Public Speaking: Make It Move to Make It Memorable

While I cannot take credit for the title of this article, those words have haunted me since I discovered them a few months ago in which the writer was discussing animating your PowerPoint presentations, certainly good advice. I was fascinated by those words because movement in public speaking is vital if you want to keep the attention of your audience on you. What is fascinating about public speaking is that if you don’t move, then your listeners will.

The question is: do you want your audience moving, checking their iPods, their watches, or even their email, or do you want their attention on you?

The answer is obvious: you want their attention on you.

Part of the secret in keeping your audience riveted to their seats is not only in the vocal variety of your voice, as well as your facial expression and body language, but also in the movement of your entire body. What this means is moving, walking, or changing your stance.

If you stand perfectly still either at a lectern or generally on a stage, then your rigidity will come through in your delivery. That is one of the reasons some audiences become fidgety. My advice is that you change positions with your body weight from one leg to the other if indeed you are at a lectern. If you choose not to use a lectern, which is most likely the case in a true presentation, you should walk, you should move, you should use your body to help express what you are saying.

By no means does this mean continual movement and it certainly doesn’t mean to pace. You may walk towards one side of the stage, for instance, stop, speak for a bit and then move to another area. There is no hard and fast rule.

The easiest way to accomplish good movement is to treat your audience as if you were having a conversation in your living room. If you were sitting in a room filled with people, you would be turning your body from one direction to another in order to acknowledge all those in attendance. Were you standing in a like situation, again you might step back at one point or you might step forward or to the side. In normal conversation, we all do this but we don’t think about.

In public speaking, it is important to remember that if you don't move, your audience will. Treat your audience as if you were in conversation, use your body to help express what you are saying, and ‘make it move to make it memorable.’