Public Speaking: Energize and Engage Your Audience

- Hi. I'm Shola Kaye, founder of Speak Up Like a DIVA. I'm a public speaker, a speaker coach and trainer, and a professional singer. I'm also author of the Amazon.com best-selling book, How To Be a DIVA at Public Speaking. In this course, we're going to look at what it takes to be an engaging presenter giving your audience a powerfully interactive experience that will keep them on the edge of their seats. How does that sound to you? This course assumes you already know about the basics of creating a presentation or writing a speech. I'm going to start by sharing an experience I had recently. I was at a business networking breakfast talk seated around a boardroom table with about 15 other entrepreneurs. At the beginning of the talk, the audiences eyes were shining with anticipation at all the cool stuff we were hoping to learn. But unfortunately, the speaker gave us a textbook example of how not to be engaging. By the end, it was clear that most of the audience had checked out. Our bodies were there but not our minds. The mobile phones had come out. Shoulders were slumped over and our eyes our glassy with boredom. In this course, I'm going to give you a variety of tools and techniques you can use to make sure your audience doesn't check out. We want them to be engaged, excited and with you every step of the way. By the end of this course, you will know how to make your presentations become conversations, not monologues, realize that you can use different personas to create a more exciting talk and yet still be true to yourself, know how to be a more dynamic presenter using your voice, your body, your words and your energy, know how to use inclusive language and storytelling techniques to inspire your audience. Are you ready? Let's go.