Public Speaking Tips for Authority

You can be an authority on a subject but might not come across as one because of how you present yourself!
On the other hand in the world of populism and snake oil sales, there are plenty of candidates who sound like authorities but they are not.

Someone who is an authority but cannot come across as one is a waste of potential.
Someone who comes across as an authority but is not one is dangerous!
I remember a session with a lady from Social Services who had come to teach us about Safeguarding. 
She was not just petrified to be standing in front of a room full of people and clearly had not imagined that she would ever need to deliver presentations when her prime motivation in entering her career was to work with and protect young individuals.
And here is an important consideration for all of us, in any field!
When you become good at what you do, other people may want to hear you talk about it.
You can refuse, but if you do become an authority in your field, teaching, sharing, and mentoring are the next steps and I might say are almost your duty as a competent professional.
When I worked with schoolchildren a frequent refrain from the class was:
‘Why would I ever need to speak in public?
I want to become a nurse, a mechanic, or an accountant.’
In answer, I would tell them that when you become an authority in your field, at some stage, you will be asked to share your knowledge and experience and if you want to do that well, you will need to present yourself well.
Luckily for the lady from social services, she had an understanding audience and by turning the programme more into a question-and-answer session we were able to access her wisdom in smaller bite-sized segments.

I also remember an experience from when I was still at school when a business expert was invited to speak to the senior school about possible future careers.  Just like the lady from social services speaking in front of a group was not in his comfort zone and his way of compensating for how he felt was to put his right hand in his trouser pocket, which unfortunately was where he kept his keys and the whole of his presentation was accompanied by the sound of jingly metal.

Unfortunately, as he discovered,  senior school children are not always very empathetic. 
We just giggled all through the talk.  The more we giggled, the more uncomfortable he became.  The more uncomfortable he became the more he jingled.  The more he jingled the more we laughed.
I imagine he went home confused, declaring that he would never again speak to a room full of school leavers.

So what is authority?

How do you get it? – and - more importantly -
How do you display it?
And not jingling keys when you are speaking is a good start!

10 tips for speaking with authority

1. Know your subject

To become an expert is a slightly glib recommendation.  Of course, we want to be experts, but even if we have the necessary experience, bringing it together and sharing it can still feel overwhelming.
Therefore like the lady from social services, you could take some of the pressure off yourself, by delivering a short introduction to the subject and then running the rest of the session as a question-and-answer session.
However, this will only work if you really do know your subject well.  Answering every second question with: ‘I don’t know,’ will quickly undermine your authority.

So if your knowledge is broad and deep, tackling the challenge in question form might take the edge off your fear and allow your authority to shine through.

However - what if you do not have that range of expertise?
Now you would need to narrow the focus of your presentation and choose one small area to concentrate on.
Draw clear circle around your chosen area, and let the audience know where the boundaries of that circle are so that you don’t seem to be pretending to know more than you do; then if someone in the audience asks a question outside your designated area, you can simply reiterate that your focus or knowledge is centred on the area already outlined.

2. Borrow Authority

If you do not have it yourself, you can borrow authority from an expert in the field.
A fundamental question in every audience’s mind is:
‘Why should I listen to you?’
To answer that question the first place for you to look is within your own experience. 
Do you have the necessary authority to speak by yourself on the subject? 
If not, then look outside of yourself. 
Do you have a colleague that you can quote or can you lean on the years of expertise within the organisation that you are representing?
If all that fails then can you grab hold of some testimony and quotes from acknowledged experts in the field?

3. Find an angle

I may not be the world’s greatest expert on parenting, but I do have children!
So I do have a level of relevant experience that I can share.

They are all boys, so maybe I would not be on very strong ground if I started to make pronouncements about bringing up girls.  I may not have the authority to make any generalised comments, but I can still share my own experience as a father. 
Maybe I can choose to talk from the point of view of my own upbringing and how becoming a father today brings a set of challenges that are different to what my father had to face. 
I am the youngest child.
So maybe a good area for me would be to share insights into the challenges of being the youngest boy in the family.
I remember a sales trainer starting his training session by saying:
‘I do not have any specific experience with your sales team, however, I did use to be one of your customers!’

And immediately he had carved out an angle which answered his students’ prime question:

‘Why should I listen to you?’
He was not pretending to have expertise that he could not claim, but he was able to offer a unique angle on the subject.

4. Be humble

There is a much-quoted line from Hamlet:
‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks’
Constantly having to justify yourself can have the opposite effect on the audience.
Natural authority does not need to boast or justify.
A person with natural authority already ‘knows’ and they just need to reassure the audience.
If Warren Buffett chooses to deliver a talk on investing, he probably does not need to spend much time on establishing his authority.  The chances are that everyone already knows who he is before they enter the room. 
However, one useful piece of information might be to reassure the audience that ‘I started from nothing, just like you!’
On the other hand, if Joe Bloggs is running the session and we do not know who Joe Bloggs is, then he will need to lay out his CV, his history and his achievements, to assure us he is an authority qualified to speak on the subject.
But then if Joe Bloggs continues to assert his credentials long after we have been reassured, we start to think that he is either ‘protesting too much’ and is not that confident in his status or else he will come across as vain, more interested in telling us how wonderful he is than on concentrating on the needs of his audience.

5. Facts and Evidence

Avoid overburdening your audience with too many facts, dates, or statistics.  One or two well-chosen statistics will add greatly to your authority on the subject.  Using only personal stories in your presentation may help you establish a trend or a tendency and may offer personal credibility and some tangible imagery for your audience, but a story can never be more than an opinion.
If I tell you my eldest son loves football, I cannot conclude therefore that all boys will like football.
If I tell you that all four of my sons like football, a generalised conclusion might start to be a bit more convincing.
If I add to that that our neighbour’s children are always playing football in the garden and if you walk past any boys’ school during break time you will see most of them playing football, the gap between the specific examples and the general statement that all boys like football is getting smaller.
If I want to move my authority beyond my circle, I would probably benefit from quoting the findings of some esteemed research that states that when asked 95% of all boys said they like football.

6. Acknowledge differences

However, as part of knowing your subject, your authority and credibility will increase if you show that you are aware of the counter-views.
Someone who committedly espouses a point of view without having room to entertain opposition will at best come across as closed-minded.
Someone who is not even aware of the counter view will come across as ignorant.
My authority on the subject of boys and football will be greatly increased if I acknowledge some boys have no interest in football (because some of those boys may be sitting in that very audience), but if my respected research says that 95% do, then even those whose personal experience is against football will understand that their personal opinion goes against the greater authority of evidence.

Tips on Delivery

7. Stance

Standing still or moving around?
If we remember standing still implies ‘sharing’, while pacing implies ‘lecturing’, then both options could apply to establishing authority.
If your message is ‘I am just like you’ and what you intend to do is ‘share’ your findings and experience, then it might be better to stand solidly as you speak.
If your message is ‘I know and I am teaching or telling you’ then choosing to walk around might help to assert your authority.
However, two considerations:
- standing still or moving around are both valid options, but what is not acceptable is a half-and-half shuffling or rocking back and forth – that always comes across as nervous or unsure.
-  if you choose the assertive walking option, you need to have already established your credibility with your audience.  If I am listening to someone with proven authority, I do not mind being ‘told’.
If that authority has not been established I will become resistant to someone who has presumed to tell me, when I am still unsure whether they have the right to do so.
Therefore in many longer presentations, you will often see the speaker standing still for the first part of the presentation as they establish their authority and once the audience has accepted them, they move around to deliver their message more forcefully.

8. Voice

Anyone who has heard the Conservative MP and lawyer Geoffrey Cox speak will note a natural advantage he has: his voice.  We will not all have his melodious and resonant diction, but we can all take note of the fact that speaking slowly, clearly and with an assured tone will add to an air of authority.  Speaking with measured authority suggests that the speaker has a breadth of knowledge that sits above the subject, whereas speaking with raw passion and excitement might suggest they are so immersed in the subject that they no longer have a clear a perspective

You can be an authority on a subject but might not come across as one because of how you present yourself!
On the other hand in the world of populism and snake oil sales there are plenty of candidates who sound like authorities but they are not.

Someone who is an authority but is not able to come across as one is a waste of potential.
Someone who comes across as an authority but is not one is dangerous!
I remember a session with a lady from Social Services who had come to teach us about Safeguarding. 
She was not just petrified to be standing up in front of a room full of people, and clearly had not imagined that she would ever need to deliver presentations when her prime motivation in entering her career was to work with and protect young individuals.
And here is an important consideration for all of us, in any field!
When you become good at what you do, other people may want to hear you talk about it.
Obviously you can refuse, but if you do become an authority in your field, teaching, sharing and mentoring are the next steps and I might say are almost your duty as a competent professional.
When I worked with school children a frequent refrain from the class was:
‘Why would I ever need to speak in public?
I want to become a nurse, a mechanic, or an accountant.’
In answer I would tell them that when you become an authority in your field, at some stage you will be asked to share your knowledge and experience and if you want to do that well, you will need to present yourself well.
Luckily for the lady from social services she had an understanding audience and by turning the programme more into a question and answer session we were able to access her wisdom in smaller bite-sized segments.

I also remember an experience from when I was still at school when a business expert was invited to speak to the senior school about possible future careers.  Just like the lady from social services speaking in front of a group was not in his comfort zone and his way of compensating for how he felt was to put his right hand in his trouser pocket, which unfortunately was where he kept his keys and the whole of his presentation was accompanied by the sound of jingly metal.

Unfortunately, as he discovered,  senior school children are not always very empathetic. 
We just giggled all through the talk.  The more we giggled, the more uncomfortable he became.  The more uncomfortable he became the more he jingled.  The more he jingled the more we laughed.
I imagine he went home confused, declaring that he would never again speak to a room full of school leavers.

So what is authority?

How do you get it? – and - more importantly -
How do you display it?
And not jingling keys when you are speaking is a good start!

10 tips for speaking with authority

1. Know your subject
   
   

To become an expert is a slightly glib recommendation.  Of course we want to be experts, but even if we have the necessary experience, bringing it together and sharing it can still feel overwhelming.
Therefore like the lady from social services, you could take some of the pressure off yourself, by delivering a short introduction to the subject and then running the rest of the session as a question and answer session.
However this will only work if you really do know your subject well.  Answering every second question with: ‘I don’t know,’ will undermine your authority fairly quickly.

So if you feel you have a knowledge that is broad and deep, then tackling the challenge in question form might take the edge off your fear and allow your authority to shine through.

However - what if you do not have that range of expertise?
Now you would need to narrow the focus of your presentation and choose one small area to concentrate upon.
Draw a very clear circle around your chosen area, let the audience know where the boundaries of that circle are so that you don’t seem to be pretending to know more than you do; then if someone in the audience asks a question outside your designated area, you can simply reiterate that your focus or knowledge is centred on the area already outlined.

2. Borrow Authority
   
   

If you do not have it yourself, you can borrow authority from an expert in the field.
A fundamental question in every audience’s mind is:
‘Why should I listen to you?’
To answer that question the first place for you to look is within your own experience. 
Do you have the necessary authority to speak by yourself on the subject? 
If not, then look outside of yourself. 
Do you have a colleague that you can quote or can you lean on the years of expertise within the organisation that you are representing?
If all that fails then can you grab hold of some testimony and quote from acknowledged experts in the field?

3. Find an angle
   
   

I may not be the world’s greatest expert on parenting, but I do have children!
So I do have a level of relevant experience that I can share.

They are all boys, so maybe I would not be on very strong ground if I start to make pronouncements about bringing up girls.  I may not have the authority to make any generalised comments, but I can still share my own experience as a father. 
Maybe I can choose to talk from the point of view of my own upbringing and how becoming a father today brings a set of challenges that are different to what my father had to face. 
I am a youngest child.
So maybe a good area for me would be to share insights into the challenges of being the youngest boy in the family.
I remember a sales trainer starting his training session by saying:
‘I do not have any specific experience of your sales team, however I did use to be one of your customers!’

And immediately he had carved out and angle which answered his students’ prime question:

‘Why should I listen to you?’
He was not pretending to have expertise that he could not claim, but he was able to offer a unique angle on the subject.

4. Be humble

There is a much quoted line from Hamlet:
‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks’
Constantly having to justify yourself can have the opposite effect on the audience.
Natural authority does not need to boast or justify.
A person with natural authority already ‘knows’ that and they just need to reassure the audience that they know.
If Warren Buffett chooses to deliver a talk on investing, he probably does not need to spend much time on establishing his authority.  The chances are that everyone already knows who he is before they enter the room. 
However, one useful piece of information might be to reassure the audience that ‘I started from nothing, just like you!’
On the other hand if Joe Bloggs is running the session and we do not know who Joe Bloggs is, then he will need to lay out his CV, his history and his achievements, to assure us he is an authority qualified to speak on the subject.
But then if Joe Bloggs continues to assert his credentials long after we have been reassured, we start to think that he is either ‘protesting too much’ and is not that confident in his status or else he will come across as vain, more interested in telling us how wonderful he is than on concentrating on the needs of his audience.

5. Facts and Evidence

Avoid over burdening your audience with too many facts, dates or statistics.  One or two well-chosen statistics will add greatly to your authority on the subject.  Using only personal stories in your presentation may help you establish a trend or a tendency and may offer personal credibility and some tangible imagery for your audience, but a story can never be more than an opinion.
If I tell you my eldest son loves football, I cannot conclude therefore that all boys will like football.
If I tell you that all four of my sons like football, a generalised conclusion might start to be a bit more convincing.
If I add to that that our neighbour’s children are always playing football in the garden and if you walk past any boys’ school during break time you will see most of them playing football, the gap between the specific examples and the general statement that all boys like football is getting smaller.
If I want to move my authority beyond my personal circle, I would probably benefit from quoting the findings of some esteemed research that states that when asked 95% of all boys said they like football.

6. Acknowledge differences

However, as part of knowing your subject, your authority and credibility will increase if you show that you are aware of the counter views.
Someone who committedly espouses a point of view without having room to entertain opposition will at best come across as closed minded.
Someone who is not even aware of the counter view will come across as ignorant.
My authority on the subject of boys and football will be greatly increased if I acknowledge there are some boys who have no interest in football (because some of those boys may be sitting in that very audience), but if my respected research says that 95% do, then even those whose personal experience is against football will understand that their own personal opinion goes against the greater authority of evidence.

Tips on Delivery

7. Stance

Standing still or moving around?
If we remember standing still implies ‘sharing’, while pacing implies ‘lecturing’, then both options could apply to establishing authority.
If your message is ‘I am just like you’ and what you intend to do is ‘share’ your findings and experience, then it might be better to stand solidly as you speak.
If your message is ‘I have the knowledge and I am teaching or telling you’ then choosing to walk around might help to assert your authority.
However, two considerations:
- standing still or moving around are both valid options, but what is not acceptable is a half and half shuffling or rocking back and forth – that always comes across as nervous or unsure.
-  if you choose the assertive walking option, you need to have already established your credibility with your audience.  If I am listening to someone with proven authority, I do not mind being ‘told’.
If that authority has not been established I will become resistant to someone who has presumed to tell me, when I am still unsure whether they have the right to do so.
Therefore in many longer presentations you will often see the speaker standing still for the first part of the presentation as they establish their authority and once the audience has accepted them, they move around to deliver their message more forcefully.

8. Voice

Anyone who has heard the Conservative MP and lawyer Geoffrey Cox speak will note a natural advantage he has: his voice.  We will not all have his melodious and resonant diction, but we can all take note of the fact that speaking slowly, clearly and with an assured tone will add to an air of authority.  Speaking with measured authority suggests that the speaker has a breadth of knowledge that sits above the subject, whereas speaking with raw passion and excitement might suggest they are so immersed in the subject that they no longer have a clear a perspective.

9. Eye contact

Good eye contact suggests confidence and one needs an air of confidence if one wants to come across as speaking with authority.  Hold eye contact with individual members of the audience and hold it for a few moments.  As a technique, deliver a complete thought looking at one person and then move to the next person with the next thought or sentence.  Try to spread eye contact around the room.

10. Gestures

Strong open gesture will support an impression of confidence and clarity.  Saving a clear decisive gesture to support a key message will reinforce the impact of those words and add to your air of authority.

9. Eye contact

Good eye contact suggests confidence and one needs an air of confidence if one wants to come across as speaking with authority.  Hold eye contact with individual members of the audience and hold it for a few moments.  As a technique, deliver a complete thought by looking at one person and then moving to the next person with the next thought or sentence.  Try to spread eye contact around the room.

10. Gestures

Strong open gestures will support an impression of confidence and clarity.  Saving a clear decisive gesture to support a key message will reinforce the impact of those words and add to your air of authority.