantly. So that's how to get after your vocal fillers. Get to it and I will see you in the next video. 13. Speaking with a Confident Volume: Hey there. And welcome back in this video, we're going to talk about your volume. In other words, how loudly should you speak when you're standing in front of a group and you are presenting ? In most cases, speakers do not speak loudly enough for the kind of group that they are speaking to. In most cases, they speak to the front row and they see those people right there. And that's about how loudly they speak. But you want to speak as if you're speaking to the back row in terms of how loud you are. So that is your goal. In fact, I like to say, Speak to the back row as if somebody back there doesn't hear very well. In fact, I don't hear very well. I have problems with my hearing, and there's probably somebody in the room that may also have a hearing impairment. You want to speak nice and loudly to the back row, and then it benefits everybody. In fact, I think that a low volume is one of the most common mistakes that presenters make. But when you speak louder, you sound better. I guarantee it when you talk a little bit louder. You sound more confident, more passionate, more energetic, more engaging. Simply boosting your volume fixes a whole lot of other problems that people often have when they are presenting. In fact, it'll even help you avoid using vocal fillers. If you're practicing nice and loudly behind the scenes, those ums and ahhs and you know it really stand out. And so we talked about this in another video. It will be easier to identify those and take those out. So when you speak a little more loudly, there are tons of benefits, and I encourage you to speak to that back route. So here's what your homework is. Let's just get right to it. I want you to make two recordings in the first recording for 30 seconds. I want you to tell me as if we're in a crowd of about 10 people, about your favorite place to visit, and then, without listening to it, I want you to think to yourself how loud was I on a scale of 1 to 10 like an old fashioned volume knob? How loud was I? And let's say you were at about a five or a six in terms of how loudly felt like you were speaking. I want you to make a second recording, but this time, boost your vocal volume 22 2.5 clicks. So save yourself. All right, now, this time I'm gonna speak at about a seven or 7.5. Whatever your volume is, just add 2 to 2.5 clicks and then make a second recording. So at the end of this, you have to recordings. One of them. You're speaking a little softer. And the other one, you're speaking a little louder. You tell me which one you think sounds better. I almost guarantee you that the one where you're speaking a little louder will send more confident, more energetic, more passionate, more enthusiastic. All the kinds of things that we want to hear about ourselves as speakers. So go ahead and make those recordings now. And I look forward to seeing you in the next video. 14. Next Steps: congratulations. You made it to the end. In terms of your next steps, I recommend picking your top two or three issues that you would like to work on the most, and then apply the tips that you learned in the course to really get after those issues. In my experience, if you can fix the top two or three things you struggle with, most of the rest of your public speaking will fall into place nicely, So identify those and get practicing. I also recommend that you look at your calendar for any upcoming public speaking that you will be doing the pick of presentation and set some goals for that presentation. Based upon what you have learned in this course, it has been my pleasure teaching you. I hope you've got a lot out of it. And if you did, I would appreciate you leaving a review so other students can see what this is all about. On also feel free to check out my other courses, so take care and I will see you soon