Adding Creativity To Your Next Speech

The more creative you are, the better your speech will be
The more creative you are, the better your speech will be
Image Credit: Ali Edwards

So what’s the hardest part of giving a speech? I think that the most difficult thing to do is to actually create a great speech – one that your audience is going to want to listen to. All of us want to create a great speech, it’s just that we really don’t quite know how to go about doing this. It turns out that what we really should be working on is our own personal creativity. The more creative you are, the better a speech you will produce.

What Is Creativity?

I’m pretty sure that we’d all agree that we’d like to be more creative. However, do any of us really know what that means? Clearly this is something that has to do with our brain. You know, that three pound mass that sits in your head and helps you out with things like creating memories, paying attention, and solving problems. It turns out that yes, your brain will do all of these things by itself, but if you want to become more creative, then you are going to have to engage yourself in some “brain training”.

What is brain training? Our brains have a number of different ways to think about the world that we live in. One way is called the logical thinking method. This is when we take in the information that is available to us and try to solve problems with it. Good examples of this are crossword puzzles and games like chess. What brain training focuses on is the creative side to your thoughts. Boosting your ability to think creatively can help in your cognitive development and many see it as a critical skill for our modern times.

The good news about boosting our creative side is that we all already have a creative side. We were born creative. Unfortunately, as we grow up we tend to suppress our creativity. This means that we now have to relearn how to think creativity. Becoming more creative will take time. However, as you work at it you will start to see an immediate impact on your thinking. Ultimately, being creative is all about having a lot of ideas. Not all of them will be great, but if you have enough creative ideas then you will boost your chances of eventually having a really good idea.

How Can I Become More Creative?

Deciding that you want to become more creative is a great first step. This is then when things become just a bit tricky: One of the hallmarks of creative thought is the ability to make connections between two things that other people were not able to connect. When we perform tasks for the first time, we are at our most creative as we figure out how to do something. However, after that we settle into a habit of how to do something and it can be difficult to create new ways of doing things. Take the time to think about the things that you do and then try to make new connections that could change how you do things.

We often look at challenges that we are facing from one perspective: our own. If we want to get good at this creative thinking stuff then we’re going to have to teach ourselves how to look at things from different perspectives. The perspectives that we need to consider are objectivity, emotion, caution, positivity, creativity and control. When you are thinking about how to solve a problem, don’t reject any of the perspectives that you use. Yes, some of the outcomes may seem silly, but there can be insights in all of them.

The final thing that you can do in order to become more creative is to use your imagination. Although this is easy to say, it can often be the hardest thing to do. However, this is what will cause you to have the biggest breakthroughs in your creativity. One way to go about exercising your imagination is to start to ask more questions in order to generate more imaginative ideas. Since you can’t be sure when you’ll have an imaginative idea, you probably want to keep a notebook within reach at all times so that you can write down your creative ideas when they occur to you.

What All Of This Means For You

When we agree to give a speech, what we are really agreeing to is creating a speech that we believe that our audience will want to hear. What this means for us as speakers is that we need to be creative and create speeches that will appeal to our audiences. This sounds like a good thing, but how can we become more creative?
In order to become more creative we need to do brain training. This involves taking the time to make connections between things that we might not have made connections between before. We also have to teach ourselves how to look at challenges from different perspectives. Ultimately, in order to become more creative we need to learn to use our imagination by asking ourselves more “what if” questions.

Anyone can write a speech. However, it’s only the really creative people who can write a speech that will grab and hold onto an audience’s attention. This is what we want to be able to do. In order to become better speech writers, we need to work on boosting our creativity. If we can become more creative, then we’ll become better speakers.

– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: What would be the best way to find out if you are currently a creative person?

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Note: What we talked about are advanced speaking skills. If you are just starting out I highly recommend joining Toastmasters in order to get the benefits of public speaking. Look for a Toastmasters club to join in your home town by visiting the web site www.Toastmasters.org. Toastmasters is dedicated to helping their members to understand the importance of public speaking by developing listening skills and getting presentation tips. Toastmasters is how I got started speaking and it can help you also!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Let’s spend just a moment thinking about your next speech. You’re going to take the time to think about what you want to say. You’ll then write it down, take the time to practice it, and eventually you’ll take the stage and then you’ll knock it out of the park because you understand the importance of public speaking. However, in that plan, have you accounted for the things that you can’t foresee? I’m talking about disasters. What should you do when they happen?