Knowing how to speak and express yourself in public is not only a useful skill in the workplace. It goes much further: it serves to trigger thought, to develop empathy and listening, and to conserve the energy that we all have.

The conviction that true and complete communication necessarily involves knowing how to speak in public has led me to launch and teach a course called Secrets, Strategies and Techniques of Oral Communication . In this course, which is voluntary for PhD students in any field at the Complutense University of Madrid, I teach public speaking, but not as a simple technique of persuasion or image, but as the gateway to truly knowing what it means to communicate.

Speaking in public, presenting ideas, speeches or projects, giving a class or telling the news: all of these are tasks that require thorough training. Body position, voice control, eye contact, use of gestures and objects or supports, voluntary or involuntary non-verbal communication , paralanguage , are a universe of knowledge that we have been accumulating since Greek Rhetoric and that mark the difference between a living communicator and an inert one.

Surrounded by bad communicators

The paradox is that in the era of universal and infinite communication, people communicate poorly, without even being aware of it: announcers hum their news with constant nonsense, politicians express their narrow-mindedness or shame with their hands or bodies, teachers bore their students to death with redundancy, and some actors cancel their emotional expression after botulinum toxin.

Silence also communicates

One of the most curious things you learn is how to handle and use silence, or pauses. Because silence, whether verbal or gestural, serves to communicate. It is the way you play with sound or with the visual signal that forms an expression.

For example, there is talk of “Hitlerian silence” because this dictator, a master in the use of the principle of simplicity , captivated his audiences by staring at them for minutes, without opening his mouth. There is nothing more powerful when speaking in public than verbal silence accompanied by eye contact with the listener.

Communication of the gaze

Because there is another paradox to learn, and that is that we communicate above all with our gaze. It is in eye contact that empathy is found, and it is by looking into the eyes of those who listen to us that people connect, respond and synchronize communicatively.

Nervousness and insecurity when speaking in public stem from the fact, among other things, that we avoid connecting visually with our audience. By practicing looking at oneself, I show students that, once they overcome the barrier of the evasive gaze, they enter the fabulous world of true communication. This is the key and the guide to speaking fluently and easily.

The energy of the voice

And if the response and empathy are in the connected gaze, the energy of the person speaking to us is in the voice. An intonation, a timbre or a vocal dynamism is more convincing than a thousand technologies, artificial intelligences or autotunes.

Whether in journalism, which is my academic field, or in politics or teaching, there are wonderful voices that are a gift from birth. Working on the voice and its volume can help to better communicate conviction, commitment and ability.

Silence also communicates

One of the most curious things you learn is how to handle and use silence, or pauses. Because silence, whether verbal or gestural, serves to communicate. It is the way you play with sound or with the visual signal that forms an expression.

For example, there is talk of “Hitlerian silence” because this dictator, a master in the use of the principle of simplicity , captivated his audiences by staring at them for minutes, without opening his mouth. There is nothing more powerful when speaking in public than verbal silence accompanied by eye contact with the listener.

Communication of the gaze

Because there is another paradox to learn, and that is that we communicate above all with our gaze. It is in eye contact that empathy is found, and it is by looking into the eyes of those who listen to us that people connect, respond and synchronize communicatively.

Nervousness and insecurity when speaking in public stem from the fact, among other things, that we avoid connecting visually with our audience. By practicing looking at oneself, I show students that, once they overcome the barrier of the evasive gaze, they enter the fabulous world of true communication. This is the key and the guide to speaking fluently and easily.

The energy of the voice

And if the response and empathy are in the connected gaze, the energy of the person speaking to us is in the voice. An intonation, a timbre or a vocal dynamism is more convincing than a thousand technologies, artificial intelligences or autotunes.

Whether in journalism, which is my academic field, or in politics or teaching, there are wonderful voices that are a gift from birth. Working on the voice and its volume can help to better communicate conviction, commitment and ability.

Information load and redundancy

The worst thing that can happen to a speaker in any field is to tire out his audience, and this is due to the creation of redundancy and overload in communication. The law of information load teaches us that proportion, moderation and simplicity are essential.

We’ve all known a teacher who returns to the same idea over and over again, or who slowly reads the text of a power point that we have just glanced at a while ago. But redundancy and overload may not be verbal.

The most repulsive thing in communication is to abuse the tolerance in the cooperation of those who try to understand us, and we can abuse visually when we do not stop moving when speaking, we repeat a gesture without stopping, or we hold on to a podium, a pen, insistently… Communicating is an art subject to the same Pythagorean laws of harmony and measure , which affect both the content and the form it takes.

The energy of thought

And among these laws, to finish, there is a crucial one. The performance of authentic oral communication produces very valuable fruits, and preserves what it expands. That is, by externalizing and materializing ideas and information, it preserves and reinforces them. Einstein stated that energy that is not materialized does not exist , as Keith Crichtlow states. Speaking in public teaches us to think. It allows the person to see themselves and receive a response to which they can adapt. When we pour our inner self out into the public, we make the cycle that enriches it and keeps it alive flow, and we bring more energy to the world around us.

That is why it is so important to introduce this subject in teaching, because not only does professional image depend on communication with others, but also authentic communication with those who listen to us, and with it the door to communication with oneself is opened.

The true harmony of our deepest being, and the symbiosis with the world around us, the true union and the solution to the needs and deficiencies not met in this world depend on that connection that we neglect so much today.

Author Bio: Eva Aladro Vico is Professor of Information Theory at the Complutense University of Madrid