Image Credit: Erik Cleves Kristensen
Wouldn’t it be fantastic if every speech that we gave was a great speech? I mean we can almost picture our audience standing up once we were done and giving us a standing ovation. That would truly be magic to our ears. Now, this is a great concept, but just exactly how should we go about making it happen? It turns out that it is really not all that hard to make a great speech. The trick is that you have to understand the importance of public speaking and know how to go about doing it. That sure sounds like something that we need to talk about.
The Key Is To Get Feedback
When we want to give a great speech, we would like to understand how our audience is going to view us. One excellent way to go about doing this is to present your speech to a sample audience so that you can get feedback from them about how they view your speech. Your goal when you give this “sample” speech is to deliver it exactly how you plan on giving it to your target audience. You want your sample audience to experience everything that your real audience will experience.What kind of feedback can you expect from your sample audience? One of the most valuable things that they can share with you is bad habits that you have in how you manage your body. It can be how you stand, how you move around, or even how you lean into your audience. Getting this kind of feedback from your sample audience can open your eyes to things that you are doing that you’d never realize without someone else telling you about it. As speakers, what we need to realize is that we don’t know what we don’t know. We need feedback from others to first see, and then change our bad speaking habits. If you can make yourself open to feedback, then you’ll have a chance to grow as a speaker.
You Can Never Prepare Too Much
Ok, so I’m pretty sure that I don’t have to tell you this, but if you want to deliver a great speech, you are going to have to practice it. Now, this of course leads to the question of just exactly what it means to practice a speech. There are the times that we stand in front of a mirror and deliver a speech. That’s good to do, but it’s not enough. If you want to give a great speech, you are really going to have to practice it.
What this means is that you are going to have to be willing to practice giving your speech at least once a day before your big day. You are going to have to record and review yourself delivering your speech. You will need to dress the way that you’ll dress on your big day. You need to use some type of a countdown timer in order to keep track of how much time you have used. If you are using PowerPoint slides, you’ll have to click through them just like you’ll do on your big day. A great way to review your videos is to watch them in three different ways: with sound, without sound, and only sound. This allows you to both focus on and improve the nonverbal parts of your speech.
Use Routines To Make Your Speech Great
Delivering a great speech can be a nerve-wracking experience. One thing that we can do that will allow us to get our nerves under control is to start to use familiar routines before our big day. Your routines can consist of mentally preparing yourself to give a great speech. This can include going to some place that you enjoy, taking a nap, and making sure that you show up to give your speech with plenty of time before you go on stage.
The purpose of using routines is to try to allow you to keep both calm and centered. Ways that you can go about doing this include drinking drinks that can sooth and protect your throat and playing music that will relax you. When the time to go on stage comes around, you may want to take a few moments to stretch out and practice breathing from your diaphragm. Together these routines will allow you to overcome your nerves and allow you to switch into autopilot and deliver a great speech.
You Are The Great Speaker
In the end, the audience has shown up to see you. Although when you want to give a great speech, you may be tempted to try to memorize your speech, you really should not do this. If you do, then you will come across as sounding either stilted or dry. As a speaker, before you take the stage you are going to have to take a moment and remind yourself that while you are giving your speech you are going to have to remain present in the moment. Your job is going to be to connect with your audience. In the end, you’d really like to have fun delivering this speech!
What you’d really like to be able to do is to connect with your audience so that you can share your message with them. What you need to realize is that in the end it will be your vulnerability and authenticity that will allow you to truly connect with them. When you are delivering your great speech, you are going to want to be as authentic as you can be and deliver your message with passion. In the end, this is all that any of us can do.
What All Of This Means For You
When we give a speech, we always want it to be a good speech and we want to share the benefits of public speaking with our audience. However, sometimes what or where we are talking is especially important. When we encounter these situations, we want the speech that we give to be great. That starts to put us under a lot of pressure to find ways to make sure that our next speech will be a memorable speech. In order to make this happen, we need to know what goes into delivering a great speech.
In order to make sure that when we give our speech that it will be well received, we need to make sure that we get feedback. The best way to do this is to take the time to deliver our speech to a sample audience then collect their feedback on how we did. If you want to be able to deliver a great speech, then you are going to have to take the time to practice. When you practice, you are going to want to do it in a way that most closely resembles how you will eventually deliver your speech. Delivering any speech can cause us to become nervous. If you can adopt routines to follow during the day of your speech, you can keep your nerves under control. In the end, you need to understand that the audience has shown up to listen to you. You have to go out on that stage and be yourself.
The thing about wanting to give a great speech is that it is possible to do. However, you are going to have to both understand the steps that are involved and then take the time to execute them. Understanding what it’s going to take in order to allow you to connect with your audience and deliver a great speech is the key to being successful. Follow the steps that we’ve discussed and the next speech that you give can be a great speech!
– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™
Question For You: What do you think that you should do just before you go on stage to give a great speech?
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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
Wouldn’t it be great if the next time that you took the stage to deliver a speech, you could have somebody else come up there to help you out to communicate the importance of public speaking? This other person would always know what you were trying to say next and they would take action to communicate the same thing that you are trying to say at the very same moment. Well, things are going to get a bit crowded if you start inviting people to be on stage with you while you give a speech, but it turns out that your hands can help you to deliver your next speech even as you are talking.