Speaking your way to Success – 4

Stephen R. Covey, in his book “Seven habits of Highly effective people”, mentioned the second most significant habit - “BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND^TM” As with any other project or activity, this is true for speaking also. It’s been said if you don’t know where you are going, then you may never recognize when you arrive. It’s true of explorers, entrepreneurs and even speakers.

When you are speaking to an audience, you are also taking them on a journey through your words; your speech would have an objective and purpose. What is the purpose of your speech or presentation –

·         To inform?

·         To entertain?

·         To teach a specific skill?

·         To persuade?

·         To change an attitude?

·         To motivate or inspire?

·         To call to action?

Before presenting you should have your purpose statement ready. A purpose statement is a clearly written draft defining the objective and purpose of the presentation. This is not an script for your lecture but this would provide you a skeleton on which your presentation would be structured, this would help you organize your thought, concept would also help you finding appropriate quote, anecdote or visual illustration to communicate your message effectively.

You should also have an idea of your expectation in terms of behavioral or response outcome from your audience, after your presentation is done. What do you want people to do as a result of your presentation? What impact will this make on their lives?

You can design a small fill in the blanks questionnaire to pinpoint your objective and design your purpose statement. 

It could be like – finish “After my presentation I want those in my audience to ……………… , then it could be in terms of feel, believe, commit, decide, behave.

As you organize content for your speech with the end in mind, ask yourself – “Does it really support my goal?” Delete every item that doesn’t belong and revise anything which is not clear.

After completing the outline, go back over each point and ask the question: Who Cares? If the answer is “I am not sure, anybody cares”, either remove the section or rework it into something you’re convinced audience needs. Don’t put anything which doesn’t go along with your audience centric objective.

Your purpose should be significant, which increases your listeners’ knowledge or improves their personal welfare. Your purpose must also be precise, there can’t be many objectives. To be effective you should focus on one objective only.  

The purpose, presentation methodology and tools depend on the profile of the audience, their age, experience, education, socio-economic background.

After you have developed your goal, you have to provide your audience with a theme – which will help them, understand the presentation and would help them move towards their target.

Your goal is the end result; your theme is the primary force that motivates your listeners to adopt your objective as theirs.

To develop your theme, note down every thought, quote, phrase anecdote in a notebook, one of these pointers would help you start writing.

Most people recall much more about a speaker’s personality and style of delivery than the content. Sometimes they will recount a specific story or a slice of humor, but rarely can they tell about the substance of the speech. It is because most of the speakers add too much of quotes, anecdotes, jokes and other such support stuff in their speech, hiding the content somewhere in the middle. The audience remembers the illustration but not the content.

As a speaker you are the pilot, the audience trusts you, they are either pre-informed about the expected destination, or you have told them at the beginning of your presentation. Therefore your confidence is of prime importance. Your confidence with the content and your expertise with using the tools of presentation will help instill the confidence of audience in you.

Focus is the keyword, use whatever example, quotes, jokes, illustration, videos etc., but remember each of these should be in line to the objective of the presentation. Don’t put any of these tools in your presentation just because they are good, only make them part of your presentation if they are relevant.

When you are making a presentation in front of an audience, you got be a specialist in your subject, a generalist is not desired. Choose to know more and more about less and less. Dottie Walters, a guru to professional speakers says, “Immersing yourself in your subject allows you to speak with power.”

Before making your speech or presentation, run the entire speech or presentation in your mind, keeping your audience in picture. Think about the possible question or query points where an elaboration might be needed if the audience so desires. If you are using jargons and abbreviations in your presentation, make sure that you know what they mean. Remember you are a specialist not generalist. Treat every word of your address as essential to your objective and valuable to your listener.