How to excel at public speaking

Have you ever been asked to deliver a presentation at a conference or to colleagues, but turned the opportunity down as you were nervous about it? These opportunities seem daunting but they are a fantastic way to boost your profile and to become a thought leader. To nail your next talk or presentation, consider the following questions.

Who is your audience?

Just like chemical reagents, every audience has needs and characteristics you will need to know to trigger a reaction.

Start by knowing how large your audience will be – and ask if you can get access to the list of attendees in advance if this is a formal event. As a rule of thumb, the larger your audience is, the more you’ll need to simplify your content and the harder maintaining audience attention may be. Knowing who is coming in advance can help here, by potentially cross-referencing your work with someone attending to give them a shoutout. Your audience research will also reveal the attitude of the audience towards your topic. Will it be curiosity, indifference or hostility?

Get to know when you’ll be speaking too. Audience dynamics are completely different if you’re speaking early in the morning or after a heavy lunch.

What is your central idea?

Think of an impactful speech as a juicy burger or nice sandwich. What’s inside a burger or sandwich is what defines it, otherwise we are only holding pieces of bread. What will be inside your speech, talk or presentation? What will be its central idea?

The tricky part is to outline this central idea in a single sentence that explains what the audience will remember from your speech and why they should come to listen to you. It will additionally be the axis around which your entire talk revolves. Your central idea may feature in your presentation’s title too.

If you are struggling to define your central idea, condense your talk outline to a paragraph first and then to a sentence. Good examples of a central idea include:

‘The chemistry of spices’ – ‘Why nuclear power is safe’ – ‘Cooking is chemistry’

What is your intention?

Any speech or presentation can have one of four primary purposes:

• Inform – Giving information to an audience, lectures, townhall updates or company presentations most often fall into this category.
• Persuade – Seeking approval for a grant, delivering a sales pitch or sharing stories to raise money.
• Entertain – Typically associated with humour and drama.
• Inspire – Seeking to uplift an audience’s spirit or motivate them into a course of action.

What do you want your audience to do after listening to you?

An impactful presentation will also have a clear, well-defined and audience-focused objective, such as ‘After listening to this, attendees will know how to use Schlenk glassware’.

How will you support the central idea?

One method is to build a clear and easy to follow structure, with an attention-grabbing introduction, a clear body supported by three main points and a conclusion. Beyond this, many types of structure are available to speakers:

• Chronological – Could be useful to explain how a specific chemical reaction works until it reaches its conclusion. Ideal for talking about past events and developments too.
• Zoom out–zoom in – Introducing the bigger picture of the topic discussed before zooming into specific components one at a time.
• Compare and contrast – Can be very effective in persuading an audience of the benefits of one approach over another.

Storytelling is another tool that can be leveraged when crafting any presentation. The hero of the story could be a product discussed, or even the concepts one is introducing to the audience, sharing their influence within a wider environment and concluding with their impact as the moral of the story.

Remember to simplify your talk to meet your audience’s level of knowledge. Analogies and metaphors using everyday objects can help. Effective visual aids will also play a part and a good rule to follow when designing slides is ‘less is more!’.

What should you do when you’re on stage?

If you are nervous about delivering a talk, use this technique to calm yourself before you speak:

• Stand straight with one hand on your stomach.
• Close your eyes, inhale deeply through the nose for three seconds and feel your stomach rise up.
• Hold your breath for four seconds.
• Exhale though the nose slowly over three to four seconds.
• Repeat a few times as needed.

A good rule of thumb is to speak at around 120 words per minute. You can use an app to help you match this cadence as you rehearse.

Finding your ideal speaking style will require practice and some experimentation, so don’t feel let down if you feel that your delivery could have been better, and don’t try to imitate someone’s else style.