Speeches can be a great way to get your message out to a wide audience and engage them on a more emotional level than written communications. Often, the speech is delivered directly to a live audience, in real time. This could be a speech at an employee event, customer event or press conference. Aside from the usual need to focus on the messages you are getting across, speeches bring an added element of complexity and new factors to consider – things like body language, tonality, speed of delivery, emphasis, even when your speaker chooses to pause… Additionally, a speech should carefully combine the tone and brand of the company as well as the tone and brand of the individual speaker, so that it sounds natural and credible. No small feat! So, here are some of my top tips for delivering a successful speech.
1. Start with your audience
As with all good communications, you should always start with analysing your stakeholder groups. Who are they, what is each group’s interest in your subject matter, what is their influence over your subject matter? This, in turn, will determine the level of engagement with them and the key messages you will deploy. For a speech specifically, this information will also determine the tone of the speech itself. In a company wide internal event for example, your tone might be more informal and warm than in a press briefing. Understanding your audience is fundamental and you shouldn’t be afraid to spend some time on exploring this and looking also at data from previous interactions – what has worked well and what hasn’t with that particular group. Obviously, the size of the audience is also important – is it more of a select group, or a large event?
2. Define your objectives
You should understand, right at the beginning, what success looks like. How will you know that the audience has responded in the right ways – what information will you want them to understand, what follow up actions might you want them to take? You could measure things like – social media engagement during and after the event, number of positive press reviews, number of people signing up to an initiative after a call to action. You should always start with the end in mind and ensure you keep a tight focus on this throughout your campaign. Then, after the fact, you can look back to measure your success and use those insights to inform future communications.
3. Win hearts and minds
Communications are always at their most effective when you can engage people’s emotions as well as simply getting your information across to them. Speeches lend themselves particularly well to doing this, because they are an audio and visual content channel. Think about how you can employ visual symbolism – for example, having two people next to each other on the stage or giving a joint press release, having one person introduce another, what the speakers are wearing (branded clothing, for example). If you were announcing a merger, or a leadership change, it’s powerful to have leadership from both merging companies, or incoming & outgoing leadership, together on stage showing synergy and good will. All these things will subliminally impact on your audience and send a message.
Think also about building narratives in your speeches. When politicians speak, often they will illustrate points using examples of individual voters – sometimes actually naming them and telling their story. This is no accident. People are innately social and respond well both to narratives and to human stories. Telling stories and using metaphors to make your content more personal can be a great way to engage the emotions of your audience and make your content more memorable.
4. Consider what’s not on the page – body language & delivery
Some people are naturally confident speakers and innately model good practice when speaking professionally. Others may have reached their level of power in an organisation based on other skills – their understanding of a market, their ability to make sound decisions under pressure, their creative problem solving. Do not assume that because somebody is an executive that they necessarily know how to deliver a speech to the press or an event audience. Coaching is something every executive can benefit from regardless of their experience level and you should absolutely make sure that anybody you put up on a stage has been supported with the right coaching and advice based on their experience.
With a speech there are so many aspects to consider aside from content: Body language on stage, the warmth of tone the speaker uses, which words and messages they deliberate on and which they move quickly through – all of this has an impact on your audience. When you choose to speak, and when you choose to remain silent, is another important factor. Pausing is an incredibly powerful tool when giving a speech and there are many different uses for a pause – dramatic, reflective, to transition between topics, to name just a few. A thoughtful approach to delivery as well as content is a must in order to execute an effective speech.
5. End on a strong note
When you structured your original communications strategy, you defined what success looked like. When giving a speech, often there will be a clear call to action at the end. This could be as simple and short-lived as “give donations generously and enjoy the evening!” or something more long lasting “together, we can build a better future”. You want to make sure that the final comments are memorable, inspiring and that the next steps for the audience are clear. How can they get involved, what are your commitments to them? A strong ending will ensure that your speech remains on their minds in the longer term.
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