Increasing your authority is all well and good. However, you will still benefit greatly from simply being able to deliver a moving speech or being able to communicate what people need to do. Communication is particularly important because it is what will prevent avoidable mistakes. If you cannot communicate what needs to be done or why, people will set about completing the wrong task, and with the best will in the world, there will be mistakes.
Likewise, charisma and charm will instantly help convey your passion and get people on board. You aim to become a better orator and better communicate your vision for your team and why it matters. So how do you go about doing this?
How to Deliver a Great Speech
Vision and passion again come up top here because they will help you come across as someone who truly believes in what you’re saying. As soon as you believe what you’re saying, this will come across in how you do everything. It will show in your expression, it will show in the content of what you are saying, and it will show in the way you move about up front and gesticulate.
Those gestures are important too. The gesture is how you move your hands and body as you speak, and when you do it right, it can make a massive difference to how charming and convincing you seem. The most charismatic people in the world all get this right. When you can move your hands around and use big body language, you take up more space, making people more interested and engaged with what you’re saying. But you also demonstrate more conviction and congruence.
This is the opposite of coming across as the shrinking wallflower who is perhaps embarrassed or shy about what they’re saying. What can you do next to demonstrate more confidence in your words? Slow down! Showing confidence is very important because, as mentioned – you are a barometer for the mood of your team. If you panic, then so too will everyone else. If you look confident, then people will have faith in what you’re saying because you have that faith.
Slowing down will instantly help you to come across as more confident because we naturally speak quicker when we’re nervous. What’s more, slowing down will make what you’re saying easier to follow. It will give you time to think of your next statement and make you appear objectively more intelligent. It even makes your voice sound deeper and helps it to project better.
Something else subtle is going on here, too, and that’s that speaking too quickly can make you appear like you’re trying to get everything out quickly because you’re not sure people will want to listen for long. Also, speaking very fast, it might seem like you’re trying to get it all out before you get cut off.
Speaking too fast is especially evident when it comes to telling stories: someone very confident and a natural storyteller will start by gradually setting the scene and creating the context for their story. They will pause for dramatic effect and build up to the big reveals and punch lines. Think back to the people who have held court. They all will have used this effect.
He will often start with some question or statement and then leave a deliberate pause – with a gaze that appears to look through the camera – before following that statement up. This is powerful stuff, and you’ll find that slowing down like this and introducing silences is nerve-wracking at first. That’s exactly why it takes confidence and how it will make you appear more confident if you start employing it as a technique.
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