Hampshire Presentation Skills & Public Speaking Trainer

Improving speech impact – Kilometres Vs. Miles Per Hour

When I drive in England I do 70mph on the motorway.

When I drive in France I do 130 kilometres per hour on the motorway.

There’s not a lot of difference in my actual speed, but one sounds a lot more impressive!

This is an example of something we can all do in our speeches to improve its impact.

“We entered the dark, daunting, cylindrical cage of the eurotunnel”

adds something more to a speech about your most recent holiday than:

“and then the train went into the channel tunnel”.

Or perhaps:

“The Brie was an explosion of full, fruity flavours in my mouth that set off a multitude of sensory fireworks and brought a huge smile to my face!” (a little over the top, but you get the idea!)

rather than:

“I love Brie and really enjoyed the Brie sandwich”.

Your audience want to be enthused by your story, so tell it well, tell it as it is, but tell it in the best possible terms – those that sound the most impressive!

Practicing a humorous speech

Ok, so now all that’s left is to practice my chosen humorous speech.

I’m going to try and practice it out loud twice daily and then hundreds of times in between in my head.

I usually find that I know I have a strong opening if it is constantly rattling around in my head so much that it becomes automatic. If I’m nervous, I want to be able to deliver my first few lines perfectly whilst still in autopilot, so this is no bad thing.

If I get through those first few lines and they go well, then I will have nothing to fear going forward and my confidence will build throughout the speech, if it’s not there already.

I’m also imagining myself delivering a successful speech, the buzz I will feel afterwards and the people that I will make smile. Let’s hope it is less of a dream this time next week and more of a premonition!

Writing a humorous speech

Ok, so I’m now down to the slightly harder graft, the speech writing.

Some people find speech writing incredibly easy whilst others can struggle for hours and produce nothing that they feel happy with using.

I’ve found from experience that the way in which we write speeches varies too, depending on who we are and how important we believe our upcoming speech to be.

For example, for a quick 5 minute presentation in a company meeting I may simply write down a list of bullet points I wish to cover and talk around them, relying on my existing speaking skills to fill in the gaps.

For a funeral or best man speech I may take hours and days writing, rehearsing and fine tuning my speech. My first draft of such a speech is likely to be a lengthy document, written word for word.

However, you write, I truly believe that a good speech plan begins long and gets shortened and shortened as you learn its content until the day comes to give the speech and you have either a small list of points on a cue card in your hand, or better still, no notes at all.

Whether you begin writing a speech by writing it out in full, or as a list of bullet points, or somewhere in between, I believe gradually condensing your notes as you learn your speech is key and should be done by all!

So over the next few days I am writing three speeches out in full, word for word, as I would deliver them in a perfect world.

Once I have three speeches I will annotate them with notes about pauses, gestures and movement across the stage that I feel will add to the speech experience for my audience.

If I’m not sure where to use these techniques and which ones I should be using in my speech, I will cross reference it with the judging criteria to see where I can illustrate my knowledge by using these techniques.

Overall, it’s quite long and arduous, but I really do enjoy the piece of art that comes out of the another end. It’s a piece that I hope will demonstrate my speech writing skills and speech delivery skills too – we will see!

Finding a humorous speech topic

Ok, so now I’m beginning to think about the topic I will speak on in the Toastmaster’s humorous speech contest and my thoughts are being led by the two points I made in my first post on the subject:

• Humour and what is funny is essentially the choice of your audience
• This has to be a speech with a story, not just random stand-up comedy

All speeches should be for your audience, not for you.

When writing a speech that will have maximum impact, you have to understand what generates maximum impact with your audience. Who are they, what do they like, what do they feel and what do you want them to feel?

Who are the audience for my humorous speech?

My audience is primarily Toastmasters. These are people from across the UK (and some from beyond too!) that have an active interest in improving their public speaking skills.

Who is a Toastmaster? A Toastmaster can be of any age and sex, but I have found that at my club and district in particular, ages range from 18 to 80. Toastmaster members come from all walks of life. My humour and content is therefore going to have to be all-inclusive!

Ok, I know who I’m talking to, but how do I find a humorous speech topic?

I began by making a mind map (a sketched diagram on a piece of paper of related areas, topics and thoughts) about Toastmasters. I followed this with mind maps on public speaking in general as well as some key themes such as ‘voice’ ‘presence’ and ‘content’.

It quickly became apparent to me that the one thing that separated my audience of Toastmasters from any other audience was our shared experiences. Our shared experiences are of Toastmaster’s meetings and the format, techniques and dare I say ‘rituals’ a meeting entails.

This was my ‘AHA’ moment. This is where I would find my humour.

As such, I now have 3-5 ideas for topics of speeches and will be trying to fill these out into full 5 minute oratories over the next few days…