8 Tips for Overcoming Distractions in Public Speaking

Certain things are inevitable – this includes distractions during any public speaking event. There will be certain people who arrive late and would look for their seats, somebody would get up and move across to use the restroom, someone might forget to keep their phones on silent, and there may be people cross-talking or whispering among themselves. One such situation occurs in every event. We get two choices to deal with them – to get distracted and lose our mind, or to prepare ourselves well in advance and ace our performances despite the interruptions. Choosing the latter is always a wise decision!

Here are 8 such tools that will help you conquer disruptions and ace your performance.

1. Maintain Eye Contact

Making eye contact is the best way to let your audience know that you see them. Even though this can be a burdensome task, doing so will help you feel heard and relaxed.

You can ask a few of your friends, co-workers, or family members to sit in the crowd and can practice doing so with them. Try to maintain eye contact with one person for at least a couple of seconds.

If you still get nervous, use this optical illusion trick – look at the top of people’s heads. This makes them feel as if you are looking directly at them!

2. Be Mentally Prepared

No matter if there are twenty people or two hundred, a few of them are most likely to get restless and lose their focus on you. They might count the number of heads in the room and then listen to you.

This should not affect your performance. You should prepare your mind that no matter how well you present, somebody is likely to chatter, start scrolling on their device, or look around the entire auditorium.

3. Use Attractive Visuals

Try to make your presentations more visually appealing. You can add statistical data in bar graphs, depict information compilation through pie charts, and use colorful pyramids, hierarchy charts, matrices, etc. This will keep your audience hooked on your presentation and will avoid any possibility of distraction amongst them.

You can use ready-to-use PowerPoint templates designed by experts to save your time. All that you’ll need to do is change its text and customize it according to you.

4. Issue a Decorum Rulebook

You must issue a decorum rulebook that mentions all necessary guidelines that must be followed. You can include every little detail here – whether children are allowed or not, if gadgets can be brought inside, whether recording the session is permissible, or any other point.

These statements can be mentioned during the process of registration. It will help you reduce the chances of any unwanted incidents during your session. Most seminars, ateliers, and presentations release detailed instructions for the attendees and are strictly followed by them.

5. Ignorance is Bliss

It is an age-old saying that ignorance is bliss, and it fits in extremely well while you’re on stage. When you find people whispering or giggling, try to ignore them as much as you can. Rather than channeling your energy toward them, redirect it to the people who are listening to you.

This will make you feel more confident and heard and will automatically stop the murmurs and hushes.

6. Start a Question and Answer Round

When you find people getting inattentive, try to bring back their awareness of you. You can give them a captivating riddle to solve, ask them a mind-boggling question, start a public poll and ask them to raise their hands, or commence a question and answer round. Such activities can help you become the kingpin again and will initiate a conversation between you and your listeners.

7. Remember Your Purpose

If you find yourself getting disheartened due to people cross-talking or losing their attention span, you must gather your guts and continue your performance with even more enthusiasm. This will help you creatively capture your listeners. Remember the purpose of your speech, and you will find yourself rooted on the stage again.

8. Address Distractions Positively

No matter how much you try to ignore all distractions, if certain things are disrupting the course of your performance, you must address distractions in a positive manner. If there are continuous noises from a group or somebody’s cell phone keeps ringing, you ought to fix that. It can be done by asking one of your teammates to go and address the respective persons, or it can be done by you from the stage.

For instance, if you find somebody in the audience talking on their phone, you can gently ask them to move out or hang up. Being rude or aggressive here can act negatively on you.

Conclusion

Tools look beautiful when they fit into a box, but they only serve our purpose when we take them out and use them mindfully. Therefore, each of the above-mentioned techniques can be helpful only when they have been practiced over and over again.

We hope that these points help you in your public speaking journey! Do share the blog post on your social handles.