• Discover effective ways to start your speech
• Understand how to use body language and gestures to enhance your message
• Understand how varying your voice can make your message more impactful
• Recognize what types of language to avoid in your speeches

Starting Your Speech

The introductory remarks of a speech have the power to captivate or lose the audience’s attention, setting the tone and establishing the speaker’s connection with the audience. Effective opening comments can significantly influence the overall impact and reception of a speech.

In a chapter on speaking, Management Communication author James O’Rourke tells the story of a plant controller who was asked to make a five-minute presentation about his value to the company. In an attempt to tap into the imagination of the audience of eighteen senior executives, the controller opened with a race car metaphor. After four sentences, he was cut off and asked to leave the room. With this type of pressure, what’s a speaker to do?

Often, the best option is to forget the introduction until you know what it’s introducing—until you have completed a full draft of your whole speech. That is, don’t force an introduction, and don’t become too invested in your first idea. Write a draft opening and allow additional options to emerge as you work through the research (including audience research) and content development process. The dual objectives are to capture your audience’s attention and to set the stage for your speech. Your opening should reflect your stated intent and be an accurate indication of what will follow—the main substance of your speech. Here are some effective ways to open a speech:

1. Quote. Use a relevant quote to set the tone for the speech.
2. “What if?” or, similarly, “Imagine.” Asking a “what if” or “imagine” question immediately engages your audience and invites them to be a part of the creative process.
3. Question. Posing a question engages the brain and prompts an instinctive answer, whether internal or verbalized.
4. Silence. A strategic silence of two to ten seconds creates an additional level of attention and expectation. The caveat: you had better be able to deliver!
5. Statistic. A powerful, relevant statistic can convey a key idea with impact and evoke emotion.
6. Statement. An emphatic phrase or statement can be used to create a sense of drama and anticipation.

How NOT to Open

Starting with some variation of “thank you for inviting me” or “today I’m going to be talking about” won’t engage your audience right away. If your audience isn’t invested from the beginning, the point of your speech may never really be heard.

Opening comments need to share the purpose of the speech, your credibility, and the main themes of what you will talk about. Consider your opening as both a brief introduction of you and your speech. 

Gestures

One of the essential rules, and success factors, for public speaking is authenticity. This is as true for your nonverbal language as it is of the words you say and the ideas you express. Body language and gestures are a form of expression and can be either meaningful or distracting. Toastmasters International believes that “gestures are probably the most evocative form of nonverbal communication a speaker can employ.”^[1] In their Gestures: Your Body Speaks publication, they identify the following seven benefits of incorporating gestures into your speech:^[2]

1. Clarify and support your words
2. Dramatize your ideas
3. Lend emphasis and vitality to the spoken word
4. Help dissipate nervous tension
5. Function as visual aids
6. Stimulate audience participation
7. Are highly visible

The improper use of gestures can have just as powerful an effect but will likely be detrimental. To avoid this, record yourself presenting and make sure your gestures are consistent with your words. When the two are telling different stories, you create confusion and lose credibility and rapport with the audience.

Body Language

Body language—how you dress as well as your mannerisms—is another powerful communication element. For perspective on this point, and a powerful speaking and life hack, watch social psychologist Amy Cuddy’s “Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are” TED Talk. The core idea is that we make judgments based on body language, and those judgments can predict meaningful life outcomes.

In one example cited, social scientist Alex Todorov found that one-second judgments of political candidates’ faces predict 70 percent of U.S. Senate and gubernatorial race outcomes.

What is perhaps more important, however, is that our body language reflects how we judge, think, and feel about ourselves. We can change not only how we are perceived but how we perceive ourselves by managing our body language. As a speaker, you must be conscious of, and cultivate, the presence you bring to your speech.

Adjusting Body Language and Gestures 

To quote Toastmasters International, “When you present a speech, you send two kinds of messages to your audience. While your voice is transmitting a verbal message, a vast amount of information is being visually conveyed by your appearance, your manner, and your physical behavior.”^[3] Your gestures, body movement, and eye contact are non-verbal elements of speaking that should reflect your personal communication style, match the audience, and align with the speaking environment. The key to leveraging your personal communication style well is to manage all three non-verbal elements so they don’t overpower either your audience or your words.

• Consider toning down your gestures in a smaller space, and instead put more emphasis on eye contact and vocal elements. If the room is a large auditorium filled with enthusiastic fans, you may want to increase your physical presence with gestures to better “fill” the space.
• Eye contact is also an important part of body language. Looking up and around the room shows you care about your audience while reading from a speech script could disengage them. Your audience came to be engaged by you, not listen to you read.
• Moving away from the speaking podium can show both confidence and competence during a speech. Make sure you have the room in your physical environment to actually move, and that this feels comfortable to you.

Rehearse hand gestures, movement, and eye contact so they become fluid and natural to you. Thoughtfully integrating nonverbal elements will reinforce rather than detract from your message. Remember that gestures and body language are most effective when they’re used as “visual punctuation.”

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