Never Read a Speech...Badly

I'm the first one to advise against reading a speech. It usually is tricky to maintain decent eye contact, a struggle to sound authentic, challenging to create any kind of connection with the audience...and just plain boring to listen to.

Yet you may be faced with some of these situations:

Perhaps your comments have been through legal or regulatory approval and need to be delivered precisely as written. Perhaps there are slander concerns. Perhaps you are delivering highly technical content that needs to be exact. Perhaps you give a great many speeches [think president or foreign diplomat] and you simply don't have the time to internalize your message enough to speak from notes.

So, even I am forced to admit that there are a few specific occasions where reading a speech may be necessary. However, reading a speech badly is never necessary.

Walking up to a podium and starting to read prepared text, whether written by you or someone else, without sufficient preparation is a recipe for disaster. Then all the concerns I listed in the first paragraph will certainly become reality.

Take a look at the first few minutes of this video of J.K. Rowling [of Harry Potter fame] delivering the 2008 commencement address at Harvard for an excellent example of how to read a speech well. Notice, above all, how much eye contact she has with the audience.

Embrace the following tips to make your speech reading so skilled that it's almost transparent to your audience.

1. Your content should be structured so that it is super relevant to the audience since you won't likely be comfortable ad-libbing explanations or examples during the presentation. Make sure the points supporting your main message flow logically.

2. Use large type and lots of white space. Number your pages. Have your text on only the top half of the sheets of paper as this will avoid the necessity of bending your chin to your chest as you read the bottom of the page. If you can prop your pages of text up so that your face is more level with the audience, so much the better.

3. Do not speak when you are looking down at your speech on the podium. Speak to the audience only when your eyes are off the text.

4. Mark up/a sentence/to show phrasing/and underline/to show emphasis/or inflection.

5. Since you're pretty much glued to the podium because that's where your text is, you can't move around. So be very conscious of your animation. Use large gestures and infuse your voice with energy.

6. Work on having a very conversational tone. The written word is frequently not conversational, so massage those words, particularly if someone else wrote them, until they sound like something you would say if you were sitting across a table from your listeners.

7. I've saved the most important for last...read the speech out loud a number of times [at least 4-5] to get the phrasing and pacing right. This also helps you implant the phrases and cadence in your brain so that, during the presentation, you can grab a phrase from the prepared text, make eye contact with the audience, and then deliver the phrase.

For more excellent tips on how to sound natural when you read a speech, please check out Heather Stubbs' blog post at Tips on Talking.

What experiences have you had, as either presenter or audience member, with reading a speech?

Comments

[סופרדסק ריהוט משרדי]

Nice video regarding JK rowling. The published expression is regularly not audio so rub those thoughts, particularly if someone else authored them.

[صور]

thanks alot