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How I Became A Better Speaker

2021-06-16 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 11:24 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Work and career (also: Mindset, motivation and happiness) · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: Sponsor segment present, His medical past

Ali, once shy and bad at public speaking, gives nine tips for speaking better: get out of your own head, speak through a smile, avoid the sing-song "British Airways" voice, let your personality show, add banter, humour and stories, use talking points instead of a script, speak louder, speak slower and pause more, and play public speaking games such as Ultra Speaking's.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Intro: from shy and bad at public speaking to nine tips

  • ★★ Ali says that when he was younger he was really bad at public speaking and super shy, and that he has improved over time. — 00:00:00

00:00:15 — Tip one: get out of your own head

  • ★★★ Ali's first public-speaking tip is to get out of your own head: the audience does not care about the speaker, only about the value it gets, so make the talk all about the audience. — 00:00:58

00:01:18 — Tip two: speak through a smile, shown with the Audible sponsor read

  • ★★ Ali's second public-speaking tip is to speak through a smile, which he says makes a speaker come across as more engaging and enthusiastic. — 00:01:18

  • ★★ Ali's third tip is to avoid the "British Airways mode of speaking", the exaggerated sing-song voice of a flight attendant or primary school teacher, and to speak as you do around your friends. — 00:02:26

    “to avoid the British Airways mode of speaking”

00:02:28 — Tip three: avoid the British Airways tone

  • ★★ To get out of the sing-song voice, Ali aims for his sentences to go down at the end, in a more matter-of-fact way, rather than up. — 00:03:49

00:04:18 — Tip four: let your personality shine through

  • ★★★ Ali's fourth tip is to let your personality shine through and be more casual and less formal, even in a business presentation or a talk at a medical conference. — 00:04:18
  • ★★ Ali has given many presentations at medical conferences and at teaching sessions in the hospital. — 00:04:18
  • ★★ Ali says an audience wants personality, banter and humour: it cares about the content of a speech to an extent, but broadly it just wants to have a good time. — 00:04:40

00:05:41 — Tip five: add banter, humour and stories

  • ★★ Ali's fifth tip is to make a speech fun for the audience by adding jokes, banter and storytelling instead of being formal. — 00:05:58
  • ★★ Ali recommends Storyworthy by his friend Matthew Dicks, his favourite book of 2020, as a book all about how to tell a better story. — 00:05:58
  • ★ Ali says he may make a video about storytelling some time soon. (hedged) — 00:05:58

00:06:22 — Tip six: don't read from a script

  • ★★ Ali finds reading from a script for a YouTube video no fun: it sounds terrible and takes him ages to get right. — 00:06:27
  • ★★★ Ali's sixth tip is not to read from a script: for a speech, use talking points, an outline and a clear start and finish. — 00:06:56
  • ★★ Ali thinks it is very possible to over-prepare a speech, and then you sound as if you are reading from a script, which is not engaging. — 00:06:56

00:07:21 — Tip seven: speak louder

  • ★★ Ali's seventh tip is to speak louder to add energy: for a video or a public speech he raises his loudness to seven out of ten from his baseline of five. — 00:07:21

00:08:11 — Tip eight: speak slower and pause more

  • ★★★ Ali's eighth tip is to speak slower and pause more, because a pause sounds much shorter to the audience than to the speaker. — 00:08:11
  • ★★ Ali says he really struggles with speaking slowly and pausing; he did the Ultra Speaking course, which he rates really good. — 00:08:11
  • ★★ Ali passes on how the Ultra Speaking instructors put it: speaking is like shaking up a snow globe, and pausing gives the snow time to settle. — 00:08:28
  • ★★ Ali says he races through talks out of worry that what he says is not valuable and to respect people's time, and is rewiring his brain to think that people want to listen and he is providing value. — 00:08:56
  • ★★ Ali's ninth tip is to play public speaking games, such as those in the Ultra Speaking simulator. — 00:09:35
  • ★ In Triple Step, one of Ali's favourite Ultra Speaking games, you give a speech on a random topic and work in words as they appear on screen. — 00:09:35

00:09:42 — Tip nine: play public speaking games, with a Triple Step demo

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Mentioned

Central: Ultra Speaking

Also: British Airways · Matthew Dicks · Storyworthy

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