Strategies for Effective Speaking
- Public speaking does not hold the same value that it once did, though it is still a valuable skill to possess and is a necessary tool in the workplace. People who typically hate speaking in front of an audience of any size are those who generally are unfamiliar with the effective process of public speaking. And ironically, the first strategy for effective public speaking to not fear your audience and to prove your lack of fear by looking the audience in the eye as you move through your speech. When you fear your audience, you look down at your notes or at the podium or the floor or at anything else that will take your eyes off of your audience. This is a mistake and can defeat the purpose of and diminish the effectiveness of your speech.
One strategy to use to overcome this issue is to pick a few people out of the audience and give the speech directly to them. Alternate between looking at each person for just a few seconds. A similar technique is to pick people out of the audience at random and pretend that you are giving each person a small part of your speech and never look at the same person more than twice. This is difficult to do if the audience is small, but you always need to tailor the speech to the audience. - Any topic can be presented to any audience anywhere in the world, so long as you can make it work for that audience. Understand the demographic of the audience before preparing your speech so it will be appropriate for the situation. Keep the number of key topics to the minimum required to get your point across. And take into consideration the amount of time you have to speak. Touching briefly on 10 different topics in 10 minutes may make their (the audience) heads spin. If you have 15 minutes to give a good speech, talk about the most important three points related to the topic, then close.
- Have you ever watched a movie that ended in a random fashion with no clear resolution or purpose? Imagine how your audience would feel if you did the same thing with your speech. Any good speech depends on the effectiveness of the closing of the speech. There are as many effective closings as there are types of speeches. One of the oldest rules of public speaking is to tell the audience what you are going to tell them, then tell them and then tell them what you told them. Persuasive speeches require a call to action of some kind, and effective placement of a call to action is in your closing statements. Informative speeches can end in many ways. You can end by telling your audience that more information is forthcoming and schedule another meeting to dispense of that new information. You can also conclude an informative speech by explaining how the information you just presented fits into a larger whole. No matter how you frame your closing, do not leave your audience wondering why you closed when you did.