Stage presence is all about expressing your confidence through non-verbal means. This is achieved through three basic means:
a. The strong speaker is confident in his or her ability to overcome difficulties.
b. The strong speaker is knowledgeable about his or her topic.
c. The strong speaker knows how to harness nervous energy.
-- Eye contact:
2. Good eye contact communicates both personal confidence and respect for your audience. Great speakers make a point of engaging their audiences by moving around the stage and even sometimes around the audience—ensuring that they make eye contact with everyone. *If you do not have the courage to make eye contact with your audience, then the audience will quickly lose interest in your speech. (*Instructor Note:Tell them to focus on the tops of the audience’s heads.)
-- Movement:
3. Except for specialized briefings, a speaker should not be static. Movement, as well as gestures, is vital to maintaining speaker and audience enthusiasm for the presentation. The good speaker follows three principles in ensuring lively (but not irritating) movement.
a. Never turn your back on the audience while you are speaking (great speakers never turn their back, period). b. If you move about on the stage, make your movements purposeful. Don’t wander about in some geometric lazy . Use your movement to reinforce or emphasize a point. Use it in concert with gesture to draw the audience in or to push them away: depending on the effect that you are trying to achieve at a particular moment.
c. Be aware or beware of all potential obstacles on the stage (and off if you leave it). An embarrassing fall or trip will kill your concentration (or you).
-- Articulation & Vocal modulation:
4. According to Robert L. Montgomery, “some psychologists believe that the voice is only second to facial expressions in influencing others” (6). If this is true, it heightens the importance of this most difficult element of speech delivery—effective articulation and voice modulation.
a. Articulation: People tend to judge speakers based on their ability to pronounce words correctly and clearly. Unfortunately, this is not something that can be taught in three easy lessons. If you have difficulty pronouncing certain words you need to (in the short term) limit your vocal vocabulary. In the long term you need to acquaint yourself with the correct method of using a dictionary to facilitate proper pronunciation.
b. Voice modulation: Good speakers do three things with their voices to maintain audience interest.
1. Be enthusiastic. This will communicate your interest and excitement for your topic and help generate audience interest, too. 2. Exaggerate voice inflection. Inflection in conversational speaking is difficult to detect when you are speaking in front of an audience. Exaggerate inflection when you are making points or demonstrating some kind of emotion appropriate to the emotions that you are trying to stir in your audience.
3. Do not speak in a monotone! Monotone does not necessarily mean speaking in a low, droning voice. Some speakers speak in a loud monotone, and worse yet some yell in monotone. You must modulate your speaking at whatever volume that you are speaking at, whether loud, medium, or soft.
a. The strong speaker is confident in his or her ability to overcome difficulties.
b. The strong speaker is knowledgeable about his or her topic.
c. The strong speaker knows how to harness nervous energy.
-- Eye contact:
2. Good eye contact communicates both personal confidence and respect for your audience. Great speakers make a point of engaging their audiences by moving around the stage and even sometimes around the audience—ensuring that they make eye contact with everyone. *If you do not have the courage to make eye contact with your audience, then the audience will quickly lose interest in your speech. (*Instructor Note:Tell them to focus on the tops of the audience’s heads.)
-- Movement:
3. Except for specialized briefings, a speaker should not be static. Movement, as well as gestures, is vital to maintaining speaker and audience enthusiasm for the presentation. The good speaker follows three principles in ensuring lively (but not irritating) movement.
a. Never turn your back on the audience while you are speaking (great speakers never turn their back, period). b. If you move about on the stage, make your movements purposeful. Don’t wander about in some geometric lazy . Use your movement to reinforce or emphasize a point. Use it in concert with gesture to draw the audience in or to push them away: depending on the effect that you are trying to achieve at a particular moment.
c. Be aware or beware of all potential obstacles on the stage (and off if you leave it). An embarrassing fall or trip will kill your concentration (or you).
-- Articulation & Vocal modulation:
4. According to Robert L. Montgomery, “some psychologists believe that the voice is only second to facial expressions in influencing others” (6). If this is true, it heightens the importance of this most difficult element of speech delivery—effective articulation and voice modulation.
a. Articulation: People tend to judge speakers based on their ability to pronounce words correctly and clearly. Unfortunately, this is not something that can be taught in three easy lessons. If you have difficulty pronouncing certain words you need to (in the short term) limit your vocal vocabulary. In the long term you need to acquaint yourself with the correct method of using a dictionary to facilitate proper pronunciation.
b. Voice modulation: Good speakers do three things with their voices to maintain audience interest.
1. Be enthusiastic. This will communicate your interest and excitement for your topic and help generate audience interest, too. 2. Exaggerate voice inflection. Inflection in conversational speaking is difficult to detect when you are speaking in front of an audience. Exaggerate inflection when you are making points or demonstrating some kind of emotion appropriate to the emotions that you are trying to stir in your audience.
3. Do not speak in a monotone! Monotone does not necessarily mean speaking in a low, droning voice. Some speakers speak in a loud monotone, and worse yet some yell in monotone. You must modulate your speaking at whatever volume that you are speaking at, whether loud, medium, or soft.
Student of Rai Business School -New Delhi
Sanjeev Kumar Singh
No comments:
Post a Comment