How To Make Your Next Speech Your Best One Yet!

The next time you give a speech, you can be a winner!
The next time you give a speech, you can be a winner!
Image Credit: DAVID MELCHOR DIAZ

Every time you give a speech, you need to have a goal. In fact, you may have many different goals for a given speech. However, one goal that you always need to have is to understand the importance of public speaking and make sure that this speech is better than all of the speeches that you’ve ever given before. There are a lot of different things that can stand in your way including feeling as though your audience is judging you and not knowing how best to prepare for a speech.

Dealing With Audience Scrutiny

It’s not easy giving a speech. All too often we have a tendency to start to feel as though the audience that we are addressing is judging us while we speak. Very quickly this feeling can start to make us nervous and all of sudden it become very hard to continue to speak. We call this type of feeling “being in the spotlight”. In order to deal with it, what you are going to have to do is to change your focus.

When you change the mental focus of a speech that you are giving, you put the focus on your audience. What you need to do differently is to understand that your speech is not about you or what you have to say, but rather it is about what your audience wants to hear. Your goal must to find ways to make sure that your audience gets the information that that they need. The spotlight of any speech that we give needs to be on your audience, not on you.

The way that you can shift the spotlight from you to your audience starts with you taking the time to understand your audience. What are their expectations and needs before you start to speak? Next, you’ll want to take the time to make a connection with your audience. This means that you are going to have to provide them with a speech that has enough evidence to back up what you are saying. Finally, if you schedule your speech in a way that you leave time at the end for questions from your audience, then you will have provided them with the ability to validate their understanding of what you have told them. This can go a long way in clearing up any confusion that they may have.

The Best Way To Prepare To Give A Speech

Every speaker knows that if you want to have any chance of delivering a successful speech, then you are going to have to take the time before the speech and practice what you are going to say. A great deal of what it takes to practice a speech has to do with ensuring that you’ll have the time that you need. What this means is that you need to allow yourself 3-4 days to practice your speech. Next you need to allocate up to 5 days to write your speech.

When you are practicing your speech, make sure that you are speaking out loud. Just running though what you are going to be saying in your head is not going to do you any good. By speaking the words that you’ll be saying you will have an opportunity to actually hear what they sound like. Another important point is to separate your speech into multiple parts. This allows you to practice each part separately and once you have that accomplished you can put the entire speech together.

If you want to deliver a successful speech, make sure that you spend your time working on what you’ll be saying and don’t spend so much time on creating pretty slides. Instead, what you are going to want to do is to practice your speech so that when you deliver it, it won’t have a scripted feel to it. By doing this you’ll be able to provide your audience with the authenticity and connection that they are looking for.

What All Of This Means For You

As speakers we all want the same thing: to always be getting better. In order to make progress in this effort, we need to understand that our audience is not judging us and that we need to prepare the correct way. The trick is knowing how to do both of these things.

One of the benefits of public speaking is that every audience really wants you to succeed. In order to get over the feeling that you are being scrutinized by them, you need to change your mental focus. You need to put the focus on your audience and then determine how you can best meet their needs. In order to prepare for your next speech make sure that you have plenty of time to both create and practice your speech. Make sure that you practice out loud – just going over your speech in your head won’t do you any good.

You can get better with each speech that you give. You need to understand that your audience really is not judging you – they want you to succeed. Take the time to get ready the right way and you’ll show up prepare to move your speaking skills forward. With the right mental attitude and practice time, anyone can use their next speech to become a better speaker.

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

Question For You: If you don’t have enough time to fully practice, what can you do to make sure that you’ll be ready by the day of your 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

Just about every speech that we are asked to give can be a difficult one to do well. However, it turns out that one speech above all others can present us with our greatest challenge: giving a eulogy. This type of speech is all about the , importance of public speaking. Think about it for just a moment, the eulogy brings together two of the things that most of us dread the most: pubic speaking and death. However, given the solemnness of the moment, a eulogy can be one of the most important speeches that we’ll ever be asked to give. What’s the right way to go about doing this?