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Speakers Need To Know How To Quickly Create A Speech

If I asked you to give a speech, how much time would you need to get ready to give the speech (including writing it)? Could you do it if I gave you half as much time? How about if I gave you 5 minutes? We don’t always control the situations in which we are asked to give a speech, knowing how to prepare one in just a few minutes is a key speaker skill…

Just Where Do You Start?

I guess the best place to start our discussion about what to do when you are put on the spot and asked to deliver a speech RIGHT NOW, is at the beginning. It’s pretty clear that if somebody is asking you to give a speech all of sudden, then they can’t be too picky about what you’ll talk about.

This is where you get some latitude. In order to pull off this quick speech creation thing, you’re going to have to pick a topic to speak about that you already both know and love. I’m hoping that it’s clear to you that you still need to keep your audience in mind, but because of the short amount of time that you have, this is the one time that you get to start with yourself first.

Since it is so critical that you already know your topic well, pick what you want to speak about and then spend a moment or two trying to think about how you can make this subject appeal to your audience. For example, if what you know really well is how to schedule family vacations and you’re going to be talking to a group of mothers, then focusing on the logistics of what to pack and keeping the family happy during the trip will generally be what you need to focus on in order to make your story appeal to them.

It’s All In The Details

Although you won’t have a lot of time to create your on-the-spot speech, it still needs to be interesting. A lack of time to prepare a speech is not a license to be boring. It’s time to whip out a piece of paper, you’ve got some writing to do.

What you need to write down is a list of things that you will want to cover in your speech. This is an important list because it holds the key to making your speech interesting to your audience. Write down the sequence of items that you want to cover, then take a second look at it.

The key here will be to make sure that the material that you will be covering flows. It needs to start some place and then build up to a natural conclusion. If you aren’t careful, then due to your limited time it will just be a jumbled collection of pieces of information. Use just a bit of your limited time to sort and rearrange your discussion points so that they present a complete story.

Houston, We Have Lift-Off

With picking a topic and creating a list of items to discuss, you will have used up a sizable chunk of the limited time that you have before you’ll be on the stage. What to do with the few remaining minutes that you have left? Simple: rehearse.

As we all know, the first few words out of your mouth during any speech are the most important – this is how the audience makes their decision whether or not to bother listening to you. You’ve got to mentally practice what you are going to say. Try out different phrases and word orders until you come up with something that works best for you.

What All Of This Means For You

Sorry, you don’t run the world just yet. This means that no matter how good of a planner you are, there will be times in which you get surprised by a request to give a speech with little or no time for you to prepare what you are going to say.

See this challenge as an opportunity to grow your speaking skills. Pick a topic to speak on that you already know well. Shape it to meet the interests of your audience. Make sure that you take a moment or two to rehearse what you are going to say in your head so that your first words will resonate with your audience.

In the end, if you believe in yourself and your ability to deliver a great speech, you will do just fine. In fact, who knows, maybe you are one of those speakers who gives the best speech of their life when they have had the least amount of time to prepare for it!

If you had 5 minutes to prepare a speech, what would you spend the most time doing?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

So here’s a quiz for you: who has been the best speaker in the past 100 years? Not an easy question to answer, eh? Even those of us who don’t spend a lot of time studying history can come up with an impressive list of names. What made them so good and can we become as good as they were?

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2. Real Life Speeches: Alan Greenspan Gives A Keynote Even if you don’t work in the world of high-finance,...
3. Real World Speaking: A Trip To See The Doctor We can talk about how to give great speeches until...

Loyal Readers,

It has been brought to my attention that the AccComm blog’s appearance on touch-based smart phones was, shall we say, poor at best.

I think that I may have found a way to solve this problem. I’ve installed some new software that should change the AccComm into an iPhone application “looking” site, complete with Ajax loading articles and effects, when viewed from an iPhone, iPod touch, Android or BlackBerry touch mobile device.

As with all great experiments, we’re going to have to see how this goes. If you’ve got one of these devices do me a favor and check the site out and then post a comment to let me know how it looks — you should be able to switch between the old (“mobile unfriendly”) look & feel and the new (“mobile friendly”) look & feel.

Thanks for all of you help in making the AccComm better!

- Dr. Jim Anderson

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2. Dennis Quaid Gives A Keynote Speech – Real Life Speeches I just got back from spending the better part of...
3. Real Life Speeches: Alan Greenspan Gives A Keynote Even if you don’t work in the world of high-finance,...

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Dealing With A Heckler During A Speech Is Like Being Caught In A Dog Fight

Fighting Back

Nothing makes me more angry than when someone is rude enough to interrupt me when I’m giving a speech. I mean come on, I’ve worked hard to prepare to give this speech and here I am dealing with all of the nerves, logistics, etc. that a speaker needs to stay on top of and all of a sudden I have to put up with this? There has got to be a way to get this person to shut up and sit down, right?

Preparing For A Fight

The best way to deal with a heckler is to do your best to prevent them from becoming a heckler in the first place. A heckler can show up in any audience and so part of your preparation to give a speech, you need to spend some time taking steps to defuse the things that might set a heckler off. Judi Bailey has done some research into just exactly what you can do and she’s got the following suggestions:

• Research Your Audience: The easiest way to invite a hacker to attack you is to not take the time to understand who you’ll be presenting to. A key part of this understanding is to make sure that you know who in the audience will be supporting what you have to say, and who you need to watch out for.
• Double Check Your Data: The Achilles heel that trips up most speakers when it comes to dealing with hecklers lies in the information that you are presenting. If you aren’t careful and you present information that is either incorrect or out of date, then you will have opened a door for hecklers to attack.
• Watch Your Time: When are you going to be delivering your speech? If it’s in the morning, then your audience is going to be fresh and ready to listen to more detailed information. However, the later in the day that you go, the less willing your audience is going to be to absorb the data that you’ve based your speech on.
• Mind Your Purpose: One of the key ways to negate the impact of a heckler is for you to stay focused on what really matters to your audience. By making sure that what you are talking about is what they want to hear you’ll be able to keep everyone’s attention and reduce the chance that a heckler will rise to the surface.

Dealing With A Fight When It Happens

Even with all of the best preparation in the world, you will still get the occasional heckler. That means that you need to have a plan for dealing with them when they show up. Judi has the following suggestions for defusing these volatile situations:

• Establish Guidelines: At the start of your speech you have a unique opportunity to layout some guidelines for everyone to follow. These guidelines can include telling everyone what topics will and won’t be covered, what people should do if they object to what you are saying, and explaining if there will be an opportunity to ask questions during your presentation.
• Be Like A Ninja: If you do have a heckler stand up and take issue with something that you’ve said, then you have an opportunity to use your built-in ninja skills to deal with the situation. The simplest way to deal with a heckler is to side-step their comments. This means that you need to deal with the heckler, then step to the side to show the audience that you are moving on and keep on speaking.
• Take Them On: This is sort of the nuclear option for speakers – dealing directly with a heckler. Clearly there are all sorts of risks associated with this approach; however, it can be the most direct and decisive way to move beyond the distraction that a heckler is causing. Keep in mind that your goal is to deliver the most value to the audience, not to embarrass the heckler. Acknowledge their point, tell them to sit down, and move on.

What All Of This Means For You

Every public speaker needs to realize that hecklers come with the territory. Preparing to deal with them before a speech starts is the key to boosting your odds of successfully dealing with them.

You need to take steps as you prepare to deliver your speech and as you start to talk to your audience in order to minimize the chances of a heckler standing up and causing a disruption.

No matter how you choose to deal with a heckler, they are your responsibility. Realizing that you can’t make them go away, the next best thing that we can all do is to be ready to deal with them when they do show up…

What do you think the best way to prepare to deal with a heckler is?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

If I asked you to give a speech, how much time would you need to get ready to give the speech (including writing it)? Could you do it if I gave you half as much time? How about if I gave you 5 minutes? We don’t always control the situations in which we are asked to give a speech, knowing how to prepare one in just a few minutes is a key speaker skill…

Related posts:

1. The Hassle Of Hecklers Just What Is A Heckler Anyway? Just imagine your next...
2. Handling Hecklers: 5 Ways That Presenters Can Restore Order How does that children’s rhyme go? “Sticks and stones will...
3. Inside The Mind Of A Heckler It’s All About Control If you could wish for just...

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Just What Is A Heckler Thinking About?

It’s All About Control

If you could wish for just one thing before you give your next speech in public, what would it be? Sure we’d all like to be able to talk like Tony Robbins, move a crowd like Zig Ziglar, or even have a powerful story to tell like Rudy Giuliani. However, I’m willing to bet good money that after considerable thought, we’d all settle for spending our wish on making sure that there were no hecklers in the audience.

The reason that speakers fear hecklers so much isn’t that they are so rude. Rather it’s an issue of control – we have it and they want it. The person up on the stage who is speaking (that’s you) “owns” the crowd. When a heckler starts to harass you, they are trying to wrestle control of the crowd away from you.

In order to start to find out how to deal with hecklers, the very first step is to take a step back and understand just who they are. It turns out that they (normally) are not wild-eyed radicals. Instead, they are very much people just like you and me. They are speaking up because they are feeling enormous pressure for some reason. This leads to a feeling of being powerless, intimidated, uncomfortable, or simply being overlooked. This is what is what turns them into a heckler.

It’s very easy for a speaker to lose control when a heckler starts to verbally assault them. However, you need to realize that when a heckler starts to speak, very quickly the audience will recognize them for what they are – a disruption.

Why Do They Do It?

Judi Bailey has looked into the psychology behind why people become hecklers. She reports that mental health experts agree that a heckler’s disorderly conduct is a symptom of an unmet need.
Just what kind of unmet need they are dealing with will determine what action you will need to take. Judi has created an acronym, H-O-S-T-I-L-E that can help speakers to quickly classify the type of heckler that they are dealing with:

• Heckler: these are the ones who are simply being rude to you. The reason that they are doing this is because they have a feeling of low personal worth and they are trying to build themselves up by getting into a shouting match with you.
• Over-zealous: a strong need for approval causes this type of heckler to always want to lead a conversation. They’ll show up most often if you ask the audience a question – they will be the one who wants to answer it before anyone else.
• Squawker: the ultimate source of negativity, this type of heckler will poo-poo any idea or proposal. The reason that they are doing this is because it’s easy to do (doesn’t take a lot of thinking to say “no” to a new idea) and because they desperately need acknowledgement.
• Turned-Off: the heckler who isn’t confronting you directly, but who is doing something else – like having a phone call in the middle of your speech. This may be partly your fault because they very clearly have an unmet need for connection.
• Intimidator: it’s all about power for this type of heckler. They are more than willing to sit through a speech as long as they are the ones doing the speaking. They are easy to spot because the vocabulary that they will use will be aggressive.
• Lost: another way to refer to this heckler is “clueless”. For whatever reason they’re just not “getting” what you’re talking about and so they can keep asking the same pointless questions. Clearly this type of heckler has a need for either a direction to go in or information that they can use.
• Expert: we’ve all seen this one before – he / she thinks that they know more than the speaker (and they may) and they’re going to let everyone else know it. What we’re looking at here is a clear need for personal recognition.

What All Of This Means For You

I’m sorry to report that to the best of my knowledge, there are no magic wishes available to speakers. This means that you’ll never be able to start a speech with the guarantee that you won’t interrupted by a heckler.

The key point that you always need to keep in mind is that no matter how inappropriate their behavior is, they are generally just people like you and me. However, because of their current situation they feel compelled to speak out.

Realizing that there are different types of hecklers is the first step in learning to deal with them. Once you are able to classify the type of heckler that you are dealing with, you’ll be well on your way to making sure that control of your speech stays firmly in your hands.

What type of heckler do you think is the most disruptive?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Nothing makes me more angry than when someone is rude enough to interrupt me when I’m giving a speech. I mean come on, I’ve worked hard to prepare to give this speech and here I am dealing with all of the nerves, logistics, etc. that a speaker needs to stay on top of and all of a sudden I have to put up with this? There has got to be a way to get this person to shut up and sit down, right?

Related posts:

1. Counterstrike: How To Deal With Hecklers Fighting Back Nothing makes me more angry than when someone...
2. The Hassle Of Hecklers Just What Is A Heckler Anyway? Just imagine your next...
3. Handling Hecklers: 5 Ways That Presenters Can Restore Order How does that children’s rhyme go? “Sticks and stones will...

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If You Stack The Deck, Then You'll Win Every Time

You can’t always do it all by yourself. If you want to make a lasting impression on your audience, then sometimes you just gotta bring in some help to pull it off. Speakers who are ready to move up to the next level in their speaking often come to me and ask for advice. Now that they’ve gotten over their fear of speaking, they want to move on and start to make more of an impact with their audience. It’s time to bring out an advanced speaking skill – rigging a speech.

The Setup

If as a speaker you can put aside your ego long enough to admit that sometimes if you really want to make a lasting impression on your audience, then you are going to have to allow others to help you, then you’ll be half-way there.

An advanced speaking technique is to work with an outsider to act as a “plant” in the audience. Having somebody in the audience who you control gives you enormous power as a speaker when it comes to steering the audience’s mood and reactions.

The most important part of stacking the deck is to make sure that you take the time to rehearse what you want to happen with your partner in crime – these things don’t just happen by themselves.

The Action

When you rig a speech, you need to make sure that you’ve carefully scripted what you want to happen. The three most common uses of a plant are to generate anger, humor, and questions.

Having a member of your audience stand up and angrily shout something out or accuse you of something is a fantastic tool; however, it’s just about as dangerous as nitroglycerin. This is an unexpected action – your audience will not be expecting it and so it will wake them up and grab their attention. I’ve used this one when I knew that what the audience would be thinking at a certain point was directly opposite to what I was telling them. Since you knew that it was coming, you have a fantastic response ready for them, this calms your angry audience member down, and everyone else is very impressed with you. That’s exactly what I did and it took the tension out of the room.

Humor is difficult enough to try to do by yourself let alone with a partner, but if you can pull it off you’ll be able to make a lasting impression on your audience. As with all types of humor, timing is everything here. One of my favorite techniques is to have my plant ask a question and then we end up getting involved in a very fast back-and-forth dialog that amazes and entertains everyone. Once upon a time I answered my plant’s question by saying that something would take 1 year, they replied with 2, I said “3″, they said “4″ and so on.

Finally, one of the worst things that a speaker can do is to wrap up a speech by asking “does anyone have any questions” and then be greeted by dead silence. This is when having a plant can save your life: have them stand up and ask an interesting or controversial question just to get things going. Since you know what they are going to ask, you can structure your speech so that your answer to that question is really part of your speech.

What All Of This Means For You

When you are ready to take your speaking skills up to the next level, starting to “seed” the audience with your trained agents is a great way to ensure that you are able to control how the speech will flow. These agents can control the audience’s mood: get them angry, make them laugh, or ask the questions that they are all thinking about.

As with all tools, the planted agent requires skill to use. You have to take the time both to structure your speech in such a way as to accommodate your plant and to rehearse what each of you is going to say before the big day. Do it right and you’ll have left your audience with a positive lasting impression.

Under what circumstances do you think it would be a bad idea to plant someone in your audience?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

If you could wish for just one thing before you give your next speech in public, what would it be? Sure we’d all like to be able to talk like Tony Robbins, move a crowd like Zig Ziglar, or even have a powerful story to tell like Rudy Giuliani. However, I’m willing to bet good money that after considerable thought, we’d all settle for spending our wish on making sure that there were no hecklers in the audience.

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Is true that people can know what you are thinking by what your body language is telling them?

What You Know About Body Language Is All Wrong

Did you know that when you are delivering a speech, there is always another conversation going on? No, I’m not talking about your rude audience (although they may be talking also), instead I’m talking about your body – it’s having its own conversation with your audience. Maybe you should know what it’s saying…?

The fact that we are always communicating with our audience through body language should come as no surprise to anyone. However, what might catch your attention is that most of what you think that you know about how to read body language is probably wrong. It’s just urban myths that have been told over and over again.

A quick example might help me to make my point: what’s the best way to make a first impression with someone? If you’re like me, you’ll assume that greeting them with a lot of energy will show spunk and drive – all good things. It turns out that we’d be wrong. Dave Zielinski has been looking into this and he reports that most people believe that people who are low energy and restrained have the most self-confidence.

There is nothing that we can do about preventing our body language from sending messages to our audience. However, the one thing that we can do is learn to read other people’s body language more effectively.

Common Myths

Have you ever had to give a speech early in the morning? The 900 lb gorilla in the room is the fact that everyone is still sleepy – several of them have probably not even woken up yet. What’s the best way to get some energy into the room?

If you are like most speakers, you’ll rely on what we’ve all been told is the best way to wake up an audience: hit them with a high-energy presentation delivered at a loud volume. It turns out that this is exactly the wrong thing to do. Instead, what you need to do is to start out at their energy level (low) and then gradually raise the energy up and allow them to come along with you.

How about when we see people in our audience who have their arms crossed over their chest? They must be resisting our message, right? Probably wrong – check the temperature in the room – they may just be cold!

In the end, once you get comfortable understanding what your audience’s body language is really telling you, you’ve got to adjust your body language so that they can connect with you. What really matters in your speech is not a lot of body language rules, but rather your voice quality & variation, conviction, strong content, and good eye contact.

What All Of This Means For You

Body language is something that every speaker needs to be aware of. However, we also have to understand that we are probably interpreting it incorrectly because it’s so hard to read. Don’t spent too much time trying to follow a set of body language “rules” because it will take away from your speech.

Instead, do what comes naturally to you. This will allow you to more fully focus on giving the best speech possible and you won’t get tripped up trying to remember a long list of do’s and don’ts.

In the end, if you can allow you body and mind to deliver the same speech then your audience will get a consistent message and you’ll be successful in connecting with your audience.

Do you think that your body language helps or hurts you when you give a presentation?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

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There’s No Love Like A Heckler’s Love

Just What Is A Heckler Anyway?

Just imagine your next presentation. You’ve studied your audience, researched your topic, created a speech, and practiced, practiced, practiced. You take the stage and start to smoothly deliver your speech. Just a few minutes into your speech, you become aware of someone, gasp, talking. We’re not talking about quiet whispering here, we’re talking about someone in the audience standing up and shouting things at you. Congratulations, you’ve got a heckler…

Why Do People Heckle Us?

It’s in the world of stand up comedy that I suspect we are most accustomed to seeing hecklers in real life. That environment has an explosive mix of edgy humor, alcohol, and an audience who desperately wants to show off for friends and participate in the fun. Hecklers are an everyday part of that environment. But what about when you are giving a speech?

Just exactly what is a heckler? I’m going to define a heckler as being anyone who chooses to interrupt your speech with their own comments. More often than not, a heckler is motivated by deep-set emotions: hostility, resentment, or even simple anger. Whatever you are talking about has set them off and they’re not going to be quiet about it. Oh, and there’s one more thing – they just might be disagreeing with what you are saying.

As bad as all of this is, there is one more reason that you may have attracted a heckler – they may not like you. For whatever reason, there are people out there who will simply set their minds to not liking us for some unknown reason and during our presentation they’ll just stand up and let us know about it. Talk about poor timing!

The Best Defense Against A Heckler Is…

The now classic case of how NOT to handle a heckler was demonstrated by Michael Richards (“Kramer” on the TV show Seinfeld) when he was performing at comedy club. A table of Afro-American and Hispanic audience members started to heckle him and he responded by trying to “out heckle” them by using racial slurs. Needless to say this didn’t work and the fallout from this event is still being felt by him even today.

When it comes to dealing with a heckler, a speaker’s options are somewhat limited. What is going on here is a power play – you own the stage, but the heckler is trying to take over your audience. The big unanswered question is which way will the audience go – will they side with the heckler or will they side with you, the speaker.

In order to win your audience over to your side, there are three different things that you can do:

• Ignore: It takes a great deal of courage to be a heckler. If the speaker doesn’t acknowledge the heckler and he starts to get disapproving looks and “shsss” sounds from people sitting around him, then his courage will start to fade quickly. By simply ignoring a heckler, you can often get them to sit down and go away quietly.
• Respond: another way of saying this is to meet force with force. If your heckler is simply unable to restrain themselves from asking a question, then answer it and go on. If your heckler is being insulting, insult them right back and tell them to sit down and shut-up.
• Joke: Humor is a very powerful tool for speakers to use. If you take a moment, and then use humor to either deal with the issue that the heckler has raised or to deal with the heckler himself / herself, then you can defuse the situation and move on.

What All Of This Means For You

At some point in your speaking career, you will be confronted with a heckler. It’s how you choose to deal with this interruption that will define how good of a speaker you are.

It’s all too easy to over react when someone has been rude enough to interrupt your speech. You’ve got a number of options from ignoring them to using humor to deflect the interruption. How you handle it will depend on the circumstances that you find yourself in.

The ultimate goal is to keep the audience on your side and not have them bond with the heckler. If you treat every interruption with dignity and style, you’ll have won the audience over and you’ll be seen as the great speaker that you can be.

What do you think the best way to deal with a heckler is?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Did you know that when you are delivering a speech, there is always another conversation going on? No, I’m not talking about your rude audience (although they may be talking also), instead I’m talking about your body – it’s having its own conversation with your audience. Maybe you should know what it’s saying…?

Related posts:

1. Handling Hecklers: 5 Ways That Presenters Can Restore Order How does that children’s rhyme go? “Sticks and stones will...
2. Counterstrike: How To Deal With Hecklers Fighting Back Nothing makes me more angry than when someone...
3. Inside The Mind Of A Heckler It’s All About Control If you could wish for just...

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The Right Speaker With The Right Words Can Win Wars

So here’s a question for you to ponder: what is more important – the words that you say or how you say them? This is one of the classic questions that gets asked about public speaking. Could you pick up a fantastically written speech and deliver it in a way that would create the same (or better) reaction in the audience that the original presenter got?

It’s All About Teamwork

In the end, it turns out that this is really a trick question. The answer is that you can’t have one without the other. It’s the combination of both the material and the speaker who presents the material that causes the desired reaction in the audience.

One thing that too many speakers don’t take the time to realize is that each speech needs to be tailored to meet the unique needs of the speaker who is delivering it. You have your own unique style (you are loud, you are quiet, etc.) and nobody else presents a speech the same way that you do.

The one thing that we need to be careful to not do is to try to present someone else’s speech. Trying to deliver a speech that was created for someone else will be just like trying to wear clothes that were custom tailored for somebody else’s dimensions. It just won’t look good.

How To Match Your Next Speech To Your Speaking Style

If you can accept the idea that it takes both a good speaker and a good speech to deliver a winning presentation, then the next obvious question is how can you do this successfully?

Gene Perret spent his career writing television shows and comedy material. He knows a thing or two about tailoring the material to the presenter. He has three suggestions on what you need to do in order to ensure that your next speech connects with your audience in a powerful way:

• Be True To Your Speech: A speaker who is talking about a subject that he/she either doesn’t believe in or doesn’t care about will never be able to connect with the audience. I don’t care how great of an actor you think that you are, if you don’t believe in what you are saying then it will eventually show through to your audience and they will dismiss your message. If you don’t believe me, then think back to some of those corporate speeches that we’ve all seen when executive management tries to convince the staff that everything is ok and that there’s nothing to worry about. That message never flies!
• Match Your Words To Your Style: I have a friend who is a very flamboyant speaker – he’s all over the stage and his arms are always waving in the air. Once upon a time I happened to see him deliver a very somber speech about a sad set of circumstances that had caused a business to fail. The speech went over like a lead balloon. My friend’s normal speaking style had to be greatly restricted because of the speech’s subject matter and so the audience got conflicting messages – they saw a lot of bottled up energy, but were hearing and seeing a very low energy speech. Don’t make this mistake – when you give a speech, make sure that the material that you are presenting matches your style of speaking.
• Stay Competent: we all have areas of knowledge that we are strong in. Either we’ve spent the time studying in order to understand this area or we’ve worked in a related field. That being said, there will be occasions that we’ll be asked to talk on a topic that we know nothing about. Don’t do it! We all do certain things well, and a bunch of other things not so well. If you end up talking about a topic that you don’t know well, then all of your weak points will show up during your speech and you won’t be able to connect with your audience.

What All Of This Means For You

A speaker by themselves or a speech by itself has very little value. It’s only when the two are brought together that the real magic of an effective presentation can happen. As speakers, we need to understand that we have our own unique style and we need to make sure that we never try to present a speech that has been created for someone else because it just won’t work.

In order to harness both the power of a speech and our personal style, we need to make sure that we believe in what we are saying, matching our speaking style, and only talk about topics that we know something about.

Combined with the right speech we can move audiences. Now all we need to do in order to make sure that our next speech is the perfect combination of words and style is to practice, practice, practice…!

Do you think that you can tell when a speaker is talking about something that they don’t really believe in?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Just imagine your next presentation. Just a few minutes into your speech, you become aware of someone, gasp, talking. We’re not talking about quiet whispering here, we’re talking about someone in the audience standing up and shouting things at you. Congratulations, you’ve got a heckler…

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President Obama Sure Knows How To Give A Speech

Who do you think is the greatest communicator of all time? For most of us, we’d pick someone who has lived in the last 100 years because that’s pretty much all that we know. We’ve had some great ones in this time period: Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, etc. However, if I had to pick the best communicator out there right now, I believe that President Obama would win. Now the question for you, independent of your political beliefs, is how can you learn to speak more like him…?

Welcome To The World Of Politics

Linda McGurk spends a lot of time studying how politicians like Obama work their magic, and she’s come to some interesting conclusions. The first one is that if you want to have the impact with your speeches that Obama has with his, you are going to have to learn to be sincere.

One of the key take-aways from this guidance is that you really do need to believe in what you are talking about. Audiences get bombarded with so many different messages these days that they have reacted by developing sophisticated fraud detection capabilities. They can detect if you don’t believe the words that you are saying.

Keep in mind that it’s not just what you say when you are up in the front of the room or on the stage that counts. Everything that you’ve done up until that point may be known to the audience and it counts also. If you are known to be an avid hunter and you show up to give a speech on why people should be vegetarians, then you are not going to come across as being sincere.

Do You Care, I Mean REALLY Care?

How much passion do you have inside of you? Why are you keeping it all bottled up in there? If you want me to listen to you speak about something, you had better be passionate about the topic.

When you let your emotions out, when you let your audience know that you really do care about what you are talking about, that’s when you can connect with them. It is all too easy to do a great job of researching everything that you need for a speech and then simply delivering a lot of solid facts to your audience. That shows that you care, doesn’t it?

The answer is no. If you open up and explain to me why something is important to you, then I’ll listen. If I can understand how deeply you feel about something then I’ll at least listen to you. I may still not agree with you, but I will at least listen.

How Far Can You See: What’s Your Vision?

When you are giving a speech, you need to be painting a picture of the future for your audience. Once again, if you are just unloading a bunch of facts that you’ve picked up during your research for this speech, then you won’t be able to make a lasting impression.

One of the best examples of a fantastic vision expressed in a speech is John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address in which he told the country to “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

This is exactly why people come to hear speeches — they are looking to hear a vision laid out for them. This is what makes the good politicians like Obama stand above so many other speakers — they’ve got the vision thing down cold.

It’s All In How You Do It

This all comes back to the basic point: what do you need to do in order to capture some of that politician speaking magic for yourself. There are three things that you can do immediately to make your speeches have more of that Obama impact:

• Have A Conversation: The more that you are able to work a conversational tone into your speeches, the deeper the connection that you’ll be able to make with your audience. Using fancy words or “talking over their heads” will only serve to increase the distance between you and them. Have a conversation with them and you’ll be able to make your point.
• Add Some Punctuation: Sure, we generally only think about punctuation when we are writing, but politicians show us that it plays a role in our speeches also. Adding periods, semicolons, and new paragraphs to the way that you deliver your speech will allow your audience to catch up and follow along with your thinking.
• Pause For Effect: Some of the worst speakers never seem to take a breath when they are speaking. Adding more pauses to your speech is a fantastic way to make it have more of an impact. Pausing allows your audience to laugh, consider a point, or just catch up and ponder what you’ve just said.

What All Of This Means For You

If you really want to learn how to speak like Obama, then run for the office of President. However, if you need to keep your day job, then perhaps simply incorporating these suggestions into your next speech will do the trick.

It turns out that it’s not all that hard to learn to speak like a politician. The overall goal is to connect with your audience using sincerity, passion, and vision. To do this in your next speech, all you have to do is have a conversation with your audience and add some punctuation and pauses.

I can’t guarantee that you’ll get elected to an office by incorporating these speaking techniques, but I can assure you that you’ll win the vote of your next audience.

Do you think that having a vision is all that important or can it be skipped?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

So here’s a question for you to ponder: what is more important – the words that you say or how you say them? This is one of the classic questions that gets asked about public speaking. Could you pick up a fantastically written speech and deliver it in a way that would create the same (or better) reaction in the audience that the original presenter got?

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YouTube Has More Speakers Than The Largest Motivational Workshop

Just how does one become a better public speaker? I mean let’s be serious here, you do want to get better, don’t you? Pretty much any book that you read on the subject or class that you attend in order to build up your skills will tell you the same time — if you really want to get better, then you’ve got to take the time to watch the pros at work. Great, just where do you find such pros and how can you get admitted to their speeches to watch them at work? Good news — I’m going to tell you how (and it’s free!) …

Welcome To The 21st Century

In the olden days (like about 5 years ago), if you wanted to become a better speaker then yes, you would have to pick yourself up and go to where a good speaker was giving a speech and plop yourself down and start taking notes. Thanks goodness we now live in the modern 21st Century and we no longer have to make such an effort in order to improve ourselves.

Carmine Gallo is a communications coach who faced this very problem a few years back. After doing some searching on the Internet, Carmine discovered that the free video service YouTube was a treasure trove of recorded examples of excellent speakers. Who knew?

Who Should I Watch?

So now you’ve found the Library of Congress of online videos. The problem is that there is almost too much information here. If you start searching for “speakers”, you’re going to get blown away. How about if we take a few moments and come up with a list to get you started:

• Tony Robbins: people seem to be split on what they think of Tony and his motivational message; however, from a public speaking point-of-view we don’t really care — he’s one heck of a speaker. His workshops cost thousands of dollars to attend, but on YouTube he’s there for you to study for free.
• Steve Jobs: Steve is not only a great speaker, but he also has a very good understanding of how to use multimedia to support what he’s saying. His presentations at Apple user conferences are legendary for their style and impact. Sure we don’t have an army of graphic artists working for us; however, we can learn something from Steve and he’s living proof that if you practice, practice, practice you will do a good job.
• Suze Orman: we all know Suze Orman as a no-nonsense provider of financial advice; however, she’s also a fantastic speaker. One of her best qualities is that she handles questions very well — there’s no good way to practice for them. Watch and learn!

Looking Beyond YouTube

You might think that once you’ve found YouTube, that’s all that you’ll ever need. However, the Internet is a big place and you might be interested in watching more formal speeches than you’ll be able to find on YouTube. Gallo has done some research and here are some other sites that you should be sure to check out:

• Charlierose.com: Charlie Rose is a PBS interviewer who seems to be able to gain access to just about every important person out there. This is the place to go if you want to learn how to master the one-on-one interview.
• Cisco: John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco has overcome personal difficulties in order to become a master speaker. His speeches do a fantastic job of making the complicated seem understandable. His trademark move is the trip into the audience in order to connect with people. Watch and learn how a master does it.
• Businessweek.com: sure you know about the magazine, but did you know about the web site and its videos? This is where you’ll see all of the “big” business leaders being interviewed and you can watch to see how they communicate. Hint: not all of them do a good job of it.

What All Of This Means For You

In the end, we can read all of the books, take all of the courses, and even attend all of the Toastmasters meetings that we can fit into our already busy lives, but in the end it always comes back to one thing: we’ve got to study and learn from the folks who know how to deliver a good speech.

In the old days it required a great deal of effort to seek out who the best speakers were and then to track them down when they were speaking close to where we’d be. However, in today’s electronic age, this is no longer necessary — now we can bring the speakers to us via the Internet.

In order to make the most of this powerful tool, we need to do our homework. We need to watch each speaker carefully and take good notes on what we think that they do well and where we think that they could do better. These are the notes that we’ll then be able to use to improve our own speeches. Now go out there and watch some YouTube!

Who do you think is the best speaker that people can watch on YouTube in order to become better speakers?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Who do you think is the greatest communicator of all time? If I had to pick the best communicator out there right now, I believe that President Obama would win. Now the question for you, independent of your political beliefs, is how can you learn to speak more like him…?

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