r/PublicSpeaking

When there’s no time I prepare only 3 things

1. The one sentence I want people to remember tomorrow
2. My first line, by heart
3. My last line, by heart

Then I say the whole thing out loud once standing up.

If you got time write time in bullet points your key points

The middle I leave loose on purpose

When you know exactly how you start and how you end your head calms down and the rest comes out like a conversation.

What do you do when a talk lands on you last minute?

There's a popular post going around from someone with years of public speaking coaching listing what makes people magnetic. I'm not a coach, so instead of adding my own list, I went looking for what the research says. A few findings kept coming up, and most of them have less to do with performing well and more to do with how you make the other person feel.

1. Expressiveness counts more than polish. Psychologist Howard Friedman developed a measure of charisma based on nonverbal emotional expressiveness, how readily people show what they feel through their face, voice, and gestures. People who scored higher were rated as more charismatic and engaging. Flat, carefully controlled delivery tends to read as distant, even when the words are good. The upside is that expressiveness can be practiced, it's less about having a big personality and more about letting your reactions show instead of filtering them out.
2. Listening is half of being magnetic, and it's measurable. Research by Guy Itzchakov and Avraham Kluger found that when people talked to a high-quality listener, someone attentive, non-judgmental, and genuinely engaged, they felt less anxious, became less defensive, and reflected more deeply on their own views. People remember how they felt in your presence long after they forget what you said.
3. Depth beats endless small talk. A study by Matthias Mehl and colleagues recorded snippets of people's everyday conversations and found those who had more substantive conversations, and less small talk, reported higher wellbeing. Steering a chat toward something real, an opinion, a story, a question that matters, tends to make the interaction more memorable for both people.
4. Vocal variety holds attention. Speakers who vary their pace, pitch, and volume tend to be rated as more engaging than those with a monotone delivery, which is why the same story can land completely differently depending on how it's told.
5. Enthusiasm is contagious. Research on emotional contagion, the tendency for people to pick up the emotions of those around them, suggests that genuine energy about a topic spreads to listeners. Fake enthusiasm tends to be easy to spot, but real interest in what you're saying is hard to resist.

Which of these comes naturally to you, and which one do you think you're missing most in conversation?

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Edit: a bunch of people asked how to actually practice this, so here's the more concrete version:

1. Let your face and voice move with what you're saying. If something's funny, let it show. If it matters to you, let that come through instead of keeping a neutral tone.
2. Practice listening without planning your reply. When someone's talking, focus on understanding them rather than rehearsing what you'll say next, and ask one follow-up based on what they actually said.

For the research side of this, I've been using BeFreed on the walk to go through the listening and expressiveness studies properly, instead of another list of charisma hacks, matched to the one I'm weakest at, which for me is listening rather than talking. Learning that people feel less defensive with a good listener changed how I approach disagreements as much as small talk.

3. Ask one deeper question per conversation, something like "what's been the best part of your week" or "what got you into that," to move past surface-level talk.
4. Record yourself telling a short story and listen back for monotone stretches. Most people are surprised how flat they sound compared to how they feel, and noticing it once is often enough to change it.
5. Talk about things you genuinely care about. Enthusiasm you're faking is easy to spot, but real interest makes people lean in.

None of this requires being an extrovert or a natural performer. The research mostly points to things anyone can practice, showing what you feel, listening well, and going a little deeper than the usual small talk.

What's a conversation where someone made you feel genuinely heard, and what did they do differently from most people?

Hello everyone, yeasterday I had to read a short lecture on a web call for work. I had 2 hours to make a traning/presentation on a fairly complex topic, and I delivered it sitting at my desk on a web call.

I consider myself a calm speaker, I have experience in public speaking in front of an audience and my level of nervousness and anxiety are probably in the normal range for someone who works daily with people.

Still, yeasterday about an hour in I started to get short breath, and it almost triggered a mild panic attack. The first time it happened it was during the pandemic, but then all the aprtecipants had their webcam off and were silent, then I got in my head that I was boring and talking nonsense and I had a full on panic attack.

This time I asked the audience to keep the camera on and tried to engage them in the talk, asking questions and input. Still, the breath thing happened and I'm starting to think it's the sitting position that's messing with my breathing.

Are there techniques to breath correctly while speaking sitting? I tried pacing myself and not speaking too quickly, still I have a lot of stuff to say in a short time.

Have never even touched a microphone let alone stand up in front of a big crowd. Most public speaking was in college.

Any tips?

Imagine this. Someone asks you a question. You answer the question to the best of your abilities. You believe that the answer you offered up is a good one, that is why you offered it up. The other person dislikes your answer and demands a better one.

I have been in that position before and not really been sure how to answer it.

I have come up with a plan to deal with that, you tell me if you think it is a good plan.

If the person is equal or below you in the social hierarchy; 

That is the only response that I am willing to offer up, take it or leave it. 

Obviously, you do not want to talk that way to an authority, so if the person is above you in the social hierarchy; 

I am afraid I do not have a better answer, I wish I did. 

I messed up such an important presentation. It was our final year project idea defence and we had to get our idea approved. There were three of us in the group and we had prepared so well.. but we got confused at the last moment and everything we had prepared just went out the window. We couldn't explain our idea properly or get our points across. Out of all the groups there I genuinely feel like we were the worst. Our idea did get accepted but we were the only group that received so many suggestions from the professor and I just can't stop feeling bad about it. I feel so embarrassed and I honestly don't know how I'm going to face everyone at uni on Monday. I keep thinking that everyone's going to judge me and I felt the exact same way during the presentation too. It felt like everyone was watching and judging us and now I can't stop thinking about how badly it went.

Hey everyone!!

So I'm having this speech competition in which the topics are unknown and will be picked randomly from a bowl.. I get very nervous when I get on the stage in front of people.

My body and vocie starts shaking slightly and I rush the entire thing.. What should I do??