One of the first questions I ask when I hear that an executive is nervous about an upcoming speech is how much time was spent preparing for the presentation. Sometimes I will hear “Well I looked it over last night”, or “I made a few bullet-points”. Usually I think to myself, “No wonder you are anxious!”. A good speech requires work, sometimes hours need to be spent culling together material, weeding out weak points and extraneous data, finding the main point of the speech, and developing interesting questions to ask the audience. At the very least, familiarity with the material is essential.

Sometimes we feel tense about a speech simply because we are in the habit of preparing at the last minute. It’s important to break this cycle. How can it be done? Make a plan:

1) Tell someone you know (ideally, a coach like yours truly ) that you are struggling to find time for your presentations, and ask them for help. Support is important.

2) Set a certain number of hours allotted for your preparation, and report your progress to your coach or friend.

3) Weed out unnecessary information. Is your speech loaded with data? Putting everybody in the room to sleep, including yourself? Weed out everything that is unessential to your main point, which leads me to my next point…

4) HAVE ONE MAIN POINT TO YOUR SPEECH Ultimately a great speaker does not ramble , but revolves his/her speech around one main theme. The public schools need reform. My company invests more selectively than the rest. You can trust my leadership. You know what it is, pick it, and stick to it.

If you feel like it will help, post your progress to this blog post. Let me know what you’ve done to improve your presentations this week, and what you plan to do next week!

Good luck!

Jeffrey Davis is the owner of Speak Clear Communications. He is a public speaking coach and accent reduction coach in New York City. Click here to contact Jeffrey for a free twenty minute speech consultation.

This entry was posted in Speech Preparation and Anxiety Reduction
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