"All the great speakers were bad speakers at first." Anyone can become a better speaker with practice.
86% agree that being able to communicate well is important for their success, only 25% put in more than 2 hours for preparation.
How to prepare:
1. Turn the computer off, pencil or pen and paper
Know the lay of the land - get a sense of the terrain you need to work with. Think about four things: speaker, subject, audience, situation. How are the interrelated?
2. Define your objective
How should the audience be changed after your speech/presentation. "After my speech the audience will...?" What is it that you want them to do after it?
3. What is my key message
Great man is a sentence, "Franklin Roosevelt lifted us up from the recession and won the WW2"
Write your key message in one sentence? Edit your speech against your key message. If it supports it keep it, if ot doesn't take it out.
4. Why should they care?
It is always about the audience. What can I do for them? How can I help them?
If you cannot answer the question, your either speaking about the wrong thing or to the wrong audience.
"Some singers want the audience to love them. I love the audience" - Luciano Pavarotti
The logistical side of the preparation
Speaking itself can be stressful and there will always be things that you cannot. Control all of the things that you can control. See John's speakers checklist in his blog
mannerofspeaking.org.
Simplicity
If people are interested, they will come back for more. Leave them a bit hungry for more, don't try to stuff everything in. "Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication"
Emotion
There are two types of sell. There is the rational sell and emotional sell. The rational sell is usually made afterwards.
Two important public speaking lessons from the picture
Speech is a circle. The mission of a speech open a gap in the audiences mind with the opening, fill itwith your message, and remind them what youbstarted with.
Be fully present in the moment. Be here now, be somewhere else later.