Before the Speech
1. Rehearse
While this seems like a no-brainer, a lot of the corporate
executives I have coached before actually think they can wing it before their
big speech. As a result, their speeches and presentations end up with many
awkward silences and transitions while building up unnecessary tension for
themselves.
The key in rehearsing is not to memorize it word for word
such that you are unable to flow or react with sudden circumstances, like
having a question from the audience that derails your train of thought.
Rehearse standing up. Gesticulate as if you are speaking to
an actual crowd. Practise pausing at important segments of your speech like
after asking a rhetorical question or for dramatic silences while telling a
story. The closer you get yourself to anchoring to an ideal state of delivery,
the better your rehearsal prepares you for your actual speech.
2. It’s about Your Audience
There are two questions that remain in the minds of the
audience, “What’s in it for me?” and “So what?”
Handling these “mental objections” at the onset ensures that
both you and your audience will be on the same page.
The first question boils down to either what the audience
can gain in listening to your speech and/or what the audience will lose out on
in not listening to your speech i.e. the pleasure and pain principle. The
second question relates to relevance to an audience — the more you connect the
dots and make it relevant to them, the stronger the listening you create.
To find the answers to these two questions, you can do two
things – interview your audience and intelligent guessing.
A professional speaker who gets paid a modest five-figure
sum for his hour-long keynote speeches once shared with me that he has a
routine system of interviewing at least 15% of his audience before his speech
with a set of questions to find out what are the challenges they face vis-à-vis
the topic to be presented and what they hope to take away from the speech.
