What is the sweet spot for public speaking?
Studying the common traits of the great orators is helpful for anyone wishing to improve as a speaker. Not because you need to transform into Martin Luther-King in order to deliver your next internal team meeting update. But because the first thing you’ll notice is that messages land much better with audiences when communicators are deliberate about varying the pace at which they speak. Going slower for impact and authority, and faster for engagement and passion.
The average person speaks at 180-210 words per minute (wpm) in everyday conversation. But in presentations, fuelled by a little (or a lot) of nervous energy, the dial often flies past 220wpm. You appear less confident, keen to “just get it over with” or even lacking care and conviction in what you are saying. And the bigger problem is, you could have the best scripted words, and fantastic slides which you have slaved over. But if you deliver it all at 220+wpm (or all just at one pace) there’s every chance your audience will not have time to hear what you have to say, or interest in what you say, let alone to take it all in. At best your messages are diluted, at worst, lost entirely.
“Aim for a bracket of around 120-170 wpm. The difference in impact on the audience - in terms of engagement and recall - is remarkable.
Richard Edwards, Founder 100th Monkey
Learning from great speakers
As our image below shows, when Barack Obama wants to land something, he takes it down to 112 wpm. Martin Luther King talked at 62 wpm during the opening of his ‘I have a dream’ speech in 1963. Steve Jobs, unveiling the iPhone in 2007, delivered the big bang moments at between 54 to 85 wpm. Sir David Attenborough purrs at 110-120 wpm.
In other words, we could all do with slowing down for greater impact. But that’s not all.
‘One-paced’ and slow is as bad as one-paced and fast. VARIETY is what you come to realise all the greats use in their voices to keep the audience engaged – and to sound human, not forced. So try finding key words, or half a sentence, to land by slowing right down, but also identify the moments where you can up the rate. Aim for a bracket of around 120-170 wpm. The difference in impact on the audience – in terms of engagement and recall – is remarkable.
How we measure your WPM
The trick we use to bring this home in our sessions is very simple. We record you delivering a presentation, then match your transcript against a stopwatch, using the latest, highly accurate AI tools. Then we can tell you how you measure up to the greats.
The winner in five years of testing (meaning the slowest speaker) clocked under 80 wpm. The fastest pushed 350 wpm, 6 words a second! Even when we asked him to recall what he’d said, he could not. So what chance his audience?
That individual was shocked at the numbers and made immediate and really tangible changes, to fantastic effect. And we have had so many more instances of delegates who told us they had spent their whole career being told to slow down without being able to crack it. Time and again we have found providing the actual hard data has really helped embed the change in behaviour.
- To find out more about how we provide you with personalised vocal data – including pace, pitch, pauses, filler words and more – contact hello@100monkey.co.uk
