Public speaking with impact: the fundamentals

Learn skills for presenting with impact, get feedback on a one-minute talk delivered with feedback, and plan to give your next presentation.

Mary ·

Before You Start

Goal: Leave with skills for presenting with impact, get feedback on a one-minute talk, and plan to give your next presentation.

Read: Public Speaking Anxiety: Why It's Different for Women, and How to Move Past It — Members are encouraged to read beforehand, but a quick recap at the meeting works too.

Anyone can learn to give a dynamic talk, but women especially benefit from practicing the strategies in this guide. You'll plan a one-minute talk, deliver it to a partner, and get specific feedback on your delivery, confidence, and warmth.

Meeting Agenda · Approx. 60 mins

  • Member Updates · 10 mins
  • Icebreaker · 10 mins
  • Key Takeaways · 5 mins
  • Activities · 20 mins
  • One Action · 10 mins
  • Wrap-Up · 5 mins

👋 Member Updates · 10 mins

Go around your Circle and share personal updates. Keep them brief and focused on significant changes or important decisions since the last time you met. It's OK not to have one every month. If you have a One Action update from last time, share that too.

🧊 Icebreaker · 10 mins

Invite everyone in the group to share. Keep answers to one or two minutes per person.

Think of a time you gave a presentation or spoke up in a group that went well. How did you prepare? Or share a time you wish you'd done something differently, and what you'd change.

💡 Key Takeaways · 5 mins

Read these aloud, or take turns reading one each. Everyone can use this advice, but women especially benefit from it.

  • Start small and be persistent — Find opportunities to give short talks to your colleagues or your Circle, because you'll build confidence and skills every time.
  • Women face a slightly higher bar, but you can overcome it — Male speakers are rated as more entertaining, enthusiastic, and expressive even when women deliver the same content in the same manner. This guide helps you counter that and build an engaging speaker style through movement, pacing, warmth, and humor.
  • Practice out loud more often than you think — Spend roughly 7 times as long practicing as you spend writing your talk. Practice moving around in front of your audience and supporting key points with gestures that look natural. Work on pacing, emphasizing key lines, and pausing at specific spots.
  • Speak communally and give credit to others — Women may unconsciously worry about the likeability penalty, meaning that when women speak up, they may be less well-liked. You can overcome this with the preparation in this guide. Use "we," credit collaborators, and frame your wins as shared ones.
  • Express strategic warmth — Women who project warmth along with confidence tend to get a better audience reception than women who project confidence alone. Bring genuine enthusiasm for your topic and your audience, and add humor or personal stories to welcome your audience in.
  • Each time you speak, you're helping other women — When more women step onto public stages, people start to hold weaker stereotypes about women speakers.

🏋️ Activity 1 · 10 mins

Plan Your One-Minute Talk

You're going to come up with a short talk of about one minute using the checklist below. You'll give it for real to a partner in Activity 2.

  1. Choose a topic (1 min). Pick something you really have to speak on soon, or something you've worked on. A few ideas:
    • How I used data this week
    • A problem my team solved recently
    • How I ended up in this job
    • What I like about my job
  2. Find a partner and share your topic (2 mins). Tell your partner your topic in 30 seconds or less. Your partner shares what they'd most want to hear on the topic. Then switch.
  3. Write your notes (5 mins). Write down roughly what you'll say and how you'll say it. Then read the feedback checklist below, and for each item on the list, jot down how you'll handle it. For example, mark the lines you'll emphasize, put a slash where you'll pause, and note where you'll use a gesture, add humor, share a personal story, or credit a collaborator.

Discuss as a group (2 mins):

  1. Which parts are you excited to talk about?
  2. Which parts of the checklist did you have a hard time addressing?

Talk feedback checklist

Delivery

  • Lines that were too fast/slow:
  • Places that needed a pause:
  • Lines that were well emphasized:
  • Movement or gestures that looked natural:
  • Movement or gestures that need work:
  • Filler or hedging words:

Confidence and warmth

  • Where did you hear confidence?
  • Where did you hear warmth or humor?
  • Did the speaker give credit to both themselves and others?

🏋️ Activity 2 · 10 mins

Give Your Talk and Get Feedback

Rejoin your partner from Activity 1. Each person gives their one-minute talk once, standing and moving as you would on a stage. The listener takes notes on the talk feedback checklist from Activity 1. (1 min to regroup, 3 mins per person, 3 mins to discuss.)

  1. Speaker 1 (1 min). Give your talk.
  2. Feedback (2 mins). Your partner shares their notes from the checklist, line by line. Speaker, write down what you hear.
  3. Switch roles. Repeat with Speaker 2.

Discuss as a group:

  1. How did your talk go?
  2. What's one thing you learned from giving your talk?

Optional take-home practice: Record yourself delivering your talk and watch the video for gestures and movement. Then upload the recording or a transcript to AI with the prompt below.

I'm a woman preparing to give a talk or update to [audience]. Here is a recording (or transcript) of me practicing.

  1. Give me feedback on my clarity, pacing, emphasis, pauses, filler words, gestures, and movement.
  2. Show me where I could add warmth, humor, or a personal story, or use "we" and credit collaborators while stating my own contribution.
  3. Give me advice tailored to challenges women face when speaking publicly, such as being judged more harshly on delivery and expressiveness.
  4. Imagine you're in my audience: what else would you want to hear, or hear differently?

🎯 One Action · 10 mins

Commit to one concrete action — big or small — you'll take before next meeting. Go around the Circle and share (1 minute or less per member). Vocalizing it helps hold each other accountable.

Find an opportunity to give a short talk soon. This could be at a meeting with your colleagues, or you could dedicate your next Circle meeting to hearing every member speak. Practice your talk at least 7 times as long as you spend writing it. Come to the next meeting ready to share how your preparation went.

📅 Wrap-Up · 5 mins

Before you break, plan your next meeting and close on an energetic note. Go around your Circle one by one and finish the sentence:

Now I am feeling… (choose one word).

  • Set the day, time, and location
  • Choose the next topic or resource
  • Confirm who's leading the discussion
  • Decide how you'll stay in touch in between