Fine-tune oratory skills and keep audience engaged

There are three fundamentals to prepare for any kind of speaking engagement. The first is to have a goal. You have to ask yourself why you are doing this. What message are you intending to send across? The second is to decide on how you are going to accomplish that goal. The third essential is practice. Being proactive, practice puts the speaker in control

When most people open their mouths, they fail to get their message across, motivate others or make themselves credible. They fail to build confidence in their company. An inarticulate oral communications can destroy more business careers and growth than all scandals, mistakes and company politics put together. Show business is the name of the game, irrespective of whether you are an international seminar leader or the keynote speaker of your company's board of Directors. A dismal and uninspiring public speaker will fail to make the executive grade because of this shortcoming. No matter how talented, driven or well-connected one is, the individual will forever remain limited in terms of growth because of poor oral communication skills. A good speech or presentation or a lively conversation with the CEO can put you in a whole different tier in your organization.

Why does this happen? Because many people don't realize that public speaking - be it a speech or a conversation on an airplane - is a discipline, just like athletics or the law. I meet plenty of people who are in their twenties or thirties and have graduated from colleges that have abandoned public speaking requirements. This implies that in their formative years, no one compelled them to get up on their feet.

In public speaking, you have to know what you are doing and why you are doing it. You will have to create strategies for reaching your goal, and practice, practice and practice.

Basically there are three fundamentals to prepare for any kind of speaking engagement. The first is to have a goal. You have to ask yourself why you are doing this. What message are you intending to send across? The second is to decide on how you are going to accomplish that goal. The third essential is practice. Being proactive, practice puts the speaker in control. All speakers improve, some dramatically, with practice.

Just about anyone who has worked with speeches, presentations and videos knows that great scripts don't necessarily translate into great deliveries. And delivery is what counts. No one cares about what's on the paper, they are more attentive to the words coming out of your mouth. Oral communications is a performance, which you should keep doing better whatever the stage may be. I have known many executives whose oral material looks awful on paper. You wonder how it could keep an audience engaged. But when the executive gets up to deliver it, the script, like the audience, comes alive.

The speaker informs, enthrals and motivates. Good speakers understand this. They will throw themselves into the speech rather than trying to be cool and laidback. Stories are great if there is a connection between the story and the message. Incidentally, the reason the story strategy works so well is that we all have many stories within us. We have only to reach inside ourselves to get material for our conversation or our speech.

Charisma is real and it is the ability to convey thoughts and emotions without words. You know it when you see it. It electrifies the room.

Top speakers usually have that flair when they are delivering a talk, although away from the stage, they might be quite ordinary. When someone speaks, that person should talk with the idea that they are going to inform, enthral and motivate. As for expectations, you should not hope to be loved. If you get your message across in the way you want, you have accomplished your goal.

There might be the temptation to have a lot of visuals. Well, don't do it. The audience usually recognizes that you are using these visuals as something to hide behind. Many speakers are overly dependent on graphics. One should understand about where they want the listener's eyes? Do you want them to be on you or on the visuals? You can't have it both ways. Frequently, visuals detract minds away from the speaker. You won't need visuals. Your body language, gestures, facial expressions, and words will say it all. You can create your own atmosphere without props.

Speech and Print

Oral communications are very different from written communications. Therefore, people speak differently from what they write. Remember speech and print is quite different from one another. The skilled oral communicator will use techniques that appeal to the ear. The ancient Greek audience was listening and repetitions kept their minds on the subject. As soon as you decide or get a speech invitation, get to know who the audience is. This is paramount. Next, research the topic. First, ask the organization if there is any background information you can read. You can also explore the topic online and get enlightened. Next, pool the information together and summarise that one or two simple messages, which has to be used to organize the talk.

There are actually two openings of a speech. The first is the pseudo-opening. There are a minute or so of pleasant things to say. During this time the audience is settling down. It is mandatory that the speaker does not say anything of consequence in the opening. It is in the second opening that the speaker actually sets the tone. There are all kinds of ways to open. One is to simply state the problem. Another is to narrate an anecdote. Some use quotations to pad up the speech. If you are deft, then oral communications can be inter-laced with humour. One must be cautioned that not all can pull it off considering that humour invariably involves risk. If it does not work out, the speaker will be off to a bad start.

We all construct different images for each situation we enter. For example, we are different with our superiors compared to family members. Many of us are also different people in different contexts. In becoming a seasoned speaker you may have to try out a number of identities too. As times change, you become more successful and your persona will be transformed too.

How can you best communicate your message? There are about a dozen basic ways to organize a speech. First is the "Problem- solution" model. You present the problem, and then you present the solution.

Later comes the extreme reverse. You present the solution and then describe the problem. You can approach your speech in three ways – the personal story approach, the string of anecdotes and the third is mix and match. It means you can mix and match, blend, several of these. There is no longer one set way to do a speech.

(The author is Advisor of SME Chambers of India for AP and Telangana State)