“All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
The number one fear in business is public speaking, which is a learned skill. Anyone can transform speaking from a weakness to a strength if he or she is motivated to do so.
The fear factor stems from three things:
- Self-induced pressure to be perceived positively by the audience.
- Uncertainty concerning how to construct a timely, compelling speech.
- Lack of confidence in persuasive delivery.
Each of these three can be demystified via explanation and practice.
1. Self-induced pressure. Some people look at an audience and smile with anticipation. Others tighten up. The basic reality of public speaking is this: The audience is rooting for you. The audience wants you to be good. If you know what you’re talking about, have earned the right to be there, and have methodically prepared and rehearsed, there is very little to feel nervous about. Audiences know speaking is hard; they will reward preparation, effort, and professionalism.
Pressure comes from the conflict of juggling how we want to come across — skilled, competent, and professional — with how we are received by the audience, which is something we can only influence and cannot control.
A good start usually carries through. The best way to launch positively into a speech is to do three things:
First, be introduced professionally. Script your intro if necessary. Give it to whoever is introducing you ahead of time so he or she can read it. The intro should be brief, professional, and answer important points. A well-written and delivered one-minute intro sets up a speaker for success. Do not be shy about asking for what you want: a professional introduction. If your intro is written and sent out ahead of time, make sure it includes these four elements:
- Your name (and its proper pronunciation).
- Your topic. The topic should be relevant to the audience.
- Your credentials. Why you? Why are you qualified to speak on this particular topic? Whoever introduces you should explain your qualifications.
- The takeaways. What will the audience leave with? How will they benefit from your talk?
2. Uncertainty in speech construction. Script your talk with discipline. Good speeches have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Here’s how to build all three:
- The beginning (15 percent of your allocated time). The beginning shares your theme. Strive to deliver a strong “hook” — a catchy or memorable phrase — that captures the essence of the talk. The beginning should also reaffirm why this topic is relevant to the audience. You also want to share the takeaway (in your words). Time example: In a 10-minute speech, the beginning merits 90 seconds (1.5 minutes).
- The middle merits 75 percent of your allocated time. In a 10-minute speech, the middle should be 7 1/2 minutes. This is the body of your speech; in it you share reasons, stories, and examples that illustrate key points. The order you present those key points is this:
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- Your strongest reason goes first. The first reason has high retention.
- Your second strongest reason goes last. People tend to remember the last reason, too.
- Less vital reasons are mixed in the middle.
- The end deserves 10 percent of your time. In a 10-minute speech, the end is a one-minute wrap-up. The end is where you reaffirm the topic, highlight in summary form the key learning points, and state your call to action. A call to action is what the audience is expected to do next. Do not leave it for them to figure out — tell them! Common calls to action are signaled by phrases like, “Starting immediately…” or “From this point forward, make sure you …” or “Join with me today as we …” A call to action is an important closing element of every good speech. It “buttons up” what you have been talking about.
In simplistic terms, the individual goals of the beginning, middle, and end are to explain this: Tell them what you’re going to tell them; tell them; and tell them what you’ve told them.
Speechwriting is a constructive discipline. It has mechanical elements. Once you demystify how to write the speech — as we have done here — speeches become simple to construct.
Trust this process! When you walk to the front of a room fully prepared, you arrive with confidence. Then locate the happy face — the man or woman in the audience with the friendliest demeanor. Look at him or her and smile. They will smile back. Off you go. Launch. If you make a mistake, stop, fix it, and resume with a smile. The audience will forgive you.
The secret to time management
The big key to great time management is knowing your delivery rate. Your delivery rate is how fast you normally deliver aloud one page of a speech. Speeches should be written and printed with double-spaced pages and one-inch margins top and bottom. The type should be in a large, easy-to-read font — use size 14 or bigger. Sans serif fonts (fonts without “feet” like Arial and Orator) are easier to read than serif fonts.
This sentence is an example of an easy-to-read speech font.
Air and spacing is important in speech text. Let your pages breathe. Make them easy to read and reader-friendly when relocating your place to resume after looking out at your audience. (Tip: Since audience eye contact is important, look left, center, and right at regular intervals, as well as short and long.).
Each of us has a delivery rate that is normal for us. Mine is 1 minute, 40 seconds. Others I know are a bit quicker, 90 seconds or so.
It is very important to know your delivery rate. Practice reading properly scripted pages aloud and time yourself several times. Build in your pauses and breaking eye contact. Your effective delivery speed will soon become apparent. Again: Know what this is.
Speech length, therefore, is simply a function of delivery speed. If you speak slowly, like me, a 10-minute speech would require six pages of printed text. Remember your script writing guidelines: one-inch margins top and bottom, double-spaced, typed in a large easy-to-read font with lots of air — paragraphs and indents. Six pages, at 1 minute, 40 seconds each, takes exactly 10 minutes to deliver. For someone with a 90-second delivery speed, they could cover 6 2/3 pages in 1o minutes — 2/3 of a page more than me.
Knowing the overall length of my ten-minute speech should be six pages, I can then apply the percentages associated with the beginning, middle, and end to ascertain how much typewritten space to allocate for teach.
The beginning (15 percent) would be 90 seconds, or nearly one full page of text.
The middle (75 percent) requires 7 minutes, 30 seconds, or roughly 4 1/3 pages of text.
The end (10 percent) requires two-thirds of a page — one minute’s worth.
Broken down this way, it’s easy to write a speech that will always hit the mark, time-wise, based on what you are expected to deliver.
3. Lack of confidence during delivery. Confidence starts with knowing you will hit your time mark. Growing that confidence comes from knowing you built the speech smartly. Best of all, your confidence increases even more by rehearsing — aloud while timing — over and over. The better rehearsed you are, the smoother your delivery.
Today’s final tip is important too: Adrenaline speeds you up. Purposely slow down during practice and during your delivery. Adrenaline is invisible but very real. We do not realize adrenaline is scheming to speed us up. We channel that two ways: by intentionally slowing down during practice and by building pauses into the speech: (PAUSE) for example.
When you have earned the right to present and are thoroughly prepared, the delivery should be fun. Let it be. The delivery is the reward for all your hard work.
Try these tips, they should help. If you have trouble with any of the elements tied to the subject, let me know. I am always happy to help.