We're covering daily exercises to improve your public speaking skills this week. Follow me on Instagram: @masteryourtalk
1. The Random Word Exercise (0:54).
I love this exercise, because all you have to do is have someone give you a random word that is commonly used like apple, orange, location, and you have to make a 1-2 min presentation out of thin air from that 1 word. It’s a difficult exercise to master and only the best of the best of speakers can do this without breaking much of a sweat, it teaches you so many things at once, like how to think on your feet, embrace uncertainty and stress, and above all, if you get it right, you know that you’ll be the best presenter in town. Obviously, this is recorded so you might think I’m cheating, but I’ll demonstrate this exercise right now. Trees. You can do this exercise in as little as 5 minutes, good practice is 5 for 5. 5 words for 5 minutes of work, simple.
2. Forced Silence Drills (2:00).
This one’s great, because it focuses on one of the biggest challenges that people practicing public speaking have which is simply using silences as a tool in their toolbox rather than a burden or hassle to ruin their credibility as presenters. That’s why this drill is absolutely crucial to both understand the importance of silences in presentations, and using them properly. All you have to do is present something you’re working on with a partner, who points at you at any part of the presentation, forcing you to silence and to do that multiple times in the presentation so that if you decide to record it, which I recommend, you’ll be able to see that 1) you sound better with silences and 2) you can then strategically think about where to play silences in that presentation to make you exceptional in that presentation the next time you present it. This one’s tough to practice alone, thus I’d encourage you do this with someone else, ideally an accountability partner, but it is possible to do it alone, it just requires a lot of pre-preparation, like recording yourself making this sound “cluck” and replaying the audio and then presenting so whenever it clicks, much like the beep test, you’ll force yourself to silence.
3. The Endless Gaze (3:04).
When you get good at forced silence drills, usually partners pause you for 3-5 seconds, but if you want to push it further, you need to understand that the best speakers in the world, are able to pause for extremely long periods of time without showing any form of anxiety whatsoever, this is also true with stares. They can look into someone’s eyes for 30 seconds without looking nervous at all. To practice the endless gaze in presentations, all you need to do is during forced silence drills, have your partner pause for 10 seconds at a time, and make sure you’re the only person in the audience so they have to look at you during the pause, then do 12, 15, 20 seconds until your partner start showing signs of anxiety. I’m at a level where I can do this for minutes, if not hours at a time, so practicing the endless gaze will help you master your talk.
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You become what you consistently practice, so practice consistently what you want to become.
Public speaking, and more importantly, practicing it is such a pain, but I believe with these simple practical drills, you’ll be able to bring your public speaking game to the next level and master that talk of yours.
Send this to someone that you know is working on their public speaking ability and help them get where they want to be FASTER.
For business or one-on-one public speaking coaching inquiries, you can reach me at brendenkbusiness@gmail.com.
Special thanks to Maison Laporem for letting me use the space.
maisonleporem.com/