Short audio preview

Barry Gibbons walked on stage with his flies undone, carrying a rubber duck. The British Library Conference Centre fell silent. Two hundred members of the London Business Forum shifted uneasily in their seats. Was this really the former CEO of Burger King? Was this the so-called expert on public speaking, who had rallied 300,000 staff around the world by sheer force of oratory? It was difficult to see how.

Fortunately, Gibbons knew what he was doing. His initial awkwardness was designed to make the point that preparation is everything in public speaking. "Check how you look. Make yourself look professional," he said. "The audience have invested their time, sometimes their money to come and listen to you, so treat them with dignity." Quoting the golfer Lou Donald, he added: "You cannot win a golf match before the first tee, but you can lose it mentally." The purpose of the duck we would find out later.

Gibbons looked too young to be the former CEO of a major US company, with his full head of dark, floppy hair and a casual open-necked shirt under his black suit. He also sounded too Mancunian - years of travelling hadn't diluted the accent, and his roughly hewn style was, by his own admission, still quintessentially northern. He was persuaded to enter the speaking circuit, he said, by a US agency that had a vacancy for someone "daft-British".

That was in 1994. Since then, he's been travelling around the world delivering speeches about his experiences in business, and more recently about the art of speaking itself. There is a "staggering lack of skill" among people who regularly have to stand up in front of audiences, he said. "Very, very capable executives, when faced with an audience this size or a tenth of this size, become either jabbering wrecks or, worst still, Eddie Izzard wannabes."

You have to be entertaining, but a budget report speech is not the right time to try out your Jerry Lewis impression, he warned. The first rule of being entertaining is to avoid telling jokes. "You're not a professional stand-up," he said. "Very, very few people can deliver a punch-line effectively. Certainly not on stage when their heart is going at 90 beats a minute." The best way to win laughs is to tell stories that are inherently funny and that give you the chance to be self-deprecating, he suggested.

Drawing from his book Speak Easy: 52 brilliant ideas for giving stunning speeches, Gibbons ran through the stages involved in a typical speech from preparation to applause. The first stage, he said, is to be clear about what the "owner" of the event is trying to achieve - the success criteria. Equally important is to clarify any no-go areas. "You can't have too much information [but] don't get over-briefed," he said. "It is not your job to inform the people out there that the north-west office is closing, and that their jobs are going to be outsourced to Bangalore."

If someone is speaking before you at an event then try to arrive early and watch their performance, he advised. This will enable you to determine the effectiveness of the sound system, gauge the audience's sense of humour, and get "a feel for what works and what doesn't."

Equally, you should try to walk around the room before the event - perhaps during the sound check. "It doesn't matter how blasé you are, how many times you have [spoken in public before], there is a comfort feeling if... you have actually seen it, felt it, smelt it beforehand." You can also judge more effectively where to position yourself for maximum engagement with the audience. "I like to move around. Some don't. [But] I would push you to be able to move around," Gibbons said. Pointing to the speakers on either side of the stage, he added: "I know because I checked earlier on that I shouldn't get too near those speakers, otherwise I will deafen myself and the front three rows of this audience with feedback."

Another vital task to perform before the event is to check how your host intends to introduce you. This is not their chance to shine as a comedian, Gibbons emphasised. They can easily lose an audience for you, simply by going on for too long. The solution, he said, is to provide the host with an introduction (or a selection of introductions) that you have written for yourself.

Equally important is how the host intends to thank you for your appearance at the end. "There is nothing worse, if you have had a smashing speech [and] the applause dies down and you are stood up there like a pea on a drum," Gibbons said. "What happens next? Does the voice of God [say] 'Now, ladies and gentlemen, coffee is served outside'? Is the owner going to come up and thank you and carry on to the next [speaker]?"

You should even try to influence the type of microphone provided by the venue, Gibbons suggested. The traditional wired clip-mic or "lavalier" mic can be "very, very uncivilised," he said. "I once did a speech where this thing was actually wired into a piece of kit at the back of the stage. [There were] lots of coils to give me mobility, but it wasn't enough. Midway through the speech, I did the first ever recorded lateral bungee jump."

A handheld mic, by contrast, is difficult to use because it must be kept at a consistent 20cm from your mouth at all times. "The other problem here is men," Gibbons said. "When men are given this, they turn into Tom Jones."

Thus, his preference was for the modern radio-mic. "The ability to use your arms, legs and [gesticulations] to enhance your speaking is absolutely crucial," he said. For example, resting your elbows on your diaphragm helps you to pace your breathing at the start of a speech. "A lot of people who are nervous when they stand up in front of people start [speaking] like chipmunks, principally because they are breathing so quickly," he said.

In reality, he continued, there's no need to be nervous at all. "The audience has an attribute that you don't appreciate: they are on your side." If someone has taken the time and trouble to hear you speak then they will want you to succeed, he explained, especially if they have paid for the privilege. "The audience is with you at the start... They are yours to lose."

Gibbons suggested you should not introduce the "big idea" at the core of your speech until you have first issued a one- or two-minute preamble - a "daft story," showing a bit of self-deprecation without getting "clever". This will give you the chance to get your breathing and stance under control, and to acclimatise the audience to your voice.

A crucial thing to avoid at this stage, he argued, is the lectern. "Learn to hate those bloody things," he said, pointing to one at the side of the stage. The reason? It is too tempting to hide behind them. "This is what Gordon Brown does. Down he goes. No eye contact... Awful." To underline the point, and add a bit of drama to his own speech, Gibbons promptly produced a hammer out of nowhere and smashed the lectern to bits, glowing with satisfaction.

Next in line for damnation was Powerpoint, the computer-based visual aid. "Sometimes you need something [visual] that is going to bring a point alive," he said, but not often. And if you leave a slide on the screen while you move onto another subject then it will act as a constant, niggling distraction. He pointed to the rubber duck, which had been left on the other side of the stage, and defied anyone to say they hadn't been staring at it repeatedly throughout his speech so far.

The most legitimate use of a slide is to summarise some of the points you've made, to drum them home, Gibbons said. "Don't stand there and try and talk people through [a slide]. Don't read along with them. Just do a simple summary." As a rule of thumb, you shouldn't put more text on a slide than you could fit on a T-shirt, he said, underlining this point by spray-painting the word T-shirt in huge green letters on a nearby flip-chart.

A slide duly appeared on the main screen behind Gibbons that summarised the points he had made so far. There was just one final box to tick, he said, to make sure that he had given his best possible performance: "Finish on time. Do not insult [the audience] by going way over because you think you are good."