Image Credit: ImagineCup Follow
Every time that we agree to give a speech, we really want it to go well because we understand the importance of public speaking. However, this does not always happen. What this means for us as speakers is that we should all be searching for a way to make this business of giving speeches run more like clockwork. What can we do to boost our odds of giving a successful speech? It turns that there is something that we can do. What we can do is to employ a systems approach to giving speeches and this will allow us to make sure that everything that has to be done will get done. It all starts with us planning and organizing our speech. However, after that, we still have work to do.
Getting The Support Your Speech Needs
When you organize the speech that you’ll be giving what you end up doing is creating a framework for the speech. This will form a so-called skeleton for the speech that you’ll be giving. What you’ll do is to identify the key ideas that you’ll want to cover in the speech and then arrange them in a clear and concise manner.
The framework for your speech is a good start to the speech, but it’s not going to be enough to allow you to convince your audience. As a speaker you have the job of presenting your audience with information and then motivating them in some way: to take action or to change the way that they think. Once you have created the framework, your next step is going to be to start to add meat to the organizational skeleton in order to boost your positions.
At this stage of the speech creation process, what you are going to want to do is to add valuable material to your speech. Your goal needs to be to provide information that will illustrate your points, backup your ideas, and clarify both the positions and the claims that you are making. This is the part of the speech creation process that you’ll want to spend time creating the visuals that you’ll be using. The visuals that you make need to be effective ways to get your point across.
Staging A Successful Speech
The fear of public speaking is something that a lot of us have to deal with. The causes of this fear are many and varied; however, one big source of this kind of feeling is a fear that something might go wrong during our presentation. The list of things that could go wrong is very long: projectors stop working, the lights go out, a microphone fails, etc.
Although we can’t prevent everything that might happen from happening, there are steps that we can take before we start to give a speech. This part of the systems approach is called staging. The goal of the staging part of the speech creating process is simply to try to anticipate all of the highly probable things that could possibly go wrong during your presentation. What this means for you is that you’ll have to take the time to identify all of the equipment, facilities, and schedules that your presentation will require. Before you begin your speech, make sure that you test everything!
What All Of This Means For You
The goal of every speech that we give is for us to be able to make a connection with our audience and share with them the benefits of public speaking. By delivering a flawless speech, we hope to be able to cause our audience to either agree to take action or to change the way that they view some particular topic. However, in order to make this happen we need to be able to create and deliver a powerful and effective speech. To make such a speech, we need to use a systems approach to make sure that we don’t overlook any of the important steps.
An effective systems approach starts with planning and organizing. The next step is to provide support for your speech. What this means is that you have to take the framework for the speech that you have already created and start to add meat to it. The material that you add is designed to support the points that you’ve made in your speech. After this, we move to the staging step. In this step you take action in order to ensure that nothing will happen during your speech that could take away from the message that you are trying to deliver to your audience. All that you have to do in this step is to spend some time thinking about what could go wrong during your speech. Once you know this, you can take steps on the day of your speech to double check and make sure that everything is going to work correctly.
The process of creating and delivering a speech successfully can be a complex undertaking. A large number of different things all have to work together correctly. As a speaker you can use a systems approach to attempt to make sure that you follow a process in order to make sure that you don’t forget any of the required steps. Follow these instructions and you’ll feel much more confident going into your next speech.
– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™
Question For You: How will you be able to tell when you have added enough detail to your speech to make it convincing to your audience?
Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.
P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Communicator Newsletter are now available. Subscribe now: Click Here!
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
Every time that we deliver a presentation, because we understand the importance of public speaking, we want it to go well. We do our best to get ready, to deliver the speech, and then we sit back with our fingers crossed hoping that we were able to connect with our audience. The good news is that sometimes we are successful. The bad news is that sometimes we are not. What we really need is some sort of system that will allow us to create and deliver presentations that always win.