TEDXTalk is one of the typical examples for any program sharing about Public speaking skills or Presentation skills. Behind a session of sharing in 20 minutes, the training speaker team from TED must always support, recommend preparation, practicing for the speaker in the best way, to make sure the presentation is expressed the most effectively and especially. So, these coaches like Gina Barnett, Micheal Weitz and Abigail Tenenbaum from TED have what kind of tips for the speakers before they are on stage?
1. Drink water 15 minutes before present?
If you feel dry in your throat when you have to speak too much then you should drink some water 15 minutes before getting started. Because when your throat is dried and speaks directly to the micro, the sound of swallowing saliva to soothe your throat will get into the micro and makes the sound effect of your voice when expressing will be much decreased. Besides, when you close your mouth, don’t let your tongue touch the upper palate to avoid the sound like you smack the lips.
2. Prepare the exciting spirit.
In a short waiting period, use it to motivate yourself and avoid asking yourself things like “if I forget A,B,C,…”. Instead, talk to yourself: “I’m so excited”, “everyone will love my speech”, “ I can’t wait any longer to share these things with everyone”,… Basically, make yourself feel confident for any reason at the moment before getting on stage.
3. Know how to navigate your worries
You know, when you worry, your body suddenly has an “energy” running all over your body and makes you restless. If you already have this kind of energy, navigate it to do activities you feel excited about. You can come and shake hands with someone or simply find a corner without anybody behind the stage, put on the earphones, and dance for a while like a TED’s speaker used to do.
4. Focus on regulating breathing.
Everybody says that you should “take a deep breath” when you worry, right? When you are worried or afraid, your breath is usually shallow and you don’t take enough oxygen for your body, so that, more and more, you feel dizzy and uncomfortable. You should do the opposite, regulating your breath to control the unwarranted fear. After only 3 to 4 deep breaths, you feel that you are more focused and comfortable to start your presentation.
5.Pay attention to repetitive unconscious gestures
When you worry, your body has unconscious gestures as keeping on changing the body’s center from leg to leg or your hands go up and down and each person has a different weird gesture when they are worried. Those gestures make listeners easy to distract from what you are sharing. How to avoid this? Practice more and more in front of many people and ask them to show you when you have strange gestures and you have to be self-awarded and adjust for more suitable.
6. Having a purpose for your movement on stage
You should move on the stage but you shouldn’t walk on it. The fact that you go back and forth unconsciously is like you are shaking on the stage, not good at all. So, make a plan for your movement on stage, each time you move around which has a certain purpose creating the effect on your audience. A small tip from coach Gina Barnett is you should line newspapers on the stage when you practice, you will see how distracted the unconscious movements are and make a plan for it.
7. Use your tone to stress what you say
You know, when studying language, we must care about the stress of the accent. A regular voice is easy to make your audience get bored. So, repeat your speech, take notes where you have to change your tone (lower your voice, stress or softly) to express the message more effectively.
8. Let your audience get used to your “accent”.
Each person has a special accent. Maybe you have a Hue accent, Quang Ngai accent, or Southern and Western accents. Some kind of accent, because of the characteristic of the place, is very hard to listen to. So, in the very first sentences, you should talk slowly and stress or release clearly in order for the listeners can get used to your accent.
9. Focus on everything around you
Another tip to make you less worried when getting on stage is to focus less on yourself. Pay attention to what is going on around you such as how many people wearing a pink shirt, what kind of shoes do they wear,… these observations will help you distract from your fear.
10. Remember that your audience likes you.
Even though you feel like the listeners are very far or scary, they will be on your side. They want you to have a good presentation when you are on stage, they want to listen to what you share.
11. And finally, although you’re well-prepared, ready to get the unexpected things will happen
You might forget something, some listener will make a loud phone call, some technical accident to your slideshow. So what? Pause for 1 second, take a deep breath and continue.
Source: TED Blog “A TED speaker coach shares 11 tips for right before you go on stage”
-H.D-
