How to give a great speech, a step by step guide.
How to give a speech.
By Reed Sawyer
At some point, if you are a professional, you will be asked to give a speech. Don't freak out. Unless you are incredibly stupid it is possible for you to learn how to give an effective speech. Politicians do it every day, surely you can too.
Here is how to do it:
1) Find out the details: When will the speech be given? How long will it be? What is the topic? Who is my audience? Why does the audience care? (If the audience is given to people that are passionate about the topic, it is going to be a lot more fun that if people really don't want to listen to you.)
2) Write out your speech. Yes, a lot of people just "wing it" and don't worry about preparing at all. Those people are the ones that are so full of themselves that they don't care if they are prepared, and they bore everyone that hears them. They are the people that usually give speeches, and are hated. A good speech is prepared, written out, and practiced several times before it is actually performed. It is a communication, and, like most performances, is better when thought is actually put into it.
a) Who is going to be there? (This will determine the topic and the tone of your speech? A speech given to third graders will be a lot different than a speech given to educated professionals).
b) What is the topic? This is the reason why they are there. They want to hear you speak about ______. What is it? Why should they care? If they don't hear your information, what will they lose? If they do hear your information, how do they gain? How is it relevant to THEIR life? If you can't articulate that, don't go.
3) Lose your fear. The entire audience; the ENTIRE audience is terrified that you are going to be boring. They WANT you to be funny. They will laugh at anything that is remotely funny coming out of your mouth. They are rooting for you, because they have heard too many bad speeches and they desperately want you to be good. They aren't expecting it, but they want it.
4) Don't give a speech. NEVER, EVER, EVER give a speech. Tell stories. Nobody wants to hear a speech, but everyone wants to hear a story that they will remember, especially if it is funny. If you can ask questions (even rhetorical questions) of the audience, it keeps their interest high. Don't make statements, ask questions.
5) Keep it simple.
A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand. So, make it simple. If you have a complicated concept, break it down into simple processes that they can understand on a cellular level. If you have numbers, toss them out. Tell a story about how those numbers affect a person. If you want to do a quantitative analysis, throw that out and replace that with the story of two people, and how it affects their lives. Keep it simple, keep it in a story, and personalize it.
6) When you introduce yourself, relate to people. If you are talking to a bunch of parents; YOU are a parent, or you know a parent. If you are talking to people from a small farming area; YOU are from a small farming area, or you know someone that is from a small farming area. People like people that are like themselves, be like them.
7) Don't be stuffy. Don't speak over the heads of your audience. acknowledge three or four people in the audience that you met with earlier, and thank them for allowing you to share your stories. (Never say the word, "speech".)
8) The mike is your friend. Choose the hand that will be holding the mike. With your other hand, extend your thumb, as if you are giving a "thumbs up". The distance from your nose to the microphone should be distance from the tip of your thumb to the back of your hand. With your mike hand, practice keeping the same distance each and every time. Plant your elbow against your chest and practice keeping the microphone at the same distance from your mouth each and every time that you move. You can use your non-mike hand to wave and gesture, but always keep your mike in the same relative position. This will keep the volume steady.
9) Don't keep the volume steady. When you talk to a friend, you raise and lower the level and pitch of your voice. Do not be robotic, practice varying the intensity and volume of your voice.
10) A speech is a performance, so perform. Be interesting. Be demonstrative. Mention people in the audience, ask them to stand up, acknowledge them and include them into your stories, if possible.
11) "Tell people what you are going to say, tell them, then tell them what you said" is the ancient advice for speeches. Here is a modification. Tell people how what you are going to say is RELEVANT to them. If it's not relevant, they don't care. When you include them in the process, and it's about THEM, they will listen all day long.
