Public Speaking Tips for Making an Impact
How can I make an impact?
How can I be memorable?
How can I have a lasting effect on my audience?
A painting is timeless; it exists outside of the passing of time.
If you leave the room for 20 minutes and come back in, the painting will still be there, complete as it was before.
Music and speech exist within time.
If you leave the room during a piece of music and return 20 minutes later, you will have missed a significant part of the performance.
Our problem as speakers is that our speech exists while it is being delivered and when it is finished it immediately starts to fade.
So, what can we do to ensure that our message stays with our audience long after we have finished speaking?
One challenge with many PowerPoint presentations is that they provide a lot of information during the presentation and once the presentation is over, very little remains in the memory.
One way of making a lasting impact is to focus on telling stories and ‘painting pictures’, because pictures stay in the mind, while words and data like individual notes of a piece of music resonate briefly for a moment and then quickly fade away.
The American Political strategist James Carville says the audience needs to see what you are saying.
And it needs to be simple and it needs to be clear.
He is famed for creating Bill Clinton’s strapline: ‘It’s the economy stupid.’
Recently he proved his point when commenting on the memory of Joe Biden’s disastrous debate with Donald Trump:
‘It's like seeing your grandma naked. You can't get it out of your mind.’
One of the most memorable business presentations I ever experienced was when I attended a seminar of a variety of presentations on aspects of business success; most of which, impressive as they were in the moment, are now lost in the passage of time.
However this one presentation has stayed with me many years later because the speaker not only understood how to deliver a message with impact, but she understood how to do that in a way that survived beyond the moment of delivery.
Consequently, she was able to deliver a presentation that has stayed with me twenty years after I heard it.
So how did she achieve this?
10 tips for delivering with impact.
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Before you even start
Before being heard you will be seen, so it is important to make the right impression. In most cases, you will need to move towards the centre of the room. It is worth thinking it through beforehand.
Will I have to climb over people?
Is there a large step up onto a raised stage?
How far will I have to walk?
Politicians walking up Downing Street and actors accepting awards have to negotiate the very self-conscious hurdle of walking towards their goal while trying to look relaxed, confident, and in command, as the whole world is watching.
Therefore go to the stage with your shoulders back and head up and walk swiftly to your speaking position.
Even in those few steps, you can send a message that what you are about to say is worth hearing.
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Dress
As we consider approaching the stage, we can also think about what we want to wear.
Based on our message we may want to look professional and smart; and maybe not too showy unless we want to dazzle. Would it be helpful to wear a uniform or wear some indication that enhances our credibility to talk on our particular subject? If we are talking about life-saving, do we have a medical uniform or insignia that we can wear, or a police or firefighter’s uniform if we are talking about law or safety?
How many politicians have we seen talking about national infrastructure while wearing a ‘high-vis’ jacket and a hard hat? They know that visually it helps to create the right impression.
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Props
I recently attended a talk on the ‘Art Deco’ movement where the speaker was wearing some Art Deco jewelry that she could talk about. She also had a range of artifacts spread out on a table in front of her, which won the attention of her audience before she even came out to speak.
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Opening words
Putting all props and costumes to one side, the first and strongest impact any speaker can make is with their first words. These need to be prepared. Otherwise the opening sounds coming from the speaker’s mouth will probably be very under-whelming – ‘um, er, hi’.
I would never recommend learning a speech by heart, as that makes it rigid and robotic, but I do recommend learning your first few words so that you can be sure of making a strong opening impact.
If you are Mark Antony speaking at Julius Caesar’s funeral you would walk to the centre of the stage with the words ‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen’ going around in your head.
I won a speech contest a few years ago and was commended for the arresting impact of my opening line, which was:
‘How do you cook a frog?’
I knew it would capture attention.
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Arresting imagery
I remember one speaker who combined a number of factors to create a powerful impact. She was giving a talk on the value of her role in the field of social services, caring for vulnerable children.
She opened powerfully, simply and clearly by describing a visit she had made to a vulnerable family.
From her first words, she had out attention and by describing in detail what had confronted her when she entered the home, she embedded a powerful image in our heads that contained the elements of everything she wanted to say to us and left us with an impression that survived long after she had finished speaking.
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Analogy, Metaphor, Example
If pictures exist outside of time and words and music exist within time, then by creating impactful imagery we are guaranteeing that significant parts of our presentation will continue to resonate after we have finished speaking.
Metaphors are excellent tools for creating impact, as they are likely to be forceful and relatable ways of emphasising the key message.
When James Carville tells us that the horror of the effect of Joe Biden’s debating performance was like ‘like seeing your grandma naked. You can't get it out of your mind’ he has created an image that is guaranteed to lodge in the mind. It is shocking, it is disturbing, it is humorous and it clarifies the point.
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Repetition
As the old allegorical story of a man who administers 267 blows to crack open a rock asks us:
What made the decisive difference, the 267th blow or the sum of the 267 blows?
Repetition will create an impact. Many rhetorical devices revolve around the repetition of keywords, key rhythms, or key structures to make their impact.
Clearly, if your message is about ‘trust’, then that word is likely to crop up regularly in your talk, and through repetition your message will impact on the audience.
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Gestures
You can choose to give a specific word or phrase extra impact by accompanying it with a significant or decisive gesture. If you support the word ‘trust’ with an emphatic gesture, the word will register more powerfully with the audience
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Pause
And then if you accompany that word and gesture with a significant pause the resonance will be even greater. It all comes down to knowing what your key message is and therefore what your key words are going to be, lifting those key moments out of the presentation and allowing them time, space, and emphasis to register fully with the audience.
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Contrast
And while we are on the subject of paintings and timelessness, the painter Caravaggio is known for his dramatic contrast of dark and light. Similarly in speaking, we should look for dramatic contrast as a way of making an impact.
- It can be a literal contrast of vocabulary as in the observation that Barak Obama was the ‘first black man in the White House’,
- or it could be a contrast of ideas which is the structural core of Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech:
‘I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right down in Alabama little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.’
- or it could be a contrast born out of statistics:
‘The poorest half of the global population owns just 2% of the global total,
while the richest 10% own 76% of all wealth.’
(World Economic Forum 2021)
The greatest impact will be created by having a clear and resonant message.
Once we have that, then we can think about enhancing that message with stories, metaphors, pauses, gestures, and repetition.
