Whenever I am training and mentoring someone for Public Speaking one of the first questions I ask the person, is ” Can you name  me one characteristic that you believe makes a Public Speaker great?”    The typical responses to this is, the speaker’s voice, the way they move on stage, the message they’re delivering, the subject they are discussing, their physical presence on stage and many other characteristics.

Although these are totally valid characteristics that help define a great public speaker, it is my belief that there is one characteristic more than anything else that really truly defines a great speaker.  The characteristic I am referring to here is Certainty. When a speaker is completely aligned with their true purpose, they have a passion for what they are speaking about, and  they have complete and utter belief in the message they are delivering, then their level of certainty goes through the roof.

This is a subject I could speak about for hours, and it is a subject that I encourage new speakers to study avidly. Next time you’re watching a speaker, take notes on their level of certainty. Observe when they are delivering the message with absolute conviction and note the characteristics, body language and tonality that they use whilst delivering in that state of certainty.

A Simple Tool To Use

There is a simple physiological gesture that you can express very early in your presentation to help you establish certainty in front of your audience. However, remember that if you do something with your body language and the rest of your message, tonality and belief system are not aligned then you will very rapidly appear incongruent. This in itself leads to a state of uncertainty.

The gesture I’m referring to is sometimes called the steeple gesture or the roof gesture. This is where you stand with your feet placed slightly wider  than hip width, you take a deep breath so that you are breathing down into the belly area rather than your chest, and you bring your hands together  as though you are going to pray, spread your fingers and then keeping your fingertips touching move the palms of hands slightly apart by about 20° to  30°.

If you ever watch somebody standing in this position they automatically appear to have a certain level of confidence. The best way to get a feel for this is to practice this on a daily basis until you find the most natural position.

A great place to start would be to watch someone like Anthony Robbins who has an immense amount of Certainty as a speaker: click here to have a look at his BLOG and some short videos:

http://www.tonyrobbinsblog.com/