Bullet your concepts. Be concise.
Have you noticed: people who have others’ attention effortlessly are always concise? They speak with pauses and you’re mesmerized. How do they do it? They weren’t born that way, I assure you. They understood the importance of being credible, they learned the techniques necessary and they put them into practice.
You can do the same.
First, record yourself and write down only the gist of what you’re trying to say. Eliminate excessive words, filler words & redundancies. There’s no need for prefaces.
For example, don’t say, “Good morning everybody. Thank you all for coming to, um, this morning’s meeting. Ok, umm, so today, what I want to talk about, in this meeting, is ummm, the results of our analysis of the XYZ project…”
Not kidding. You can laugh but listen to the openings of your next meeting. And then everyone who speaks after. This is happening left and right in meetings.
How to Speak with Authority