Last updated on October 30th, 2023
Speaking to the audience is an art. To succeed, you need to master this art efficiently. We understand that not all speakers have the skills to captivate their listeners for hours. During the process, many of them even become directionless if they forget something and get nervous. But not to worry! Designhilll conducted a webinar where Brenden Kumarswamy, an expert on communication skills, shared the tricks and tips to master your communication skills. Have a look!
Glossophobia, the fear of speaking, is common. Most people are afraid of expressing their thoughts if there is a larger audience in front of them. They tend to forget something while lecturing on an issue and then get nervous. That leaves a bad impression on the attendees, no doubt.
However, being nervous and forgetting things is human. It can happen to even professional speakers. But the professionals know how to tackle nervous and awkward situations.
To discuss this issue with an expert, Designhill, the leading creative marketplace, conducted a webinar. The topic was Art Of Public Speaking Tips And Tricks To Mastering Your Communication Skills. Brenden Kumarswamy was the expert guest speaker.
Brenden shared his expertise and experience on how to speak like a professional. He showed the importance of eye contact, silences, and removal of filler words during the presentation while speaking to an audience.
About Brenden Kumarasamy
BrendenKumarasamy is an expert on public speaking and communication skills. He is the founder of MasterTalk, a YouTube channel he started to help the world with communication and public speaking skills.
In this post, we have shared the video of the session and transcript in the form of Q and As where Brenden has shared the must-know tricks to master your communication skills.
Transcript (Q/A): Here Is What You Need To Know When Speaking To Your Audience
No one formula applies everywhere
Brenden Kumarswamy: Before I start my presentation on the topic, I’d love to give a disclaimer. And that disclaimer is the following. The way that I speak is not necessarily the one right way. There’s a lot of people who are loud like me. They go to events all the time to go to different parties. And a huge portion of the people I speak to lie on the opposite end of the spectrum. They are introverted and shy, and would much rather read a book than come to a workshop like this.
So, the reason I’m saying that is because the tips I’m going to be sharing today apply to any type of speaker. You may be someone extroverted, like me, who has a lot of energy. Or, you may be someone introverted, who would rather read a book. These tips will apply to all of you.
Much like every second-generation immigrant, our job is really simple. Get a great job, get a good education. So hopefully, we can provide a better opportunity for our families. And I wasn’t any different. Growing up in Montreal, Canada, I got all the best grades in school, there weren’t sciences, or math, or different subjects.
The need for learning the speaking skills
Brenden Kumarswamy: When it comes to public speaking, this is a more accurate representation of who I am. Now, the question is, why? Why is somebody like me? Who’s this extroverted, this energetic? Why were they scared of communication my whole life? And the reason is you need to know how to speak French while growing up in a city like Montreal, I didn’t know how to speak it, and you need to know it, to do well in the city.
So my parents looked at me one day when I was five years old, and they said, you need to learn how to speak French. For the first 15 years of my education, I was uncomfortable with presentations. I had to deliver them in a language I didn’t even know. So, imagine all the stress, all the anxiety that comes from that. And that is where my journey started. And this journey has a simple message to it.
I believe that public speaking is a learned skill. It is not something you are born with. We know that leaders are created not born through a series of life experiences. I believe it to be the same for public speaking. That’s exactly what I’m here to convince all of you off today.
The ability to pause
Brenden Kumarswamy: All of our favorite speakers share one thing in common. And that commonality is their ability to pause, their ability to pause effectively, to drive core points of their message. It is that pause that makes them so exceptional. But of course, there’s no point in just me telling you that I think it’s much easier if I just proved it.
So, I am going to present it in two different ways. I am going to present it with pauses and without pauses. This way, we can see the difference and then compare the two pausings, not pausing. What does the difference look like? I’m going to present it without pausing so we can see what it looks like. Then, go ahead and type it in the chat. What would you think that is?
Let us go ahead and try example number one without pausing. I made a laundromat and authored the book Run Machine one said that if you fulfill the wishes of your employees, the internal for your vision. What is your vision that by telehealth your vision is to keep players like Mike within the business and accelerate company growth so that one day you can become a world leader in nutritional products and services?
‘’But what’s stopping you from achieving this vision today? One Catholic senior police will persist if you don’t remove the stack ranking system within vitality health. as this will lead to disengaged employees, no innovation to the business, and a high turnover rate. It will result in a large financial impact on vitality. But as long as you never forget that every one of you plays a star, we believe that you’ll always be successful in structure HR policies training, assessing, and retaining.”
Different audiences
Brenden Kumarswamy: I usually get three types of audiences in response to the rapid reading of the above paragraphs without any pause. Audience number one is going to say something like this. Oh, Brenden, that was like a seven, or an eight out of ten. That was great. You’re a great speaker. It’s probably people who have been watching my YouTube videos.
Audience number two, or people are a bit more honest with me. They would say something like, well, Brenden, that was like a three. That was like a five. That was a six. He spoke way too quickly.
Then you get audience number three. So audience step three was the Sunday morning I remember I was waking up. And I was giving a workshop for a bunch of teenage girls between the ages of nine and 16. And I came to that workshop. And I asked them the same question. I said, girls, what did you think of this one to 10? And I got tumbleweeds, nobody answered the question. There’s one person in the back who raises their hand, they go finally, after three hours of yelling at these people, I finally get a hand raise.
So I asked her, what did she think of the presentation? And she looks at me and goes five points. I asked why’d you give me five out of 10? Julia said, well, Brenden, you’re too quick and fast. Julia was right. I went way too quickly with the slides. The points were too fast. But I ask the same question to all of you. That question is, what if I presented the same information with pauses with silences? How would it be different? How would the content change? How would the delivery change?
Amic Kolandari, author of the book run machine once said, that if you fulfill the wishes of your employees, they, in turn, will fulfill your vision.
But what is your vision of vitality health? Your vision is to keep players within the business and accelerate company growth. That way, one day, you can become a world leader in nutritional products and services. But what’s stopping you from achieving this mission today?
If conflicts between employees persist, it will result in disengaged employees and no innovation. Employees we cherished will start to leave the company.
Finally, high turnover and a large financial impact on the business. Employees will start to leave in droves.
The employee is our STAR
But, as long as we never forget that every single one of our employees is a star. We believe that as a flow consulting group that you’ll always be successful. That is why we are proud and excited to present our star recommendation. This is about
- Structuring each of our policies for success,
- Training, and communicating to all stakeholders
- Assessing for success, and
- Retaining to progress.
Why do we not use pauses?
Brenden Kumarswamy: Why do we not use silence? We know pausing is important. Everyone’s doing them. All of our best speakers do them. So, why don’t we pause effectively in our presentations? The answer is pretty simple. It’s right here. Think about it. Most of the presentations you have given your life or at school. And on top of that, you don’t wake up one morning and say let me go and present all day for fun. Nobody says that.
What happens is that your high school teacher looks at you and says I need you to present a topic on the Renaissance. And you are sitting there thinking what a renaissance is. Is that like a fruit? Then you find out later? That is a period in history. So, you go back to the drawing board. You say hey, I want to deliver a great presentation. You come up with all these great ideas. You have all this excitement, and then you present to a buzzkill of an audience. And it’s not their fault.
Fear of communication
Brenden Kumarswamy: They are a bunch of high schoolers. And, they don’t want to be there in that setting. That is where the fear of communication comes from. Every time we are presenting to audiences who don’t want to hear us. We are always communicating our message to people who don’t want to be there. All your school presentations are exactly like that.
So, when you pause, the opposite reaction happens. You are scared. And we all are scared. That is because our audiences are always not willing to listen, especially in high school, when it’s not their fault. That’s what the challenge ensues. That’s where the challenge is around communication. And that is the crux of the issue.
Master silence
Focus on practicing long pauses
Exceptional presenters use silence as a weapon to make their presentations better. To work on that, all you gotta do is practice long pauses and stairs. Now give a great example of this. One of my friends, Kevin, used to do competitions back in university. We used to present in front of all these executives.
So, the way that we would practice this is me and him would stand in front of a classroom. And then the first couple of seconds, I would just pause him a little bit. But, then what I would do is I would pause them for a very long period.
So he’s sitting there thinking, Oh, Brenden, such a dumb exercise. So he pauses for two seconds. Then he pauses for 10 seconds. Then after 15 seconds, he starts to look away, and I go, Kevin, you gotta keep looking at me. And then I make them pause for 40 seconds. 60 seconds later, after two minutes, he’s twitching on the floor. That’s just a joke.
Have mastery over your pause
But, the point I want to drive is that the best communicators on the planet can pause forever. Never make it seem awkward at all. So if you want to learn how to master pauses for five seconds in a presentation, learn to pause for five minutes. So, how does that work?
The way that works is you go up to somebody that you love, you go up to someone that you care about that cares about you, the kids, but when you do, you sit down with them, and you pause for five minutes. Most people can’t last that long. They can’t last for five minutes. But if you want to be exceptional, if you want to get better at pausing, you need to learn to pause for very long periods.
Master umms and ahs
Brenden Kumarswamy: Now, let’s go into umms and ahhs. How do we get rid of the pesky words in our vocabulary? You know, like, how do you get rid of that stuff? The way you get rid of them is by understanding the following.
We need to understand the mindset between what great speakers are doing and what we’re not. By under looking at this text, looking at the screen, because it’s a much better idea on how to filter through all of this. Let’s get started.
Average speaker versus exceptional speaker
Here is a comparison of an average speaker and an exceptional speaker. Both of them forget what to say next. I don’t have an amazing memory. I don’t know what I’m going to say next as much as you do. Naturally, both are going to think about it. It gets me nervous. What am I supposed to say next? I’m not sure. So we start to get nervous, but the difference lies somewhere else.
But the average speaker forgets what they want to say next, thinks about it, and gets nervous. And then, say filler words such as uh, oh, I mean, to buy time. The exceptional speakers also forget what they want to say next. So naturally, they think about it and they get nervous. But they say nothing to buy time. And that’s the secret.
Exceptional speakers pause correctly
Exceptional presenters replace their arms and awkward silences. So those of you realize the first or the second tip that I shared or the same because the better that you get at pausing and your presentations, the better you get at using more silences, the fewer filler words that you’ll say. So you’re better off saying nothing and maintaining eye contact with the audience like so. Versus saying filler words deviating by contract.
So, now that we understand that, how do we practice this? How do we get better at pausing and will sing fewer filler words? So this sentence gives you an example of how to practice this. The sentence is –John loves apples, he has one every day to keep the doctor away.
So when you start practicing umms and ahhs, when you start practicing filler words and getting rid of them, it’s very challenging. Because you can’t control it. So the beginning is gonna sound something like this. John loves apples, ah, ah, um he has one every day and has to keep the doctor away.
Forced pause
Brenden Kumarswamy: But then the next level is saying, Okay, how do I pause at any cost? John loves Ummm [forced pause] apples. He has one every day Ummm [forced pause] to keep the doctor away. Notice that here I’m forcing myself to pause. That’s the technique. That’s the trick. And if you do that, I think you’ll be exceptional at communication. But understand that it takes time.
I didn’t master my umms and ahhs right away. You have to keep practicing over and over again until you get it right. And then as you get better as a speaker, you can start to even use silence. Silence is more impactful in your presentations.
So, I’m sure a lot of you are thinking right now. Oh, well, you know, Brenden, that’s easy for you to say, you know, you’re a speaker, you’re doing all these things. How am I supposed to get better at this? So let me give you some words of encouragement.
A lot of people when they look at the slide and how I present it, they say that I am such a good improviser. He just showed up, and he improvised this amazing presentation. That’s how he got really good. But here is what you don’t know.
The pause makes it look new
Everything I do in this presentation is artificial. I have presented this one slide 200 times. I am telling you this for two reasons. One, because it’s important and you can do it too. And if you still don’t believe me, I’ll tell you the secret. For this slide, I do the same thing all the time, I pause for three seconds. I say the image collage record, if you feel the wishes of the thing, they’ll fulfill your life.
Then I asked them, what’s stopping you from achieving division? point number one to the second pause, point number two, two-second pause, point number three, two-second pause. Everything is made in advance. Nothing’s improvised to you. Which means you could do the same thing.
Just pause strategically
You could look at all your presentations, present the same thing over and over again. Pause at specific moments of the presentation. And that’s it, you’re done. And if you just applied these two tips that I’ve shared with you today, you’ll be an amazing communicator. If you do that, I think you’ll be incredible.
Master your audience
So, then let me just go through the audience’s mastery. I want you all to imagine this beautiful rose. It is so elegant, so beautiful, and lovely. Roses mean different things to different people. It means respect. To others, it means to love, and bromance, with that clear image of a rose in your head, let’s talk about audience mastery.
Engage your audience
The keynote presentations are simple. Everyone, the quality of your presentation lives and dies by how engaged your audiences are. Think about this presentation. A lot of you have meetings, clients’, master’s exam schedules, commitments. So how do we as speakers break through the noise? How do we break through the noise as speakers?
A lot of you are looking at this Rosener asking, why is a consultant at IBM sharing a rose on his crib? The answer is very simple. Two reasons, one, so I can tell you that it’s fun, and I wanted to do it. But the second reason was to tell you a story.
When I was at university, I gave workshops on this topic to these young girls. I didn’t know how to get them interested in speaking to me. I was presenting in front of these 15-year-old girls. They didn’t want to listen to anything about communication. So what did I do? I brought a bouquet of roses to the presentation. They looked at me and said, wow, Brenden, you’re so incredible. And I was able to get their attention.
The point I want to drive here is not the roses but something else. The more you understand your audience, the better you’ll be diving into their psychology. That is the key to a successful presentation to your audience.
Know more about your audience and goal
Here are three easy questions you can ask yourself before you take a quick commercial break.
01. What is the goal of your presentation?
You should find out what you are trying to achieve with a presentation. Knowing what you’re trying to sell is very different from teaching somebody.
02. Who is your audience?
Find out what their needs and expectations are. The way that you speak to different people will change if that person is a five-year-old girl or a 15-year-old woman.
03. How do you meet their needs in a way that gets them excited to talk about your ideas?
But it’s hard to get people excited to hear you.
Master eye contact
Eye contact is fairly simple in the virtual world. All you gotta do is keep your eyes on the camera lens. Notice how your eyes are always staring at the lens directly. So, I could look anywhere else and I don’t seem credible. You have to keep your eyes on the lens at all times. That’s how you become successful. And then you’ll win.
Master Mirroring
Now let’s talk about mirrors. Imagine the following scenario. Let’s say you’re waking up in the morning, getting ready for work and different things in your life. You look at a mirror because naturally, you have to go to the bathroom to get ready for the day.
Think of energies
There are two energies which will show up that day. Number one, you’ll show up with positivity. You’ll go wow, today’s amazing. I get to see all these different things today, spend time with my family, and meet with people I love. Your days are amazing. And that energy gets projected onto everyone else around you.
But the opposite is also true. This day sucks. Oh my god, I gotta listen to this Brenden guy give a presentation that I got to spend time with my family. So, when we have negative energy, that energy also gets projected onto everyone else. So, the mirror you look at in the bathroom.
Is it just a mirror? It is the very thing that you are because as speakers we are members. We are mirrors, reflecting our own emotions to the audiences that we present to. So the question is very simple. Which emotions will you choose? Most speakers pick board when they project their end of the project and their passion onto everyone else. What I want to push today is I have watched you just start thinking about calmness and excitement. Those emotions that you’re feeling on a day when you’re presenting are the emotions that your audiences will remember. That choice of which emotions to choose is entirely yours.
So, from this presentation, I can say that public speaking is a learned skill. You aren’t born with it. Leadership works in the same way as public speaking, through shared experience. I think you can go from the five-years-old kid I once was to the first presentation I gave with the suit and a tie. Let’s just say I didn’t end up being the communicator that I am. So that you too can be the champions of what you want to do in life, do incredible things with the art of public speaking.
Designhill: How to avoid getting nervous when speaking in public?
Brenden Kumarswamy: The fear of communication is normal. So, how do we change that? I’ll give you all one simple question that will help get rid of your fear of communication. It is a question nobody asks. But it’s a question you all need to ask. The question is, how would the world change if I was an exceptional communicator? How would the world change if I was an exceptional communicator?
If we start to ask that question, that is when the fear will start to go away. Because of the whole piece, the reason why we want a master is much clearer. And that’s how we defeat fear.
Designhill: How can we break away from the fear of public speaking?
Brenden Kumarswamy: Just ask yourself the question. How would the world change if I was an exceptional communicator? I think it is through those conversations that we start to understand things. The fear will always be there. It’s never going to go away. Like today I was presenting and I burped a couple of times. I sneezed a couple of times as it happened. That’s life, life goes on.
But the difference is that your message needs to be more important than fear. If what you have to share with the world is more important than the fear that is associated with it, your message will always be your fear. That’s what I teach my clients all the time. When you understand what your message is and what your fear is, your fear will be there. But your fear will always lose to the message. And as long as you know what the message is, you will always be successful.
Designhill: What to do when sometimes the nerves kick in, the mind gets closed?
Brenden Kumarswamy: The biggest issue with most speakers is they keep presenting new topics. So let’s say you take Tony Robbins, I’m sure everyone in this room knows who Tony Robbins is or Gary Vaynerchuk. It’s all the same thing. Bernie Brown. They present the same thing 200 times. They don’t present different speeches.
Gary Vaynerchuk’s speeches are always the same. It sounds like this – “Hey, guys, I grew up in the Soviet Union and came to the states to build the business. Do you have any questions?” For me, it’s always the same thing. But that is why he is such a good communicator.
The reason why most of us aren’t good is that we are not willing to present one thing 100 times. Think of any skill you want to learn. Let’s say you want to learn how to play the piano or any instrument. It is a lot easier for you to learn an instrument if you practice one song 100 times, versus 100 different songs. So, the same analogy applies to public speaking, my keynote I gave to you today.
Do you know how many times I presented that keynote, that same keynote 300 times? That is why it sounds good. Even if I see nobody on the screen, still I show up with a lot of energy because I have just done it like clockwork. So I just imagine those people on the other side of the screen, they just go perfect. I will present it like it’s a keynote. Like these 110 people were in the same room.
You should figure out the repeatable presentation. What is the one topic that you can present 100 times that will make you exceptional quickly? In the same way, when you cut vegetables, you might cut yourself. But after 100 times, you cut the same vegetable easily.
Designhill: Do you prefer practicing what you’re about to say before a speech, or do you prefer letting it out more naturally?
Brenden Kumarswamy: I would say both. I don’t think there is one right answer. But I do think that if you have one presentation, and you present that a lot of times, it’ll come naturally. So like today, I’ve presented 300 times. It comes up naturally because I just know when to pause. I don’t want to do this and that.
So, just figure out one presentation that you are good at. And that over time, it will come out naturally for what you want to share.
Designhill:What are your tips when it comes to spontaneous public speaking?
Do random work exercise
Brenden Kumarswamy: The way this works is very simple. I’ll give you a quick strategy. It’s called the random word exercise. You pick a random word, any word, and you create a random presentation out of it simply. I’ll give you a quick example. You want to give me a quick word. Just give me a word.
Okay, the word is mouse. Now, I need to create a presentation based on the word mouse. So, now look how it sounds. ‘It is about playing a game of cat and mouse. Are you the person who’s doing it? Are you a cat? Or, are you the mice that are always getting caught? It’s always getting chased. It’s always being followed. It’s always being caught.
So, the next time you wake up, ask yourself if you want to be the mouse? Or, do you want to be a cat? Do you want to be the person who needs life to the fullest? The person who decides to control what they want to do in life? Or, do you want to be the person who’s always getting caught? So, I asked you all to be the cat’s meow. ‘
That is a random word exercise. I was just given a random word mouse and I gave a quick presentation. I’ve done this exercise 3000 times. That’s why I’m good at it. You don’t need to be an expert like me. I teach my clients to do five minutes a day. Pick five random words. If you do them for a year, you’ll have done the exercise 1500 times. That’s how you master spontaneous speeches and make them muscle. It’s like going to a gym every day, five minutes a day.
Designhill: How do you avoid a monotone type of delivery?
Brenden Kumarswamy: The answer is simple. Get feedback. Have somebody, whether it’s a coach or friend, tell you that you are monotone. When I started doing virtual presentations, I sucked. It was really weird for me because there’s nobody on the screen. I can’t talk to anybody like I do in my live workshops. So, have other people who can say, hey, it is not working. Let’s change your tone. Let me give you feedback, record something for me and work on it super simple.
Watch your tone and other speakers and try to copy the way that they speak. So notice I can get high. But I can also get low. That is practice. You work on different vocal tones. And then over time, you’ll find something that works for you.
Designhill: How to make nervousness less noticeable?
Brenden Kumarswamy: I think for me it’s presenting the same thing 100 times. You know, the first time when you present something, you’re always going to be nervous. But if it is presented 100 times, I think you’ll be a lot less nervous, and they just won’t show as much. That is because you’ll know what you’re talking about, or doing. And then over time, you’ll become a master of what you want to do.
Designhill: How can you speak confidently even if you’re not fluent speaking in English?
Brenden Kumarswamy: I’ll give you the secret sauce because I speak three languages. I speak English, French, and Tamil. But I keynote in French I give presentations in French too, even if it’s not my first language, what’s the secret? I’ll give you guys a three-part framework. I have the video on this on my YouTube channel that you can check out.
Start with your first language
But I’ll give you the three-part framework now. Number one is to write the speech in your first language. Your first language is the one you understand the culture. So, let’s say you’re someone from India, and your first language is Hindi.
Then, translate it into the language you need to speak. So, let’s say English is your second language. Since Hindi is your first language, write it in Hindi and translate it into English, even the Hindi numbers, if there are any. Then, present the script in English to native speakers. So go to somebody whose first language is English and say, “Correct my vocabulary.”
If you do these three things, you’ll be super good. That’s what I did. I struggled a lot in French. So I wrote it in English first, then translated it into French. And then I would present them to native speakers who speak French, who live in Montreal, and they correct me on the vocabulary. That’s the secret.
Designhill: How do you manage your pronunciation without murmurs and trembles?
Brenden Kumarswamy: Do the harder thing. So for me, the way I overcame my trembling was to start karaoke. I just sing languages. I just have fun because I’m not a good singer. What this does is it takes you out of your comfort zone. You can start to present in languages you don’t know. So, I can speak in five languages like Italian, Korean, Japanese, English, Mandarin, right now switching from one to another.
Practice pronunciations
I don’t speak most of these languages. But because I’m willing to try to pronounce those words, I am willing to go out of my comfort zone. It is much easier for me to pronounce my words in my first language. So practice pronouncing words in languages you don’t understand. And then bring those lessons back into the languages you need to present them in. Super simple.
Designhill: What do you love about the art of communication and what career mistake you made and learned from them?
Brenden Kumarswamy: What I love about communication is the catalyst for ideas. If you have an idea, and you’re amazing at communication, you’ll reach 1000 times more people. That’s the thing that I love about communication, that’s the thing. It’s not easy. But if you master it, you could give presentations like me. Designhill will come to want you to give a presentation to 200 people. And that’s the magic of communication.
If you’re not good at public speaking, you can’t talk to 100 people, you can talk to one person, two people, five people. If you’re a master at communication, you can talk to 100 great leaders who know how to communicate properly. Most of us need to be exceptional communicators. So learn it, prioritize it, invest in it, so that you can get good at it.
Designhill: How to put over a persuasive speech without sounding persuasive?
Brenden Kumarswamy: To be persuasive, you should talk to your audience. Understand your messages, and have dinner with the people you want to speak to. Look at Designhill. They’ve built something incredible here. So, instead of making their commercials look boring, they make them fun. They make them interesting so that you want to buy their services. So, I think understanding who you want to speak to is essential. having dinner with them, asking them questions. If you were to explain your idea back to me, or my idea back, how would you explain your idea? So, have dinner conversation.
Designhill: How to be effective when reading from a strip that was prepared from prior?
Brenden Kumarswamy: I have presented 100 times. Then, we also get feedback from people who aren’t afraid to tell you where you are bored.
Designhill: Any tips in terms of audience lack of attention towards your speech?
Brenden Kumarswamy: It’s always the core issue. You are not presenting the same speech 100 times. This is because you can’t expect your audience to be interested in what you have to say. If you haven’t presented the speech at least 10 times. Think about it.
Master one topic
Let’s say you give a school presentation, you only present it one time. The reason you’ll be presented one time is that you have to move on to the next school presentation. The same thing at work. You have a status meeting, a boardroom meeting. That’s why I tell clients all the time, you cannot master communication in the boardroom, because you’re always changing your topics. You need to master one topic and get good at that talk. That’s the key.
Designhill: What should you do if you forget a part of your speech?
Brenden Kumarswamy: You don’t want to do umms and ahhs in your speech. Instead, you take a big pause or try to cover part of the story. I think the key is that the stakes are gonna happen. I have made a bunch of mistakes in today’s presentation. Did I sneeze, oh, my God by accident, like a bunch of mistakes? Nobody cares. There are still 100 people on this call, they still want to listen to what I have to say.
Focus on your core message
I think what matters is that you focus on the core message. What is the idea you want to share? Share that a couple of more times. And that way, you’ll start to find public speaking fun and get a lot of joy from it. This is because a lot of us find public speaking daunting. They also resume as this is fun.
They start saying that let’s figure out different ways to make this more interesting. Oh, I’ve never been to a design conference. Maybe this is going to be different. There’s somebody who was like meeting me 10 minutes before it was interesting. So, there are always new dynamics. So, you have to start to fall in love with that process.
Designhill: What is more important, content or delivering key?
Brenden Kumarswamy: Think about all of your high school teachers. How much do you remember from high school? Probably not a lot. Was the issue content or delivering? Probably, it was not content. Most high school teachers have bachelor’s degrees or master’s degrees. They are very educated and so content is not the problem.
How to deliver matters a lot
If 1% of your content is good, you need to spend 99% figuring out how to deliver it. You can have the best content in the world. But if nobody retains anything, they will remember anything. Does nobody take action on anything that you are saying that was the point in giving the presentation in the first place?
Understand that the delivery is what allows you to share an idea and a message in a way that people want to hear. That is my take.
So, these are the points you must consider while preparing to speak in front of your audience. All you need to do is to practice these tips for months to achieve mastery over nervousness and other problems.
Wrapping Up
Public speaking is an art and it requires practice to be master of grabbing your audience’s attention from start to finish. Communication expert Brenden Kumaraswamy emphasizes keeping your eye contact, silences, and removing those filler words. He highlights the importance of pause while speaking to the audience.