How to prepare your next speech
1. Don't forget
Less is best - the more you say, the less your audience will remember…
- Be appropriately brief. Research shows that today’s audiences have an attention span of just on 18 minutes - the period between commercials on prime -time television!
- Push a single concept. The podium is no place for multiple messages and muddled meanderings.
2. Smile & ponder
Max Walker, former Australian test cricketer turned author and public speaker, says one of his worst experiences with public speaking was when he expected to be addressing a hundred blind people - and arrived to find a hall full of deaf people instead!
‘Imagine. I’m trying to be funny on some bloke’s fingers and all the laughs are coming back about sixty seconds later!
But it worked - and the moral is that, when necessary, you’ve got to be flexible enough to readjust the speech you prepared for your audience and make it work.’
3. Viewpoint
"Centuries ago, Marcus Cato led his successful campaign of rhetoric with the phrase ‘Carthage must be destroyed’, repeated over and over in speech after speech. That’s what it took to persuade his compatriots. This historical precedent has relevance for speakers.
In speechmaking, keep the main points you’re going to emphasise and re-emphasise extremely simple. …
