The 10 Commandments of a Good Public Speaker

"The ten Commandments of the speaker are the last reminders to keep in mind at the very last moment before stepping onto the stage, dreaded by every human being," writes Adeline Toniutti in the conclusion of La Bonne Voix. "Anyone who makes you believe that setting foot on stage is easy, simple or even normal, is lying."

"Taking the floor, finding the right voice is not a hostage situation. You do not force people to listen to you, you make them want to."

Adeline Toniutti, La Bonne Voix (Leduc, 2025)

"Speech is a weapon and it must be handled with respect and discernment. Let us not forget that live performance offers no safety net, except one's intelligence and ability to bounce back and to truly hear the other person." That is why Adeline concludes her book "with the speaker's checklist, or the survival kit for those who find the audacity to take the floor and deliver their thoughts."

"This book is also to encourage you to always communicate infinitely rather than going to war against the other person who, let us remember, is just like us. Remember that no matter what happens, it must ring true, and with the heart, as we musicians say in our jargon."

Faced with pointed questions designed to destabilize, "I encourage you to regain control by asking to clarify the question," advises Adeline. She recounts a recent shoot where a host tried to put words in her mouth: "I became my own lawyer and replied with three successive questions that eventually put my interlocutor in an awkward position. That is how the audience saw that the use of that question was unfair. And the more you respond with a smile and a childlike tone, the more devastating the effect."

"Rarely will anyone, as the saying goes, hold a knife to your throat to make you answer." Thinking before speaking, as her mother used to say, remains very useful in daily life. "Above all, smile while you are preparing your answer."

Adeline recalls interviews where a superior used their status to humiliate her: "I would answer with a smile that enraged him; that smile and my blue eyes firmly locked on his told him I would rather lose that shoot than lower myself to fear him. Fear does not prevent danger."

"Likewise in writing, it is even easier to stretch time to leave space for the relationship and to give the other person time to return to an emotional state appropriate for both parties."

"I love these people who think for you, who know better than you what you feel," Adeline says with irony. "In relationships of any kind, we cannot tolerate others speaking for us: it creates lies, false situations, unfortunate rumors and tragic endings. In La Traviata, if Alfredo had known that Violetta was very ill, she would not have died of love and tuberculosis in Paris."

The answer is not war but reframing: "I once advised a friend of mine to skillfully and kindly, without accusing the person, redirect the one who was overstepping. It worked like a bomb: the other person softened."

This commandment was whispered to Adeline by the iconic Armande Altai "discreetly over tea in her salon filled with a thousand memories: you must remain dignified in every circumstance."

"There is nothing more dignified than a person who has the courage to keep their smile firmly in place and their soul high-minded when faced with an enemy trying to destroy or humiliate them."

"A wicked person will never find satisfaction if they kill their victim and she keeps not silence, but a vibrant smile, above it all..."

How many books hammer home that if you have no charisma, you will never have any? "What a reductive vision of our own energy and our own human power! Every beating heart possesses its own energy to radiate from birth, wherever there is life." And Adeline specifies: "The so-called confidence comes from hard work or a well-reinforced ego; charisma, on the other hand, emanates from the conviction that something greater illuminates us."

"Before every scene, before every prime-time show, I connect. I think of those charismatic beings whom even death could not make disappear." Like Freddie Mercury, about whom her father would say with an undisguised smile: "Freddie is a living legend, that's just how it is."

"I have sunshine on my face, as if grace had touched me, and if she is willing to guide me, I would say that everything is going to be all right"

Adeline Toniutti, lyrics of the song that closes her show, quoted in La Bonne Voix (Leduc, 2025)

These few notes of music recall "the sensation of the sun radiating generously on our face" and allow one "to feel the beam of charisma on each of the beings who inhabit this planet."