When Keir Starmer stood at the despatch box in the House of Commons this week he did the thing every speaker eventually has to do—ask a roomful of unconvinced people to believe him. Because you want to be believed when you give a speech. The subject was the security vetting of Peter Mandelson, the former UK ambassador in Washington D.C. The Prime Minister apologised. He said he was wrong to have made the appointment. Indeed he insisted, by one count eleven separate times, that he "wasn't told." And somewhere in the middle of it, the audience on the benches opposite burst into laughter.
You Want to be Believed When You Give a Speech
That laughter is the moment worth studying. It is the sound of an audience deciding, in real time, that they do not believe the speaker in front of them. If you give presentations, pitches or keynotes, the same judgement is being made about you—just more quietly. So, here are five things to get right if you want to be believed when it matters.
Be Believed When You Speak
Own it First
The most persuasive opening sentence a speaker can use is the one the audience is already thinking. Name the awkward truth before anyone else does. Any delay can be perilous. Thus, Keir Starmer's "I was wrong" was the right line, but it arrived too late. So it was crowded out by his repetitive use of "I wasn't told." Your job as a speaker is to volunteer the hard fact up front. And then every sentence after it lands on friendlier ground.
Anchor
Build your argument on one fixed point and keep coming back to it. Pick the single sentence you want your audience to walk out repeating—a fact, a commitment, a number—and structure everything else around it. Speakers lose trust when they drift, pile on caveats, or hop between defences. An audience that cannot find your anchor will conclude you haven't got one.
Evidence
Your credibility is built on specifics, not adjectives. Dates, names, numbers, moments. If you genuinely cannot be specific, say so—vagueness that announces itself is more trustworthy than vagueness that pretends to be a point.
Plain Speech
Short sentences sound true. Long ones sound rehearsed. The most trustworthy sentence format in English is subject-verb-object. Use the active tense and keep your sentences under fifteen words. Thus, "I made a mistake." "We have fixed it." "This will not happen again." Passive constructions such as—"mistakes were made", "information was not shared"—sound like a press release. And this is why your audience will discount them.
Read the room
Your audience will tell you, moment by moment, whether they believe you—if you are looking. Disbelief shows in shifting weight, folded arms, eyes dropping to phones, the wrong kind of laughter. Belief shows differently: stillness, held eye contact, a small nod, the pen pausing over the page. Your job on the platform is not just to deliver the next sentence, but to read the answer coming back from the room and adjust the one after that.
Your credibility as a speaker is not a trick of delivery. It is the sum of what you choose to say, in what order, in what language, and whether you are paying attention to the faces in front of you. Get those right and you have a chance. Miss any of them and no amount of charisma will close the gap
Sound and Look Believable When You Give a Speech
You want to be believed when you speak at the conference, or any other event. So, these pointers will keep you on track to be believed.
- 1Own it first. Name the awkward truth before the audience does.
- 2Anchor. Build everything around one sentence they'll remember.
- 3Evidence. Replace adjectives with dates, names and numbers.
- 4Speak plainly. Short, active, subject-verb-object. Drop the hedges!
- 5Read the room. Belief and disbelief show in the audience's body language.
For more public speaking and presentation tips, you'll find our full series here on the site. Because with more than 100 top tips for speakers, there's something for everyone at every event. And when you're ready to sharpen your own presentation skills, you're always welcome to enroll on an online public speaking course.
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