Tips to improve your body language for public speaking

Presentation skills coaching tips

When it comes to public speaking success, body language is everything. It will communicate to the audience how you are feeling about presenting, even before you have opened your mouth to speak.

As you probably know by now, I always start my presentation skills coaching by working on mind-set. You need a good mind-set before you can get your head round skill sets such as body language, after all.

Once your mind-set is in the right place, you need to work on good body language until it becomes second nature. When you have got it, it will make you feel better and will also impact the audience. Here are just a few examples of how it can work for you.

By holding your head high:

• You portray confidence to the audience
• You gain a feeling of confidence
• You are able to speak more clearly

By smiling:

• You build rapport with the audience
• You make the audience feel relaxed and open up
• You’re encouraging the audience to smile back at you

By standing upright with shoulders back:

• You’ll look taller and more authoritative so the audience will want to listen
• You feel secure, rooted and not lightheaded
• You feel more confident and have more positive thoughts

As your body language improves, so does your confidence and as your confidence improves so does your mind-set (for example, your ability to remember everything you practised). Everything is interconnected, so the benefits are huge.

If you’d like to read more about confidence and executive presence and the three basic elements for establishing your presence, take a look at presentation skills.

Simply Amazing Training offers professional presentation skills coaching and public speaking coaching for individuals and companies in Bournemouth, and across Dorset, Hampshire, Herts and London. Have a look around the website, or call me today on 0330 223 4392 for an informal chat to discuss your requirements.