Posts Tagged ‘speech’

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The 100 Hour Secret To Creating Speeches Everyone Will Want To Hear

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010
Image Credit Yes, I Do Have A Secret To Share With You

Yes, I Do Have A Secret To Share With You

Have you ever gone to hear someone speak and just been blown away by what they had to say? I mean their words just seemed to flow out of them and the stories that they told were right on the mark – a perfect complement to the point that they were trying to make? It turns out that you can deliver speeches like this too…

The Secret To Creating Great Speeches

If you want to be able to give a great speech, then you’ve got to be willing to invest the time to create a great speech. I’m not talking about shutting down for a couple of days and holing yourself up somewhere and banging out some fabulous bit of text – that never seems to happen when you need it to.
Nope, what I’m talking about is actually spending the time that it takes to really create a fantastic speech. How much time is that you ask? Probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 hours. Oh, oh – now I’ve gone and done it. It looks like you don’t think that this is possible. Turns out that you’re wrong – spend the time keeping a journal and you’ll have all of the high quality content that you’ll need to quickly make a great speech.

How To Spend 100′s Of Hours Creating A Speech

I’ll grant that you are correct that the next time someone asks you to give a speech, the last thing that you want to have to tell them is “could you get back to me after I spend a 100 hours just whipping up a speech for you?” Maybe there’s another way to do the same thing.
Keeping a personal journal is something that all too few of us speakers do, and yet all of us probably should do more of it. Life comes at us fast and if we’re not careful, it will blow right by us and we won’t even remember what happened to us. That’s why a journal is so important.
If you take the time either once a day or perhaps for short times throughout the day to write down what you are doing, how you are feeling, what challenges you are facing, then you will be able to remember everything that has happened to you. This is the raw material that makes for a great speech.

Strong Words Make Strong Images

Anybody can jot a few words down on a piece of paper. It takes a truly skillful speaker to capture just exactly how you are feeling when you update your journal.
One of the keys is to record how you are feeling using all of your 5 senses. Yes, this means taking note of what you are smelling (perhaps your own fear?), tasting, hearing, seeing, and feeling. These are the small details that you will need to use when you use your journal entries to create a fantastic speech.

What All Of This Means For You

The truly great speakers are the ones who have taken the time to create a speech that will resonate with their audience. This means that they have crafted both the words and the stories that will not only allow them to get their points across, but that they have also found a way to get their message to stick with their audience.
You have the ability to create this kind of speech also. What you are going to have to do is to take the time that is needed to create such a speech: 100 hours or more. It turns out that you can do this by keeping a journal – the time that you spend working on the journal will pay rich dividends when it comes time to create your next speech.
By recording everything that you are experiencing at any given moment in your journal, you’ll be able to go back and relive those moments when you are in the process of creating your memorable speech. The secret is to not gloss over how you feel, but rather to record everything that is going on so that you can recapture it. Nobody said it was going to be easy, but it will be the best 100 hours that you’ve ever spent doing something…

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

Question For You: How often do you think that a speaker should update their journal? Once a day or more often?

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

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

PowerPoint is a double edged sword when it comes to giving a speech: it can be both a powerful way to add a multimedia impact to your speech or it can end up distracting your audience and taking their attention away from what you have to say. The experts know how to use this tool correctly and here are three of the ways they tame the PowerPoint beast…

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Speechwriting Magic: 3 Ways To Cast A Spell Over Your Audience

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
Image CreditIt Turns Out That Your Speeches Can Be Magical

It Turns Out That Your Speeches Can Be Magical

When you deliver a speech you stand up straight, you speak clearly, and you have fantastic eye contact. What more could anyone ask for? How about a speech that is both memorable and magical…

Do Your Homework

If you want to create a speech that will do the two most difficult things that any speaker can attempt, inspire and motivate your audience, then you’re going to need to write a killer speech. That speech is only going to be as good as what you are able to put into it. This means that you’ve got some homework to do.
If you wait until when you are sitting down to create your next speech to start to collect the information that you are going to need to make a great speech, then it may already be too late. The really good speechwriters are always collecting information. They read everything that they can get their hands on and those items that catch their attention get filed away somewhere they can find it when they eventually need it.
Your ultimate goal needs to have more information that you’ve collected for your speech than you could possibly use. This will allow you to sort through it all and pick out only the best bits to use.

Magic Speeches Start One Word At A Time

What’s interesting about speech writing is that all too often we are our own worst enemies. We all know what a great speech sounds like and as we are creating a speech we quickly realize that our first draft basically sounds pretty lousy. If you aren’t careful, you can get caught in an almost endless loop of editing in which you try to get a sentence perfect before you write the next one.
Don’t do this. Instead just let the words flow out of you as you create your first pass of the speech. One way to make sure that your speech is able to grab your audience’s attention and holds it is to identify 6 or so main points that will grab attention and which have a good story associated with them.
As you practice your speech, what you are going to be listening for is the “rhythm” that your speech has: it has a lot to do with the pace of the speech and how it all links together.

It’s All About The Ears

I can’t tell you how much time I’ve spent in the past working on getting my Power Point slides just perfect. It turns out that what I should have been doing. Your audience really isn’t going to remember what your slides looked like after your speech is over. Instead, it’s your words that will stay with them if you choose them correctly.
If you take the time to make sure that your words are used to draw a sequence of mental pictures in your audiences heads then you will have found a way to leave a lasting impression. An important note here is that we write differently than we speak – we use more slang and contractions when we are speaking. If you write your speech out and then read it as you wrote it, it’s not going to come across as a natural way of speaking.

What All Of This Means For You

Finding a way to cast a magical spell over your audience is what every speaker wants to find a way to do. Creating a great speech is one way to make this happen.
The way to make happen is to get into your audience’s head while you are writing your next speech. Once you do this you’ll understand that your audience doesn’t really want to find out just how smart you are (what can they do with that?), but rather what they really want is to know what they can do with the information that you share with them during your speech…

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

Question For You: What’s your secret to writing a great speech?

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

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Humor, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Well, maybe not – simply because although I do like using humor in a speech; however, it’s a tricky beast and it can turn on you at any moment. Just how is a speaker supposed to determine when some form of humor is inappropriate for the audience that he / she is speaking to?

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Speaker Alert: Make Me Laugh — Or Else

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Audiences Who Laugh Remember What You Say

Make Your Audiences Laugh And They'll Remember What You Say

Stop. How funny was the last speech that you gave? What – you were talking about how best to diversify a 401k basket of investments in order to incorporate more foreign exchange funds & there’s nothing funny about that? Wrong. You’re not trying hard enough. Stop being not funny.

Learn To Be Funny From A Politician

Every speech counts. Especially if you are trying to get elected. If there was any group of speakers who needed to find a way to get people to remember them & their message, it would be politicians. They have three goals every time they give a speech:

  • Promote their policies
  • Boost their accomplishments while minimizing their opponents
  • Impress people with their moral upstanding character & leadership skills

Politicians know that humor is a powerful speaking tool. They use it to both make a point as well as to illustrate that point for their (or your) audience.

In the end, it’s all about getting votes. You’re probably not running for anything right now, but why waste a speech?

Why Humor Is So Powerful When You Are Speaking

Every speech that you give is your next chance to change the world. Adding humor to your speaking style isn’t something that you can put off until “sometime”, you’ve got to do it right now.

The reason that humor works so well comes down to five basic “levers” that every audience has. Gene Perret who won several Emmys for his work in television has spent a lot of time researching what these levers do to an audience:

  • Humor Makes You More Likable: I don’t care how much of a jerk you are in real life, if you start to work more humor into your speeches your audiences will start to like you better than your family does. Perret points out that it’s really hard to laugh with a person if you don’t like them – make your audience laugh and they’ll love you forever.
  • Build Credibility Using Humor: Who are you to talk to anyone about anything? Somewhat amazingly, audiences associate the ability to be funny with wisdom. When you can joke with your audience about 401k plans, they’ll settle back and say to themselves “gosh, if he can joke about this stuff then he must know it really well”. Whether or not you really do know it really doesn’t matter any more after this.
  • Get Respect Using Humor: Some of the worst speeches that I’ve ever had to sit through were ones where the speaker was too full of himself / herself. I quickly tuned them out – I don’t have time for blowhards. When you kid around with your audience you’re telling them “I’m one of you”. When they understand that you “get” them, you will have hooked them and they’ll pay attention to you for the rest of your speech.
  • Make People Want To Listen Using Humor: When you say something funny, people laugh. If they’re not listening, then they miss out. Nobody likes to miss out on something that’s funny. When you work humor into your speeches and people start to laugh, then all of those other people who are busy reading email and sending text messages will start to look around and wonder what they are missing out on. Very quickly those iPhones and Blackberry’s will go away and you’ll have their attention.
  • Make People Remember What You Say Using Humor: Stay home if you are going to give a speech that nobody is going to remember. Why bother? What humor does is it creates the possibility that people will remember the joke, and if they do then there’s just a chance that they might remember what your point was that you made the joke about.

Final Thoughts

Stop wasting my time. If you want to get up there and give a dry, lifeless speech that has no humor in it then you may as well stay at home and just send me an email with your main points.

If, however, you want me to walk away thinking that you know what you are talking about and remembering what you said, then that’s another story. The only way that that’s going to happen is if you start to work some humor into your speech. No, you don’t have to turn into a stand-up comedian; however, you do need to make me crack a smile or at least chuckle. Get me to do that and you’ve spent your time well.

Do you think that there is any type of speech that can’t have humor added to it? (Hint: eulogies are great candidates for humor so don’t even bring that up)

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

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

When I come to hear you speak, no matter if it’s at a departmental project status report or at a local restaurant or even if it was at a convention, the worst thing that you can do is to waste my time. What are you going to do about this?

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Posted in humor | 1 Comment »

Size Matters – Shaping Your Speech To Match Your Audience

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
Speakers Need To Tailor Their Speeches To The Size Of Their Audience

Speakers Need To Tailor Their Speeches To The Size Of Their Audience

Have you ever heard the expression “one size fits all“? I’m not sure what this phrase was invented to describe, but I can tell you that it sure wasn’t public speaking. Something that too many public speakers don’t realize is that you need to create different speeches for different size audiences. There is no such thing as the one-size-fits-all speech.

Types Of Audiences

One of the first questions that has to be answered is just how many different size audiences are there out there? Cliff Suttle has taken a look at this and he believes that there are four different common audience sizes:

  • Conversation Size: an audience of up to 10 people.
  • Speech Size: an audience of 10-40 people.
  • Performance Size: an audience of 40-100 people.
  • Show Size: an audience of 100 or more people

The reason that the size of your audience matters is because you need to tune your speech to meet the needs of that size audience. Just as a clown at a birthday party does different things to entertain its audience from what a comedian at a nightclub does, so to does a public speaker need to make changes to suit the size of his/her audience.

How To Match Your Speech To Your Audience’s Size

Once you know how large of an audience you’ll be talking to, you can adjust your speech to best match the needs of that audience. You’ll have to take a different approach for each type of audience:

  • Conversation Size: the key to satisfying this type of audience is to NOT deliver a formal speech. Instead what you want do is to have an intimate conversation with them. You’ll need to be able to be flexible in order to adjust your speech to meet the changing moods of your audience.
  • Speech Size: the audience size is still small enough that you are going to be able to use a conversational tone, but you are going to have prepare and deliver a formal speech. Eye contact becomes very important and you need to make hand gestures in order to include everyone in you speech.
  • Performance Size: for this type of speech, taking the time to memorize your speech can be a big help because it will free you up to focus on HOW you say it. You are going to have to speed up the eye contact and not spend too much time looking at any one person. If you make your audience laugh, be sure to give the entire audience time to laugh before you start speaking again.
  • Show Size: One of the most important points about speaking to a large audience has nothing to do with your words – it’s all about self-confidence. Being confidant and taking and owning the stage are critical parts of winning a large audience over to your side. There will no longer be an opportunity to make eye contact with individuals in the audience, instead you’ll have to look at sections of the audience in such a way that they all feel as though you are looking at them individually. Your use of vocal variety becomes critical to keeping your audience engaged in your speech.

Final Thoughts

All too often when we are asked to give a speech we will spend all of our time thinking about the speech and not spend any time thinking about the audience. All audiences are not created the same. We need to tailor our speeches to meet the needs of the size audience that we are addressing.

When preparing a speech always plan for the big show. Then spend some extra time scaling it down to match your audience. This way you’ll have a back up plan if more people happen to show up.

Learn to do this well and you’ll be able to intimately connect with your audience and make an lasting impact in their lives.

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

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Even the most accomplished public speakers can develop a sudden phobia about speaking in public. In order to get over this phobia, you need to recognize what kind it is and how to deal with it…

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Posted in audience | 9 Comments »

Know Your Audience: What You Don’t Know May Hurt You

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
Speakers Need To Realize Their Audience May Be Different From Them <p>(c) - 2008</p>

Speakers Need To Realize Their Audience May Be Different From Them (c) - 2008

When you think of the perfect speech in your mind, what do you see? Do you see yourself up on a stage giving a speech, reaching the end, and then having everyone stand up and applaud until their hands grow tired? Nice picture. However, all too often that doesn’t happen. There are lots of reasons for this, but one big one is because we don’t take the time to fully know our audience…

Why Bother?

Why give a speech in the first place? There always has to be a reason for us to give a speech – are we there to entertain, inform, motivate, etc. We won’t be able to do this if we don’t connect with our audience. We won’t be able to connect with our audience if we don’t know who they are.

It’s way too easy for a speaker to make assumptions about the audiences that we are talking to. The biggest mistake is to assume that they see the world the way that we do. Craig Harrison points out that by presuming that the audience thinks the way that we do we risk offending them – perhaps without even realizing it.

It Takes A Village To Give A Speech

The right way to go about getting an audience on your side is to tackle three big issues right off the bat in any speech that you are giving:

  • Acknowledge Differences: What makes you different from the majority of your audience? You realize this and your audience realizes it. Deal with it in a way that shows respect. If you are an older speaker talking to a much younger audience you could start out by saying “I realize that you are out there looking at me and thinking to yourself that I may be old enough to be your parent; however, don’t worry – I won’t be telling you that you should visit your mother more, that you really should be getting more sleep, or asking when you’ll finally be getting married. Instead, how about if we talk about…“
  • Include Everyone: Not only are you an outsider to your audience, there is a good chance that a lot of people in your audience are outsiders to the rest of the audience. Use the opening of your speech to unite everyone together at least on a single issue. An example might be “I realize that we all live in different neighborhoods, go to different schools, and attend different churches, but the proposed change in how property taxes are calculated will affect us all and that’s what I’d like to talk to you about tonight.“
  • Mind Your Reputation: Before you even open your mouth, the audience has pre-judged you. It might be based on the information that was used to advertise the event or perhaps you are known for some past deed. Dealing with this right off the bat will allow your audience to get by it and start to listen to what you have to say. One way to do this would be “I come from the sunny state of Florida where you might think that just about everyone is retired and just living off of Medicare. However, there are a few of us who are still working and we care just as much, if not more, about the current debate over healthcare reform…“

Final Thoughts

Giving a speech is a tough job. Giving a good speech is even tougher. You need to have your audience working with you, not against you if you want to have any hope of making an impact. The first step in accomplishing this is realizing that your audience is different from you.

Once you acknowledge this, then you need to work to include them and dispel any preconceived ideas that they may have about you. Learn to do this well and you’ll be able to intimately connect with your audience and make an lasting impact in their lives.

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

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Have you ever heard the expression “one size fits all“? Something that too many public speakers don’t realize is that you need to create different speeches for different size audiences. There is no such thing as the one-size-fits-all speech.

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Posted in differences | 2 Comments »

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