My heart beats faster. I start to feel that slight churning in my stomach. I wonder if this is such a good idea? Walking in front of 100 people and letting them watch me do so horribly. After all, I’m barely prepared! I know what I want to talk about but what will I say? What words will I use? What if I don’t use the perfect words that will make my whole audience like me?
These are real thoughts that go through my head every time before a presentation or a speech. But I can still go up and deliver it. And I’m proud to say that my speeches are not too boring. And it’s because I know that it doesn’t need to be perfect.
People WANT to enjoy your speech
It takes a lot of effort to travel somewhere to sit down and hear you speak. It takes a lot of time out of their busy day to do so. If your audience is there, they want you to succeed. They want you to do well.
Think about it. Have you ever thought to yourself, “I wish this speaker was boring”? Never. It’s always, “I hope this next speaker isn’t too boring”.
Your audience has already made a huge investment. They’ve come all the way there and they have to spend the next few minutes listening to you anyway, so they might as well try to enjoy it, right? And they’ll try to enjoy it as much as possible.
Your audience want to find any excuse possible to enjoy your speech so if you do even the smallest thing well, or make even one tiny joke, they’ll remember that and conveniently forget the rest.
Nobody remembers the bad parts, they only remember the good parts
I’m sure you’ve heard thousands of speeches before. It could be your teachers at school, speeches on TV, a seminar you’ve been to, toasts at weddings and even the opening speeches at most programs. What do they have in common? 99% of them are quite boring.
What else do they have in common? I don’t remember that 99%. I don’t remember who gave the speeches. I don’t remember what they said in the speeches. Most probably I wasn’t even paying attention.
I do remember all the good speeches I heard though. I still remember the faces of the speakers (sometimes I didn’t get to find out their names), what they talked about, where it was that I heard it and even when I heard it.
So it turns out that even if you perform extremely horribly, guess what? The audience was expecting that anyway. 99% of speeches ARE boring. They won’t bother remembering it and will have forgotten it later. So it’s ok to mess up. No one cares.
3 points is more than enough
Ever thought that you need to make sure that your audience gets all your knowledge? Or maybe you just wanted to impress them with how much you know? It turns out that talking too much bores people!
“Oh my God! Seriously?” sarcasm
Seriously though, having too many facts and figures and points that you want to explain will only overwhelm your audience. Stick to 1 or 2 points. Have a maximum of 3 points. Preferably only one. Be clear what they are. Repeat it. Emphasize it.
If you’re telling a long story to explain one of those points, at the end of it tell your audience how that story links to that point. Because they’ll probably forget.
When the speech ends you want them to come away thinking only one thing. That point that you wanted to get across. Just that single one.
So your speech doesn’t need to be perfect
It doesn’t have to be perfect and it probably won’t be perfect. But that’s ok. It will still be better than 90% of speeches if you just keep it short and stick only to the simple message you want to get across.
Once you’re done reading this, I hope you’ll come away with only one point which is, “Speaking in public doesn’t need perfection. It only needs to be just a little bit ok. And short. Keep it short.”