Public speaking techniques

Learn my D.I.V.A. framework – a shortcut to all the important public speaking techniques

Hi, this is a very quick video about public speaking techniques. And as you can probably imagine, there are many of them. So what I want to do is summarize them in a framework that I use with my clients and customers. And it’s a framework that I first shared with people in my book, which is called How to be a Diva, D-I-V-A, in Public Speaking. And being a diva has nothing to do with being difficult or bitchy or hard to deal with or to work with, but it’s actually a framework for public speaking. So D stands for being dynamic as a speaker. I stands for being inspiring. V stands for being valuable, and A stands for being authentic. And so I’m going to run through those briefly now with a view to this question about public speaking techniques.

D stands for DYNAMIC

So let’s start with D. So D is about being dynamic. It means that when you’re speaking on stage or in front of that group or in the boardroom, you need to have a little bit of life and some energy in your presentation. Now there are lots of ways that you could deliver that, so that could be in the language that you use. It could be that you’re a particularly energetic person, so you’re very passionate and very energetic when you speak. It could be that you’re very interactive, so you have a lot of interaction. You ask questions. You get people’s feedback. That could be the way that you are dynamic. There’s a lot of different ways. It could be the way that you use your voice, could be that you pause a lot, could be that you change your pitch and you go up and down. Okay, there are a lot of ways to be a more dynamic speaker. And I think it’s down to the individual to decide what works for them in the environment that they speak in and also what kind of message they want to leave with their audience.

I means INSPIRING

I stands for being an inspiring speaker, and that’s about storytelling and using what I call you-focused language. You want to tell plenty stories, so you touch people’s hearts, their emotions, as well as their heads. And then you want to use the word you a lot more than you use the word I, because when you use I, I went here, I did this, it’s all about me, me, me, you’re creating a bit of a barrier between you and your audience. Whereas when you use the word you, it’s like you’re bringing them along on a journey with you, and it’s much more inclusive. So being inspiring as a speaker is about using that you language and telling stories to connect.

V is VALUABLE

V is about being valuable, so that’s about having a really good structure that you can use that’s tight, and it means that your presentation or your speech flows nicely. And it makes sense logically to your audience and to you when you’re delivering it.

A for being AUTHENTIC

And then finally, we’ve got A, and a is all about you being an authentic speaker. So when you’re standing in front of the audience, when you’re speaking, you do it from a place of confidence and strength because it taps into who’s inside you. And I believe that our personalities are not fixed. We can change at any time, so being authentic doesn’t mean that you’ve got to be the same all the time. And I’m the same person watching TV at my house as I am when I’m speaking to a group of a thousand people, right? Of course, you’re going to be different in different circumstances, and different scenarios bring out different parts of ourselves. So don’t feel that being authentic means you’ve just got to be the same every single moment of every day, because that’s not what it’s about.

Use the D.I.V.A. framework to tick all he boxes when you speak

So I’ve given you a bit of an overview of a framework that I use to make sure that all the boxes are ticked. When I’m speaking, when my clients are speaking, and there are obviously various techniques we can use in public speaking, but they fit within that framework. So I hope that was helpful to you. Take care.

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Shola Kaye is an award-winning speaker, author and professional speaker coach with clients around the world. Her work has been mentioned in Forbes, Harper’s Bazaar and on the BBC.
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