I tried my best, but I can't resist borrowing this blog from Guy Kawasaki. I believe it will help your next public speech.
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When I started public speaking in about 1986, I was deathly afraid
of public speaking--for one thing, working for the division run by
Steve Jobs was hugely intimidating: How could you possibly compete with
Steve? It's taken me twenty years to get comfortable at it. I hope that
many of you are are called upon to give speeches--it's the closest
thing to being a professional athlete that many of us will achieve. The
purpose of this blog entry is to help you give great speeches.
- Have something interesting to say. This
is 80% of the battle. If you have something interesting to say, then
it's much easier to give a great speech. If you have nothing to say,
you should not speak. End of discussion. It's better to decline the
opportunity so that no one knows you don't have anything to say than it
is to make the speech and prove it. - Cut the sales pitch.
The purpose of most keynotes is to entertain and inform the audience.
It is seldom to provide you with an opportunity to pitch your product,
service, or company. For example, if you're invited to speak about the
future of digital music, you shouldn't talk about the latest MP3 player
that your company is selling. - Focus on entertaining.
Many speech coaches will disagree with this, but the goal of a speech
is to entertain the audience. If people are entertained, you can slip
in a few nuggets of information. But if your speech is deathly dull, no
amount of information will make it a great speech. If I had to pick
between entertaining and informing an audience, I would pick
entertaining--knowing that informing will probably happen too. - Understand the audience.
If you can prove to your audience in the first five minutes that you
understand who they are, you've got them for the rest of the speech.
All you need to understand is the trends, competition, and key issues
that the audience faces. This simply requires consultation with the
host organization and a willingness to customize your introductory
remarks. This ain't that hard. - Overdress.
My father was a politician in Hawaii. He was a very good speaker. When
I started speaking he gave me a piece of advice: Never dress beneath
the level of the audience. That is, if they're wearing suits, then you
should wear a suit. To underdress is to communicate the following
message: “I'm smarter/richer/more powerful than you. I can insult you
and not take you serious, and there's nothing you can do about it.”
This is hardly the way to get an audience to like you. - Don't denigrate the competition.
If you truly do cut the sales pitch, then this won't even come up. But
just in case, never denigrate the competition because by doing so, you
are taking undue advantage of the privilege of giving a speech. You're
not doing the audience a favor. The audience is doing you a favor, so
do not stoop so low as to use this opportunity to slander your
competition. - Tell stories. The best way
to relax when giving a speech is to tell stories. Any stories. Stories
about your youth. Stories about your kids. Stories about your
customers. Stories about things that you read about. When you tell a
story, you lose yourself in the storytelling. You're not “making a
speech” anymore. You're simply having a conversation. Good speakers are
good storytellers; great speakers tell stories that support their
message. - Pre-circulate with the audience.
True or false: the audience wants your speech to go well. The answer is
True. Audiences don't want to see you fail--for one thing, why would
people want to waste their time listening to you fail? And here's the
way to heighten your audience's concern for you: circulate with the
audience before the speech. Meet people. Talk to them. Let them make
contact with you. Especially the ones in the first few rows; then, when
you're on the podium, you'll see these friendly faces. Your confidence
will soar. You will relax. And you will be great. - Speak at the start of an event.
If you have the choice, get in the beginning part of the agenda. The
audience is fresher then. They're more apt to listen to you, laugh at
your jokes, and follow along with your stories. On the third day of a
three-day conference, the audience is tired, and all they're thinking
about is going home. It's hard enough to give a great speech--why
increase the challenge by having to lift the audience out of the
doldrums? - Ask for a small room. If you
have a choice, get the smallest room possible for your speech. If it's
a large room, ask that it be set “classroom style”--ie, with tables and
chairs--instead of theatre style. A packed room is a more emotional
room. It is better to have 200 people in a 200 person room than 500
people in a 1,000 person room. You want people to remember, “It was
standing room only.” - Practice and speak all the time.
This is a “duhism,” but nonetheless relevant. My theory is that it
takes giving a speech at least twenty times to get decent at it. You
can give it nineteen times to your dog if you like, but it takes
practice and repetition. There is no shortcut to Carnegie Hall. As
Jascha Heifitz said, “If I don't practice one day, I know it. If I
don't practice two days, my critics know it. If I don't practice three
days, everyone knows it.” Read this article
to learn what Steve Jobs does.
It's taken me twenty years to get to this point. I hope it takes you
less. Part of the reason why it took me so long is that no one
explained the art of giving a speech to me, and I was too dumb to do
the research. And now, twenty years later, I love speaking. My goal,
every time I get up to the podium, is to get a standing ovation. I
don't succeed very often, but sometimes I do. More importantly, I hope
that I'm standing and clapping in the audience of your speech soon.
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