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Val

Presenting a speech

The best speech in the world is wasted if it isn’t presented well.

What does ‘presented well’ mean? To me it means a speech presented with confidence and conviction in your own unique style.

Look at it this way – if someone asked you to do a speech on the yurts of Outer Mongolia, chances are you won’t feel confidence in your topic and you won’t feel any conviction that this speech is going to be worth your time and that of your audience.

So your speech should be about a topic you know and care about. You feel that you have valuable information, or a unique viewpoint that is worth sharing. Your confidence flows from this assurance. You are giving your audience something of value.

Conviction flows from that sense of value. It says “Listen to me! You’re going to hear something important!”

Perhaps your topic isn’t of world-shaking importance – it’s about flower arranging or table setting. If it is important to YOU, if you know more about it than your audience, then you are giving them information they might not get elsewhere.

(A caveat here – Know your audience. If your audience is full of gun toting sheriffs maybe flower arranging isn’t the best choice of topic.)

If you sill feel nervous – and most speakers do – fake the confidence. Fake it till you make it. Walk on stage as if you are thrilled to be there.

Don’t apologize. New speakers seem to think that an apology for any type of weakness is a ticket to audience tolerance and approval. It isn’t. It just shows you to be new and nervous.

Speak with as much animation as you are comfortable with. The best advice about speaking I ever got was “Relax and have fun up there.” Relax? Fun? Me, on stage?

But it’s true. The more relaxation, the more fun you yourself have, the more your audience will enjoy your speech and think of you as a good speaker.

Your best speech

Remember when you did your first speech?

Remember how important it was that everything be as perfect as possible for your Icebreaker?

Did you spend a considerable amount of time selecting just the right aspects of yourself to present?

Did you change the wording a few times to make it sound better?

Did you practice in front of a friend or in front of a mirror?

Did you spend time deciding what to wear – what might be too casual or too dressy?

So, now you are well on your way to your CC or maybe you’re doing advanced speeches, is it still like that?

OK, maybe if you’re a woman you still spend time deciding what to wear. Do you spend time on the other preparation though?

Do you select your topic carefully, your main points carefully and develop your stories fully?

Do you still sweat a little over finding the best opening and conclusion? Do you take a second look at those transitions?

Sometimes as Toastmasters we get a little complacent. “My speech is tonight? Ooops! Oh, well I can wing it!”

Winging it might get your Chairperson or Toastmaster out of their bad spot when you are not ready, but you are cheating your audience, your club and you are cheating yourself. Your audience is entitled to your best performance – they are paying you the compliment of quietly listening to what you have to say, hoping for a take-away nugget. Give them your best speech, your best self.

You are cheating your club by lowering the level of performance overall.

You are cheating yourself because you are letting yourself slip into a bad habit. You have been given stage time and you are wasting it.

Wherever you are on your Toastmaster journey, give your best speech. Give it full value preparation in both content and presentation.

All that energy that went into nervousness for your Icebreaker? Use it now in giving your audience more than they expected. You have that energy in reserve now to make a good speech great.

 

Care About your Topic

You don’t have to be madly in love with it, or have it be one of your deepest beliefs. It could be an idea that took your fancy yesterday but – for the moment at least  - it’s intriguing to you.

You care enough to research it, discover more, try to get a handle on the idea and what lies behind it. Your interest and enthusiasm will come through to your audience. It will give life to your speech. You might not want to take questions about it, but you will have shared your pleasure in the discovery.

Sharing your pleasure is a gift. People will take away the pleasure and the interest as well as whatever facts you have shared. Which do you think they will remember longest?

But sharing an idea that concerns you deeply comes across in a different way. Suppose you believe it extremely important that more people should donate to cancer research. A deeply felt appeal will reach your audience at an emotional level and might well cause people to move towards doing that.

The danger lies in caring so deeply that you become a bit overwhelming on the subject. If you speak about it every chance you get  your listeners might get bored with it and tune out. Maybe you unintentionally indicate that this is the only useful avenue for donated money and you risk turning off those who donate to, say, world hunger or animal welfare.

Care enough about your deepest beliefs that you exercise some tact and self restraint. Save your passion for a small number of speeches about it, but make them count. Within a few tightly focused speeches collect all the pent up passion and do a first rate job of making others care as much as you do.

Caring for your topic comes in a range of strengths from temporary enthusiasm to heartfelt belief. Play the whole range as you develop your skills as a speaker. See where your strengths lie and build on them.

Selecting a Topic

When you have a speech coming up does your mind revolve in ever tightening circles as you wonder what on earth you can talk about? Mine did until someone showed me a way out of the maze. Now my squirrel brain has a path to follow as I choose a topic.

Start with the type of speech you’d like to make. You have three basic choices – informational, inspirational/motivational, entertaining. Yes, there’s overlap between them, but those are the three basic types.

If you choose informational you can speak about something you know well or you can treat yourself to exploring a new topic and discovering it for yourself. If you choose the new topic, it will take longer to research but you’ll end up knowing something you didn’t know before.

If you start off knowing the topic very well – you’re a baker and you’re thinking of speaking about how to make fine pastry – beware of adding too many precise details. Give them the basics and throw in a couple of anecdotes and a few tips they might not know.

If it is a new-to-you topic share the excitement of what you found out along the way. Your own pleasure and interest will be a bonus for the listener. It will help to make your facts easier to remember.

An entertaining speech is often a humorous speech, but I’ve found that some speakers have strange ideas about what is entertaining. Re-living a holiday in the ‘Fourteen days with my Dear Husband in the Alps’ fashion is not truly entertaining. “On the Tuesday we got up and again had croissants for breakfast, with coffee.”

Ask yourself, even with an entertaining speech – Is there meaning? Is there story? Is there some point to it?

“Well, I thought it was kinda interesting.” is not a good answer to these questions.

The motivational/inspirational speech is one where you hope to change the thinking of the audience. These are not easy for the beginner, but if your heart is in it and you feel you have a message of importance then go for it. Focus on your message. Illustrate it well with personal stories. Your sincerity and belief will make it a well-chosen topic.

 

 

Finding the Meat in the Topic

Have you ever noticed how some speakers can make the most interesting topic dull, and others can bring the most boring topic to life? You and I, of course, are the latter. But how do we bring a topic to life?

How do we find the meat that makes an audience feel that was a good, filling meal of a speech? Yes, we have a dynamite opening and a memorable conclusion. Yes, we are animated and we are either knowledgeable or we have done our research.

Ah, yes! Our knowledge and our research. We know so much about it now. We are like a fox in a rabbit warren – so much to choose from. Which  information will we choose to share?

Most topics can be approached from a variety of different angles. Child poverty, for example. Third world, first world, from the point of view of an NGO, a government, an educator, a nurse, a hospital administrator? Shall we take the child’s point of view or a parent’s, or perhaps a volunteer’s viewpoint. Shall we look at reasons for childhood poverty or possible solutions? That’s just for starters.

You can use facts (sparingly – most of them will be forgotten anyway) A few dramatic facts will hit home most forcibly – x million children go to bed hungry each night, in Africa x % of children die before the age of five.

Tailor your approach and the facts you select to your audience. Spend time deciding which information, presented in which way, will most strongly pique their interest

Are they engineers who want to hear about the wells that were dug in the desert, the depth and the diameter of the pipe, the pressure of the pump? Are they teachers who can see how education can improve nutrition? Are they parents who will feel the despair of a parent with a dying child? Are they possible donors who need to hear personal stories so they understand how they can help?

Whatever your topic find time for a little humor and a little emotion to add spice to the speech.

Remember that the way you see the issue is not necessarily the way others see it. Filter your knowledge, your research for different eyes and ears. Look at the topic from several points of view, and through several different lenses.

Different people will take different things from your presentation.  Make it easy for them to discover the essence of the topic, to enjoy the feast you have prepared.

Personal Anecdotes

Think back over today or yesterday. How many anecdotes happened to you?

What did your kids or pets do that was interesting? What did your boss say or do? What did that nutbar down the hall do? What was the barista talking about to her friend as she made your latte? Was the school bus late again? Was there a line up at the check out?

If you don’t pay attention anecdotes will slide by unnoticed and you’ll be stuck telling the same old stories over and over. Anecdotes are the spice of life.  Don’t let them escape your notice or you will lead a life that is duller than it need be. Hands up all those who would like to lead a dull life.

Maybe your kid said something really cute today. (Grandpa, why do you have hair on your chin and not on your head?”) Instant anecdote. You mimic his tone and you observe grandpa’s reaction and the reaction of everyone else in the room.

You build the anecdote, adding detail, exaggerating a bit here, subtracting anything irrelevant. You practice it silently. You share it with friends. It gets better all the time. Next thing you know you’ve got an anecdote to illustrate – for example – grandpa’s patience or the fresh view of the world that kids have or family interactions.

Your boss – well, depending on how you feel about him or her, you’re going to come home  quite often with tales of the latest interesting/terrible thing they did or said. Whatever it was will have had repercussions, positive or negative (or both). Put it together in the best story form you can before you get home – “She said this and Mary Lou got annoyed and she said….and Betty sided with her and…” Build it. Add details. Exaggerate just slightly. Throw in some hand gestures and roll your eyes. The boss just gave you an anecdote.

The  nutbar down the hall is a windfall of anecdotes. Of course, in your anecdote you won’t call him a nutbar, nor will you name him. He will become the man who has talked with aliens and who knows that JFK is actually alive. People would rather draw their own conclusions than be told yours.

You can take his odd beliefs and carry them to their logical conclusions. You can dramatize his meeting with the spaceship. You can even pretend you were there with him. At the end of your anecdote bring your listeners back with something that shows you are understanding and not just critical and supercilious. “But no-one gets his work done faster or more accurately than he does and he’s always willing to help the rest of us.”

Overheard conversations and interactions are another wonderful source of anecdotes. Can you get into  the head of someone who says “My wife’s in hospital, so I’m free for a few  days.” What was that about? Can you backtrack and try to understand the story behind it? It would only be personal insofar as you overheard it but it holds wonderful potential for a story.

Dig your life out of its rut. And remind me to tell you the story of my $400 nail.