6. PAUSE: At critical points in your speech, pause long enough to make your listeners reflect on what has been said and to refocus their attention. The most difficult lesson a speaker ever learns is the lesson of judicious silence. And that is so because it is completely counterintuitive: it would seem that a speech should consist only of continuous talking. But every speech should have periods of intentional silence in it to jolt the auditors back into full focus. Silence in a speech builds great tension in the audience. Once the speaker learns that lesson of judicious silence, he will begin to realize the very great power of closing his mouth so his listeners can refocus in order to hear him again. Five seconds of silence will completely re-boot a dead audience. A fool chatters to a sleeping audience; a wise man shuts his mouth to wake them up.
7. DISTANCE: Stand near your listeners to establish an intimate speaking distance, and to avoid the perception of remoteness. Do not hide behind a lectern. Walk right up to them and speak to them as a father would speak to his children. When you stand close to your auditors, you violate their “space.” But you must violate their space in order to persuade or to convince them. They will never feel threatened as long as you stand (or hide) behind the barrier of the lectern.
8. IDIOSYNCRATIC PHRASING: Avoid sandwiching your syntactical units of speech with empty idiosyncratic phrasing, such as, “you know,” or “right?,” or with superfluous grunt words, such as, “er,” “ah,” “um,” or “and dah.” Speakers quickly lose their audiences when they fill their narratives with all those stuffers.
9. EYE CONTACT: Look at your audience members individually. Look directly at a particular person, holding your gaze there for a sufficient period of time to engage that person. Move that eye contact to another person and repeat the process during the entire speech. Do not stare at some imaginary spot on the floor just ahead of you or at the walls or the ceiling. Instead, actively look at your listeners. Make them uncomfortable with your eye contact in order to keep them focused on your speech. Never look from, say, left to right without pausing slightly to look directly ahead.
Always coordinate eye contact with gestures. Both of them are required simultaneously to give coherence to your speech. Disjointed and unconnected gestures not only look awkward; they also pull the auditor in two different directions at once because of the lack of visual coordination. The “eyes” tell a different story than the “hands.”
10. AMPLITUDE: Always speak in a somewhat constricted range of vocal amplitude. Avoid the extremes of shouting or whispering. In every case, do not bomb the target with a pillow wrapped around your munitions, i.e., do not make the “central point” of your speech in a muffled or attenuated - and hence, unintelligible - voice. The “punch line” should be delivered in a rather loud and well-articulated voice in order to make it understood and effective. If necessary, the “punch line” should be repeated to ensure that the audience gets the point of your speech. Be especially aware of extraneous noises when you deliver the “punch line.” A rude cough by someone in the audience that comes out just while you are making your most important point will smother comprehension in the audience. Always be aware of competing noises when you are giving a speech.
11. IDEAL SPEAKING VOICE: Find a comfortable speaking voice and use it. Avoid timbres that are either too high or too low. You will always know when your timbre is inappropriate because you will feel a great deal of strain on your voice when you speak with that unnatural voice.
Women, especially, should seek to avoid that “little girl” shrill voice that many people (especially men) perceive as irritating or nagging or whiney. Think of the simpering teenage girl chattering away rapidly in that eeky little head voice and you’ll know just what I mean.
Also to be avoided are the “shushing librarian,” argumentative, or scolding voices that serve only to force the auditor to concentrate on the relative “bitchiness” of the speaker,” rather than to allow the auditor to focus on the content of her speech. Such women would do well to cultivate the lower registers of their natural voices in order to produce pleasant and attractive timbres.
7. DISTANCE: Stand near your listeners to establish an intimate speaking distance, and to avoid the perception of remoteness. Do not hide behind a lectern. Walk right up to them and speak to them as a father would speak to his children. When you stand close to your auditors, you violate their “space.” But you must violate their space in order to persuade or to convince them. They will never feel threatened as long as you stand (or hide) behind the barrier of the lectern.
8. IDIOSYNCRATIC PHRASING: Avoid sandwiching your syntactical units of speech with empty idiosyncratic phrasing, such as, “you know,” or “right?,” or with superfluous grunt words, such as, “er,” “ah,” “um,” or “and dah.” Speakers quickly lose their audiences when they fill their narratives with all those stuffers.
9. EYE CONTACT: Look at your audience members individually. Look directly at a particular person, holding your gaze there for a sufficient period of time to engage that person. Move that eye contact to another person and repeat the process during the entire speech. Do not stare at some imaginary spot on the floor just ahead of you or at the walls or the ceiling. Instead, actively look at your listeners. Make them uncomfortable with your eye contact in order to keep them focused on your speech. Never look from, say, left to right without pausing slightly to look directly ahead.
Always coordinate eye contact with gestures. Both of them are required simultaneously to give coherence to your speech. Disjointed and unconnected gestures not only look awkward; they also pull the auditor in two different directions at once because of the lack of visual coordination. The “eyes” tell a different story than the “hands.”
10. AMPLITUDE: Always speak in a somewhat constricted range of vocal amplitude. Avoid the extremes of shouting or whispering. In every case, do not bomb the target with a pillow wrapped around your munitions, i.e., do not make the “central point” of your speech in a muffled or attenuated - and hence, unintelligible - voice. The “punch line” should be delivered in a rather loud and well-articulated voice in order to make it understood and effective. If necessary, the “punch line” should be repeated to ensure that the audience gets the point of your speech. Be especially aware of extraneous noises when you deliver the “punch line.” A rude cough by someone in the audience that comes out just while you are making your most important point will smother comprehension in the audience. Always be aware of competing noises when you are giving a speech.
11. IDEAL SPEAKING VOICE: Find a comfortable speaking voice and use it. Avoid timbres that are either too high or too low. You will always know when your timbre is inappropriate because you will feel a great deal of strain on your voice when you speak with that unnatural voice.
Women, especially, should seek to avoid that “little girl” shrill voice that many people (especially men) perceive as irritating or nagging or whiney. Think of the simpering teenage girl chattering away rapidly in that eeky little head voice and you’ll know just what I mean.
Also to be avoided are the “shushing librarian,” argumentative, or scolding voices that serve only to force the auditor to concentrate on the relative “bitchiness” of the speaker,” rather than to allow the auditor to focus on the content of her speech. Such women would do well to cultivate the lower registers of their natural voices in order to produce pleasant and attractive timbres.
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