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How to Speak Like Obama
It was Obama's Democratic Convention speech in 2004 that thrust him into the spotlight, made people take notice and ultimately opened the door for him to become US President. Public speaking might be as scary as all hell but to master it is to open up a world of potential.
Most of us get nervous about making a speech, whether it's to 2,000 convention delegates or a PTA meeting at our child's school. Often, though, people find that that is the worst part of the whole process - the anticipation. The reality is often a lot easier to handle and can even be quite enjoyable, provided that you take the necessary precaution of doing your homework beforehand - preparation.
There are very, very few people who can get up at a moment's notice and give a good speech totally impromptu and on the spur of the moment. There are plenty of people who think they can and/or who will tell you they can but the truth is that most of them are deluding themselves and boring their audiences to tears.
There are also plenty of speakers who get up and present and make it look easy, as though they hadn't prepared anything beforehand. These are the real experts who, despite having years of speaking experience under their belts, if anything, put more effort into preparation than people who speak for ten minutes once a year at the Golf Club dinner dance.
So, what about that preparation? Really, it's about remembering those key golden rules that apply to all good business writing and they are:
1. Define exactly not so much what you want to say, as what you want your speech or talk to achieve - ask yourself: "What do I want the audience to be thinking as I come to the end of my speech?"
2. Find out as much as you can about your audience and ensure your content is very, very relevant to them and their needs.
3. Use language and tone of voice that the audience will understand and identify with - and blend that in with your own natural style of speaking.
4. By all means use a bit of jargon and a few "in" phrases as long as you're certain the audience understands them but never use jargon others may not know.
The only extra point I would make here is, remember that people can't rewind/replay or re-read you. For that reason, you can't expect them to absorb as much detailed information as they would if you were to write it in a document or CD-ROM, which allow them to refer back to details as often as they want.
Knowing your audience is also unusually important here - you'll find out very quickly if you've got it wrong because you'll see it in their faces and their body language.
Cut the Clutter
Depending on the nature of the presentation you're making, sometimes you will be giving out delegate packs or some other form of permanent record of your material, so details, expansions, etc. can go in there. Whether you're doing this or not, though, what you say must be clear and uncluttered.
With live speeches, your success is almost entirely dependent on what your audience remembers of what you say. People have very bad memories, and if a speech has been boring or complicated or both, they will remember even less of its content and only recall how terrible it was.
Often senior managers are called upon to give speeches - usually to internal audiences - which cover a wide range of topics, for example a review of the company's performance over the past year, announcements about new developments, etc. These presentations sometimes last for nearly an hour and attempt to cover more topics than a fat Sunday newspaper. At the end of it, the audiences have absorbed very little, having been mesmerised by the drone of the boss's voice and an increasingly urgent desire to leave the meeting and go to the washroom.
Yet, argue the senior managers, we have to get all this information over to them at our conference. The answer? Split a one-hour speech down into four fifteen-minuters, interspersed with the other presentations throughout the day or half-day session. (Or if you can't do that, split the one-hour presentation across four different speakers.) Fifteen minutes is much more comfortable for the audience's attention span. And the fact that there are more, shorter presentations creates variety which, to totally misquote an old saying is the spice of live communication.
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