Here are my observations of emcees, corporate trainers, entertainers and managers over the past few weeks.
Confidence is an infectious thing, demonstrated by people with positive attitude, healthy self-esteem and achievements. It is a quality of leaders that attracts followers and a following.
When presenters get nervous or unsure, they show their hesitation by stuttering or stammering. Common signs of anxiety or lack of preparedness include linguistic faux pas like er, erm, ah, okay, and alright. These meaningless suffices telescope the speaker’s lack of conviction and are hard to shake off once we program that into our language patterns.
So, how do we remedy these signs of being unsure?
1) Be prepared. Use a mind map to list your key points.
2) Focus on key points. Your sentences wrap around these critical points.
3) Be mindful of the relevance and power of conjunctions. These are sentence connectors like ‘and, because, but, however, therefore, so, as’.
4) After using a conjunction, pause for effect. Pauses increase tension, suspense and inform the audience that you are not finished with your sentence. The pause after the conjunction gives us permission to formulate our next idea, or link a thought.
5) Stop, pause and keep quiet (as least for a while). It helps us compose our thoughts, and us.
6) Rehearse your script. Repetition is a useful tool. Make sure you stick to your script, before you decide to be creative.
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