How a little brain science can make your presentation memorable
There’s no need for hypnosis or subliminal messaging here, but applying a few tenets of how the human mind works will help you convey your overriding themes—and make them stick.
For speakers, fall is a busy season, so your speech and delivery had better be in tiptop shape.
Are ready for those jaded audiences and their famously shrunken attention spans?
People often ask how neuroscience can help extend those attention spans and engage those brains better.
So here are five insights into the speaker’s world and how to succeed by understanding the human mind:
1. Get your body language sequence right. It’s counterintuitive, but we gesture before we think, consciously; it’s how we find out what our unconscious minds want us to do. So, gesture first, and then speak. If you’re thinking about your gestures consciously, that will slow them down. You’ll instead gesture after the related idea or word, which looks fake. Audiences don’t pick it up consciously, but unconsciously it looks stilted and insincere, so they’ll rate you low on authenticity and engagement.
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