How to be an all-rounder at public speaking

This is an AI generated transcript so please forgive any errors and spelling mistakes. 

Hi. If you are wanting to be a better public speaker and to have a nice little framework that will help you to check all the boxes every time you speak, then this is the video for you because I’m about to teach you how to be a DIVA at public speaking.

My name is Shola Kaye. I’m a public speaking coach, professional singer and professional presenter based in London. I wrote a book called How to be a DIVA at public speaking. And I want to share with you not so much why I wrote the book but what is being a DIVA all about? And how can it help you.

Now, contrary to common thinking, being a DIVA is not about being a difficult, bitchy woman who makes life hard for everybody around her. Diva actually comes from the word divine, which means godlike. So being a diva is actually a very positive thing. And it’s positive not only in terms of being close to the divine, but also it’s very positive in terms of your public speaking, because DIVA is an acronym. And I think that if you can check on all those four letters, the DIVA of the acronym and what those represent, then that will really put you in a good place for your public speaking.

So let’s go into what each of those letters represents.

Public speaking – be DYNAMIC: keep your audience engaged

So D is about being a dynamic speaker. Now, why do we need to be dynamic? Well, because we need to make sure that we keep our audience engaged. And there are a number of ways to be dynamic. And you can choose a way that suits your personality. So you might, for example, want to be very engaging in terms of asking questions, or you might want to be funny and tell jokes, relevant jokes, that don’t put anyone’s back up, hopefully, but you might want to tell jokes will be a very humorous speaker, or you might be high energy and jump around the stage. But there are a number of ways to be dynamic. And I think you should at least have one way that works for you and for your audience of being dynamic every time you speak, so that your talk doesn’t become a snooze fest.

Public speaking – be INSPIRING: use storytelling

Next is i and i is all about being inspiring. And to my mind, being inspiring is about telling stories. Because if you tell stories, those can inspire, connect with motivate your audience, to take action and to make change in their own lives. And that’s what we want to speakers, we obviously want to entertain. But we also want people to take action as a result of hearing from us. and sell inspiration is a great way to get people to take action. And inspiration comes from storytelling. So whenever you speak, you should be telling stories, whether about yourself about clients, stories that you’ve heard, maybe even fables or folk tales, that are relevant to the message that you have.

Public speaking – be VALUABLE: prepare to serve

The V is about being a valuable speaker, how can we add more value to our audiences lives? Well, one way is by having a really solid structure to our presentations, so that the audience can follow along easily and know exactly where we’re going. And also, we can be valuable by researching our audience beforehand, and making sure we know who they are, what they need, what to avoid what to give them. And just making sure that we’ve ticked the boxes in terms of doing our audience research for that V for being valuable.

Public speaking – be AUTHENTIC: bring your true self onto the stage

But finally, we have a, which is the being authentic, it’s being yourself. And authentic. People often see that as being a book that they get trapped in, because they say, well, I’ve got this personality. That means every time I speak, that’s all I can be on stage. To my mind authentic is about tapping into the different personas that you have as an individual. Because I might be one person with a child, another person with my girlfriends, another person with a romantic partner, another person with different behavior with my parents, another set of behavior with my siblings, and not the set of behavior if I’m at a sporting event, and so on and so forth. And different events call on us as individuals to become different people slightly.

We’re all the same person, but we have different behaviors in different situations. So to my mind, being authentic means bringing all of that to the stage as needed. It’s not about being this one person that has to be the same all the time. But it’s about being able to tap into all the different sides of yourself, to really make your presentation the richest and most interesting presentation that it can be, and also the most accurate reflection of you at your best.

Just a little acronym that you can use when you’re preparing your presentations. And you can check off.

Public speaking – the framework recap

Now was I dynamic? You know, there’s this, there’s this presentation involved me being dynamic in some way. And then you cook that in you take that into your presentation. And I being inspiring. Am I telling stories? No, or not enough. Okay, add some more stories. We did I research the audience might be invaluable here. So I have a really good tight structure people can follow. And then finally, a I’m like bringing my best self and all of myself to this presentation, so that people can see that I’m a rich character with a lot to share.

So I hope that helps. Now you can go forward, you can be a DIVA. And if you’re interested in finding out more about this, I usually share my DIVA tips and most of my presentations and my talks and my online training. So you can get my book How to be a DIVA at public speaking, whether you get the PDF or you can get it from Amazon in paperback or Kindle. You can join one of my courses, six weeks of speaking success or get clients with speaking or you can even attend one of my workshops and you’ll find out more about deeper and you’ll go into a lot more detail in all of those particular situations courses, etc.

I hope that helps go forth.

Be a DIVA and enjoy!

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P.S. Whenever you’re ready… here are 4 ways I can help you improve your speaking or grow your business:

1 – Get my free guide – 27 places to find speaking opportunities.

Find out where your next speaking opportunity might come from – whether you’re a beginner, intermediate or experienced speaker.

2 – Join my Facebook Group – Public Speaking for Female Coaches and Entrepreneurs.

Join us for tips, discussions and community!

3 – Are you an ambitious coach, consultant or small business owner? If you’d like to wow your audiences and find more speaking opportunities, then watch the FREE on-demand training video here: https://sholakaye.com/masterclass

4 – Find out about my VIP Days and private coaching.

Book me for a VIP half or full-day session if you want to make some serious progress! We could help you create a business networking strategy and perfect your pitch. Or we could work on your signature talk so that audience members or hungry to work with you. Or we could explore frameworks and strategies to help give you confidence whether you’re speaking at conferences, in meetings or at other events. Or more!!