03/29/2014
I was talking with my daughter, Kristin today. She, like most people, dreads giving a public speech. Guess what? She is giving one next week, and I know she will do well.
Here are a few thoughts I passed on to her. Maybe, if you are going to give a speech, these may help you as well.
1. Fear of Public Speaking If you are afraid, you may simply not be prepared. Most people who are afraid of public speaking carry some kind of dread left over from a high school, or even grade school experience where they were required to give a public speech, and it did not go well. Most often this is due to the teacher assigning a topic that the student is ill prepared to discuss. They do not prepare well and fail. They carry that failure for years, never letting it go and creating their own self-fulfilling prophecy.
As an adult, when you are asked to speak, you probably are asked to speak because you know something about the topic. Knowing that, I think most everybody can give an excellent speech. It just takes a little preparation.
2. Preparing to Speak.
Here's a basic, basic, basic tip.
Before you begin preparing a speech, know where you are going. Know what you want to happen when you are done speaking.
If you took a boat to the shore of the Atlantic and just set out on it, where would you go? "I don't know." is not a good answer. You need a heading and a destination. Let me tell you how to do that when writing a speech.
Write ONE sentence that says what you want from your audience.
Write the following exactly as I write it below.
"At the end of my speech, my listeners will................"
Then fill in the missing words. What do you want the listeners to do, think, feel? Do you want them to understand something? Do you want them to do something?
Write that out very specifically. Then, when writing your speech, just keep that one thing in mind. (For those of you who have taken a Public Speaking Course, That is called A Specific Purpose Statement.) That seemed so dumb when I was in school. Now that I teach it, I seem the simple wisdom of that idea.
Good luck, Kristin. I know you will do very well. You are an expert in that field. Go get 'em! Have fun!
