Some people only deliver speeches to hear themselves talk. Or worse: speaker who use the speech as therapy to solve an emotional issue of their life.
In these situation gains often only the speaker something – in the best cases the audience is being entertained, but will they learn anything? In the worst case they are led into a sad emotion or even frightened.
As speaker we are responsible for our audience and what they get from our speech. We are responsible to entertain and leave them in a great mood.
A speech and no target
This weekend I watched extraordinary speeches in a the Swiss Toastmasters Division contests. Wow, they were all fantastic.
The winning speeches were all inspiring and intense. They all had clear messages: The champion speaker John Zimmer talked about what difference words can make – like a thank you in the native tongue of the country you visit.
The other speeches have been great as well, although there were a few which were missing a message. I observe very often that speaker who tell a story in which they are still emotionally entangled have problems keeping the message of a story in view and lead to it. They report their feelings and often succeed to lad an empathic audience to understand them. But miss to lead them further to a solution or even in a better mood. This happens especially wen the speaker has not defined their message beforehand.
The message
As a peaker you always have a general goal: to inform, to convince, or “just” to entertain. Additionally you have your message: what do you want to convey?
Recently I had to deliver a speech at 4:25 PM. At that point of time the audience had been about 6 hours at the event and attended quite some sessions. Of course I had defined my message, but the time of the day meant to include an additional goal: to fresh up the energy of the audience. Attending a conference for 6 hours leaves hte audience in a bit exhaustion and they are not as attentive any more. If you just lecture this can easily be boring. Do I added some interactive elements to energize the audience and lift them up.
Today I measure my success a speaker how many people come to me after my speech and tell me what they learned from it. Or how inspired they are.
The tipp with the business card
When you prepare your next speech, take a business card and write on the back in one or two sentences your message you want to convey.
That is your message which you tell your audienve and lead them to. Last weekend I also listened to a feedback for a speech, given by Lesley Stevenson, coach and speaker. She told the speaker that she was missing the message. She felt like boarding an airplane to the UK and then the plane took direction to Mexico and eventually headed back to UK. This example shows me impressively and clear how she felt.
For us as speaker: if we don´t know where we´re heading, how could our audience follow?
The message makes the difference
No matter which general intend you have with your speech (inform, convince, entertain), only if you have your message in your mind you lead your audience there.
Have fun with your next speech.
So many times I observe speakers who tell a great story – only I miss the purpose in their speech. Especially recently I observed this: as top executive I am regularly the district representative on conferences of the European Toastmasters. Those conferences host the contests for the winners who compete at the European championship.
