Educate, Energize, Entertain, and provide an experience for your audience

1. Use the Rule of 3. The most successful speakers limit their remarks to three major points. Here is where you use your signature stories (your own personal stories) to support your points and help people visualize what you are saying.

2. Every five to seven minutes, back up your facts with signature stories (about you or others). Stories are out there everywhere. Find them in stores, at restaurants, on the airplane, at home. People retain information better when they hear a story.

3. How quickly do you get to the core of your audiences problems and challenges? Skip what is between their ears and go straight to their hearts.

4. Practice pausing before and after important points. Dont be afraid to leave open space. The use of silence is a key requirement to becoming an effective speaker.

5. People delineate their thoughts visually. Speakers are to words as an artist is to a painting.

6. A good storyteller memorizes his experience, not his words. Tell your story and then involve the audience by reliving your experience with them. Then they are only a step away from their own experience. Thats connection!

7. For those of you who are more theatrical, open with some role-playing that relates to a specific message. Get your ideas from your own life or TV sitcoms.

8. Use analogies. They help your audience understand new ideas and situations by showing how these things are similar to something in their own lives. For instance, our lives will never be the same again because of September 11. The message: Life is impermanent and change is constant.

9. Be there fully for your audience. Although you have prepared your script, be in the moment. When you do this, you can adjust your presentation to meet the mood and energy of the group.

10. Risk being fully who you are. Be genuine. Display your enthusiasm for your audience. Have the courage to talk about uncomfortable things.

11. Demonstrate candor. Tell your truth. Be vulnerable. Be ethical. Share your mishaps.

12. Involve your audience. Speakers often get their best lines from the audience. Research shows that people retain more when they are involved. Have them work in pairs or small groups and share their stories and experiences.

13. Refer to people by their first names, if possible.