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This week I had the opportunity of hearing former U.S. President Bill Clinton speak. He gave a great, uplifting speech and he was a pleasure to watch.

Before he began his speech, Mr. Clinton took a few moments to remind us of some of the tenets of modern day public speaking. I think they deserve mention here.

Speak as if you were speaking to friends. No need to scream your lungs out! There are microphones to help you project your voice to an audience of hundreds or thousands of people. You can now speak in a normal, conversational tone and establish personal contact with each and every person in the audience.

This is also a great relaxation technique. Before getting in front of a group, imagine that you are in your living room — or your kitchen — entertaining pals of yours; a lot of your fear and anxiety will disappear. Don't set out to articulate majestic grandiloquence. Just talk to a few good friends.

Don't read your text. As I said in a previous newsletter, reading a speech is extremely hard. Unless you are excellent at it, unless you rehearse extensively, you will lose all eye contact with your audience when you read a speech. To illustrate his point, Mr. Clinton showed us the paper he used for his 40-minute speech. What I saw was a sheet with three or four lines, and maybe a doodle or two. You don't need a to read a 10 page transcript to do a 45-minute speech. You need to look at your audience.

Eye contact is one of the most important elements of public speaking. When speaking to an audience, look them in the eye. Don't look at a point in the back of the room, right over their heads. Don't look at their noses. Please don't picture them naked! Look one person in the eye for about 5 seconds, then do the same with another person, and another. By using this technique, you can span the entire room in a few seconds. Make sure you scan the entire room, in a smooth, flowing manner. You will seem more assertive and you will captivate your audience.

Tell your story. Everyone has a story to tell. The story you find bland and eventless may be just the story someone else is waiting to hear. That is why the spoken word is so powerful. You can move masses, coax people into action, change people's lives, simply by sharing your story with them.

Your story does not need to be of heroic proportions. Not every one has been an American President! Not everyone has beaten cancer to win the Tour de France seven times! But everyone has been through hard times and survived.

Maybe you were bullied in school, and now you are a self-defence teacher. Maybe your parents always claimed you would never amount to anything, and today you are the head of a very successful business. Maybe you dreamed of being a writer, and you've written a book! That's the story you need!

Telling others how you overcame obstacles to get what you wanted may be just the spark they need to send them on their way. So next time you are offered an opportunity to speak, gather a few hundred friends in a room, chuck that text to the side, look them in the eye, and tell them your story. Then send them out to change their world!

© Laurent Duperval