Most of us get nervous about making a speech, whether it’s to 2000 conference delegates or a PTA meeting at our child’s school. Often, though, people find that’s
worst part of whole process – anticipation. The reality is often a lot easier to handle and can even be quite enjoyable, provided that you take necessary precaution of doing your homework beforehand – preparation.So, what does that entail? Really, it’s about remembering those key golden rules that apply to all good business writing and they are:
1.Define exactly not so much what you want to say, as what you want your speech or talk to achieve – ask yourself, “what do I want audience to be thinking as I come to end of my speech?”
2.Find out as much as you can about your audience and ensure your content is very, very relevant to them and their needs
3.Use language and tone of voice that audience will understand and identify with – and blend that in with your own natural style of speaking
4.By all means use a bit of jargon and a few “in” phrases as long as you’re certain audience understands them, but never use jargon others may not know
Cut clutter
Your success is almost entirely dependent on what your audience remembers of what you say. People have very bad memories, and if a speech has been boring or complicated or both, they will remember even less of its content and only recall how terrible it was.
When assembling material for your speech, write yourself a list of points – a structure. Try if you can to keep main issues in your presentation to fewer than five, no matter how long your speech is. If you can’t actually put it together as a traditional story, what you must do is ensure that one topic leads logically on to next using some good, workable links.
Links
It is possible to change direction abruptly in a presentation, but you need to be a practised speaker to pull it off and know how to use your stage body language as well as that other wonderful presenter’s tool, silence. Nothing gets an audience’s attention faster than a few seconds of total silence when they’re expecting a stream of words.
Whether you use a bit of silence or not you need a short, effective link. Links are actually quite useful even if they are a little abrupt, because they act as punctuation to your material. They also tell audience that we’re now moving on to something new. Your links can be as simple as a few words, or up to a few sentences, but no longer or they cease to be links and become mini-topics.
