2007 - a fantastic year in the making - so here's a few thoughts to start it off! Over the holidays I had a chance, as we all do, to review the year that's just past and plan for the year ahead. As I did that I reflected on what I think are the two basic principles of public speaking.
The first thing is that the key, to my mind, in all public speaking is to be audience focused. Too often I’ve watched people give presentations and their focus has been on themselves. In my courses I invariably say, "It’s about them (the audience), it’s not about us". So as we prepare we concentrate on how best we can get our message across to our audience. We will use our own stories and ideas to assist in that but we use them to help illustrate the message not to massage our ego. If our emphasis is on us that’s a sure-fire way to lose our audience.
The second thing is an observation. It seems to me that a speech’s primarily purpose is to make a sale. Why do we give speeches? We give them to change peoples’ attitudes, to sell them a product or to inform them. We give them to get our audience to follow a course of action that can help them or assist them to recognise and solve their problems. If we do our preparation with the thought that we are making a sale, selling our message, then it will keep us focused. When we’ve decided on the structure and the content of our speech our last check should always be, "Is what I’m presenting going to get that message across?" – if not then there’s more work to be done on it.
Ensuring we stay audience focused and message (sale) focused will contribute significantly towards our building effective presentations.
So good luck with all your endeavours, speaking and otherwise, in the year ahead.
