Posts Tagged ‘objectives’

Learn To Set Goals In Order To Succeed As A Speaker

Tuesday, October 4th, 2011
Image Credit Learn How To Knock All The Pins Down, Set Goals In Order To Become A Better Speaker

Learn How To Knock All The Pins Down, Set Goals In Order To Become A Better Speaker

Congratulations – you can give a speech in public without bursting into flames. But can you give a good speech? No matter what your skill level is, you can always become better. However, you can’t improve if you don’t know how. It turns out that thing that we do each year around New Years, setting goals, is exactly what you need to do in order to become a better speaker…

Set Goals

Can we be honest here? If you don’t set goals, then you are never going to be able to achieve them. Simply by being aware of what you want to accomplish makes it easier to get there.

Setting goals sounds like something that should be easy for speakers to do, I mean just think about what you want to achieve, right? It turns out that you need to know how to set goals in order to be successful.

Based on some studies done back in the 1960′s of people who both set goals and then were able to achieve them, the following 5 goal setting criteria were developed:

  1. You Have To Be Able To Describe Them: this, of course, means that any speaker goals that you come up with need to be specific, measurable, relevant, and have a time by which you will have completed them.

  2. They Have To Be Hard To Do: : well, maybe not hard but at least challenging – if they aren’t, then you won’t be motivated to work on them.

  3. Lust Must Be Involved: : desire for what completing the goal will provide you with must be part of the game. If you set a goal to accomplish something that you don’t care about, then you won’t do it.

  4. Change Happens: : don’t set your goals in stone. Instead, leave some room to make modifications as you move towards achieving them. Stay flexible.

  5. This Is Not Mission Impossible: : don’t set speaker goals that you are not going to be able to achieve. Instead, set your next set of goals as something you’ll be able to achieve in the not so distant future and then set more goals once you achieve those ones.

Keep Your Commitment Level High

Having goals is all good and well, but it’s not going to do you a whole lot of good if you aren’t able to keep your motivation high enough to achieve these speaker goals. It turns out that there is a simply way to keep your motivation high, but you’re not going to like it.

If we tell the world, or at least our friends and family what our speaking goals are, then all of a sudden we have social accountability. What this means is that we can’t just ignore our goals any more – people that we know will be asking us about them.

The scope of your goals will also help with your motivation. If you have a mix of short-term and long-term goals then you’ll be able to have a string of successes even as you continue to work towards your longer term speaking objectives.

What All Of This Means For You

Hopefully the goal of every speaker is to find ways to become a better speaker. As daunting as that may sound, it turns out that it really is possible. All we need to be able to do is to set speaking goals for ourselves.

In order to make our goals happen, there are three things that need to be done. The first is that we actually need to identify and set our speaking improvement goals. Next we need to make sure that we fully understand why these goals are important to us. Goals without meaning will never get accomplished. Finally, it can take time to accomplish goals so we need to create ways to keep our motivation high.

In this life there truly is no sweeter taste than that of achieving a goal that we set for ourselves. The reason that this feeling can be so powerful is all tied to the level of effort that went into achieving the goal. The harder the speaking goal that we set for ourselves, the better we will feel about ourselves when we achieve it!

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

Question For You: How many speaking goals do you think that you should be working on at one time?

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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

All that I’m asking for is some simple rules that would govern our lives. Among these rules would this little gem: I’ve got no problem having to deal with being nervous as a beginning speaker; however, once I’ve been speaking for a while I should no longer have any problems with nerves. Dang it – it turns out that these rules don’t exist and speakers can have panic attacks at any time no matter how much experience they have…

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Speech Writing Success: How To Make It Happen

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010
Image Credit You Can Be A Winner, You Just Have To Know How To Get There…

You Can Be A Winner, You Just Have To Know How To Get There…

So there you are: you’ve agreed to give a speech and now your mind has gone completely blank when you’ve tried to start to figure out what you’ll say. Where did your energy go? Perhaps more importantly, how are you going to get it back and create a great speech?

It’s All About Your Goals

If you’ve ever read a book or attended a workshop on motivational techniques, then you already know about the power of goals. If for some reason you haven’t, then you’re going to learn now.

In a nutshell, if you want to accomplish something, like writing a great speech, then you need to first start by creating a goal and, this is the important part, writing it down! Yes, I know that it seems too easy, but trust me – this really works.

Setting Goals Is How You Start To Be Successful

Sure we throw the word “goal” around a lot, but do any of us really know what it means? It can mean many different things, but for our purposes here lets assume that when we talk about goals, we’re talking about something that you want to achieve.

You would think that when it comes to the goal of writing a great speech, all you have to do is to think to yourself “I’m going to write a great speech” and that would be that. Right? Well, actually there is a lot more to it than just that.

The experts say that thinking about the goal is really just the first step. The next (and some argue the most important) step is to write it down. For some reason this has the effect of making the goal seem to be more “real” to us. Finally, the last step in the process is actually taking action to make the goal a reality. There may be many steps that you need to take, but taking the first one is what will get you on your way…

Visualization: Can You See What I Can See?

If you were a professional sports figure, then in the past few years you would have found yourself getting caught up in the “visualization” craze that swept through the sports world awhile back. Simply put, this is where you take the time to imagine yourself being successful before it comes time for you to perform. Since the mind can’t tell the different between real and imagined actions, it thinks that you’ve done this before and you’ve just improved your odds of completing your goal.

When it comes to writing a great speech, visualization can be a big help. Speech writing can take quite some time and so having taken the time to visualize yourself successfully creating a great speech helps you to stay focused and on track while writing.

What sport figures go through is called process visualization. What you’ll go through when you are writing a speech is called outcome visualization. You can “see” what you want to produce and that will help you to get there.

Becoming A Speaker Of Action

In the end, all of the goals and visualization in the world won’t do you any good if you don’t get up out of your chair and take some action. It’s this final step of the goals process that separates the people who plan great things from those who achieve great things.

What All Of This Means For You

You can write a great speech. The key to doing this is to make sure that you have clear goals for what you want to achieve.

Knowing your goals is only the first part of a process. Next you need to take the time to visualize yourself creating that great speech and then, most importantly, you need to start to take the steps that will be necessary to get you to where you want to be.

There is no secret to writing a great speech. You have the ability to do it right now. Go set some goals and you’ll be half way to creating that great speech…!

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

Question For You: What kind of goals do you think would help you to create a great speech?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Can we all be honest here? PowerPoint is a part of everyone’s life no matter how you feel about it. We all seem to fall into one of three camps: we fear it, we love it too much, or we just don’t really know what to do with it. With a little help, I think that I can help you out here…

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Posted in speech writing | 5 Comments »

Back To Basics: Presentation Tips 101

Monday, November 10th, 2008
We Can All Use Some Reminders On What Makes A Speech Great

We Can All Use Some Reminders On What Makes A Speech Great

So perhaps you’ve had the opportunity to do some public speaking in the past, shucks maybe this is how you are currently making your living. As with all things that we’ve done a few (or many) times, we have a tendency to start to become just a little bit, how shall I say this, complacent? I guess the word “lazy” would be just a bit too harsh, but I’m sure that you get the point. If our last presentation went over fairly well, then why rock the boat? Well, here’s the harsh reality – you can do better. If you stall now, then you’ll at best be as good as you were last time and in fact you’ll probably start slipping and that won’t be good for anyone.

In order to stop all of this from happening, let’s take just a moment and see what David Brooks who once upon a time won the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking contest can suggest to help us get better. David has seven presentation tips for us to remember and learn from:

  1. PowerPoint Is Really Not Your Friend: Way too many of us spend more time working on the PowerPoint slides that we’re going to use instead of working on what we are going to say (business presenters please confess NOW!) No matter how beautiful your slides are, nobody is going to remember them once your presentation is done. Don’t hide behind your slides, instead let your slides support what you are saying.
  2. It’s A Speech, Not A Battle: All too often we approach a presentation just as though we are preparing to go to war with the audience. This is crazy – they are there because they want to hear what you have to say, not to throw stones at you. The most painful thing in the world for an audience is to sit through is a bad speech. Therefore, they are actually on your side. They may or may not agree with what you are talking about, but they want you to do a good job no matter what.
  3. Why Are You Doing This?: Look, why are you going to be willing to stand in front of a group of people and talk to them? What is that reason? It can always be put into one or more of four buckets: to entertain, to inspire, to persuade, or to inform. You need to know the answer to this question BEFORE you start to speak so that you can make sure that your words will accomplish what you want them to do.
  4. W.I.I.F.M.?: How long should your presentation be? Not too long! Your audience will be asking themselves What’s In It For Me (WIIFM) even before you open your mouth. The last thing that you want to do is to sound like a high school Spanish teacher who is going over the irregular verbs. Instead, you want to engage your audience in what you are saying and have them feel that you are having a conversation one-on-one with them directly that lasts just the right amount of time.
  5. It’s ALWAYS Story Time: Brooks makes a great point when he boils public speaking down to this very, very simple formula: make a point, tell a story, make a point, tell a story. When you are done talking, your audience probably won’t be able to remember your points. However, there is a very good chance that they will be able to remember your stories long after you are done. Don’t use other people’s stories, instead pay attention to your world and “see” you own stories.
  6. Write But Don’t Read!: If you want to get really good at giving a speech here’s the secret: write it out word-for-word. Don’t you dare read it to your audience word-for-word! Instead, edit what you’ve written over and over again until the words shine from being polished so much. Then practice, practice, practice. Once you’ve practiced enough, you won’t need to read your speech word-for-word, the words will simply tumble from  your mouth with only the slightest shove provided by notes on cards.
  7. Don’t Forget The “P” Word: That would be, of course, practice. In order to get the little things that make a speech great like pauses and your own natural rhythm correct, you need to practice your speech over and over again. Make sure that you say the speech out loud just like you’ll say it on that special day so that you can hear how you sound and make any needed changes.

How many of these tips do you already use when you are preparing to give a presentation? Do you take the time to write out your presentations or do you just create a quick outline and wing it from there? Have you ever had to give the same presentation multiple times and did you get better each time? Leave a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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