How to craft and deliver a memorable and inspiring speech.

“The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops…until you stand up to speak in public.” (Source: BrainyQuote)

Let’s face it, the fear of public speaking is real. Anyone who has delivered a speech in front of an audience has felt the stage fright before. Even experienced TED speakers, Toastmasters and leaders in various disciplines can attest to this fact.

Right now, you are reading this article probably you don’t care if your hands shake, your heart beats faster than normal and whether you feel like you are going to die before you even start your presentation, but you want to focus on the positive side – which is to deliver a memorable and inspiring speech. That must always be your goal.

When you step in front of an audience to deliver a presentation, forget about yourself (especially your feelings), instead, consider your presentation as a performance rather than just a mere presentation.

“Keep this in mind. When you deliver a presentation, your goal should be to inspire your audience, to move them, and to encourage them to dream bigger” – Carmine Gallo.

But what encourages an audience dream bigger in your speech? What inspires them to take action?

The answer is simple: Ideas. But you need to make your ideas stand out, useful, impactful and sticky or memorable to your audience for a long time. The next question is – How?

The Heath brothers (Chip and Heath), in their excellent book for public speaking tips called Made to Stick: Why some ideas survive and others die, says “For an idea to stick, for it to be useful and lasting, it has to make the audience;

1. Pay attention,

2.  Understand and remember it,

3.  Agree and believe,

4. Care and

5. Be able to act on it.”

These are five principles you will need to use as a checklist or framework when crafting and delivering an inspiring and memorable speech. Let’s look at each one of them in details.

1.      How do you make your audience pay attention to your ideas?

Before you even start writing your speech, always remember that a speech must have a) An Introduction, b) Body and c) A conclusion. These are three fundamental or essential requirement of a presentation or a speech.

In your introduction and conclusion, that is where you need to make sure you got the full attention of your audience. “Studies have proven that the first and last 30 seconds of a presentation make the most impact on the audience.” – Ambigaphathy Pandian and colleagues.

Kindra Hall, a public speaking expert and author advice that the simple secret to nailing a presentation in the first 30 seconds is to start with a story. She goes on to say “Research shows that storytelling is more persuasive than facts. Stories will make your speech more memorable because humans are hard-wired for stories. You've likely heard that stories tap into the emotions of your audience which is critical to changing behavior.”

2.    How do you make your ideas clear so that your audience understand and remember them?

You must explain your ideas using figures of speech and other compositional techniques such as analogies, proverbs, metaphors, relevant quotes, anaphora’s etc. “When you tell a story, by all means use metaphors, analogies and vivid language, but eliminate clichés, buzzwords and jargon. Your audience will tune out phrases they’ve heard a million times.” – Carmine Gallo

An analogy is a comparison that points out the similarities between two different things in order to make the idea more comprehensive. For instance, “A good speech should be like a woman's skirt; long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.” ― Winston S. Churchill.

Here, I used a quote that illustrate an excellent example of an analogy of what makes a good speech. It is also relevant to the context of this article. Often times, a simple analogy can bring a smile or even laughter to your listener or audience.  

In his famous “I have a dream speech” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr used a public-speaking tool called anaphora, repeating the same word or words at the beginning of successive clauses or sentences. In his speech, the phrase “I have a dream” was repeated several times in successive sentences and that’s why the speech is still remembered to this day.

3.     How do you make your audience agree with you and believe in your ideas?

By backing up your ideas with statistics, relevant quotes, and logic to influence your audience’s beliefs, values and principles through persuasion. To persuade is to induce someone to do something through valid reasons and arguments.  

In his book titled, Talk Like TED: The 9 public – speaking secrets of the world’s top minds, Carmine Gallo says. “You need to understand the art and science of persuasion…

The Greek philosopher Aristotle is one of the founding fathers of communication theory. He believed that persuasion occurs when three components are represented (in your speech in this case): Ethos, Logos, and Pathos.

Ethos is credibility. We tend to agree with people whom we respect for their achievements, title, experience etc. Logos is the means of persuasion through logic, data, and statistics. Pathos is the act of appealing to emotions…

Brian Stevenson, the speaker who earned the longest standing ovation in TED history, spent 65 percent of his presentation telling stories. Brain scans reveal that stories stimulate and engage the human brain, helping the speaker connect with the audience and making it much more likely that the audience will agree with the speaker’s point of view”

Carmine Gallo analyzed the Brian Steven’s presentation and came summarized it in the following chart:

4.    How do you make your audience care?

By telling personal stories that will appeal to their self-interest and make them feel something. Your story must have a struggle and a triumph. You must be a hero in your own story.  Even better if your story has a villain.

If you want to master the art of storytelling and be an expert on crafting powerful and inspiring stories, I recommend you read another book by Carmine Gallo titled “The Storytellers Secret: How TED speakers and Inspirational leaders turn their passion into performance.”

In addition, there must be something at stake or beneficial for your audience before they can care about your ideas. As a blogger, I make sure the title of my article spark an interest to my reader and suggest through it that there will be some benefits.

What will you gain for reading this article? You will be able craft and deliver an inspiring and memorable speech (provided you understood this article). Therefore, you must have the same mentality if you want your audience to care about your ideas

5.     How to get people to act on our ideas?

Again, by telling stories. As Kindra Hall, has said above “Stories will make your speech more memorable because humans are hard-wired for stories. You've likely heard that stories tap into the emotions of your audience which is critical to changing behavior.”

The bottom line is, make sure you do your research and find the core of the idea you want to present. The core of your idea is what makes your presentation simple, clear and understandable.    

 

How do we find the essential core of our ideas? Antoine de Saint-Exupery says “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

When you are writing a speech, the ideas you want to present must be comprehensible to your audience. Avoid jargon and verbosity (Instead of writing “At this particular point in time”, say “Now”) and bombastic words (I should have said “difficult” instead of “bombastic”, but you get the point). “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” -  Leonardo da Vinci

If you follow the five principles above, and use the pie chart as a reference to structure your own speech, you might not get the longest standing ovation but you will be able inspire someone and get what you want after your presentation.

When it comes to delivery, always remember the 5- Ps: Proper preparations produce professional performance. Preparation involves planning and rehearsals. Practice, practice and practice your speech until it’s ingrained in your mind and you don’t even need notes to deliver it. Great speakers don’t use notes but speak from the heart.

Proper practice will also help you deliver and finish your speech within or less than your allocate time. “Be sincere; be brief; be seated. Franklin D. Roosevelt

To Conclude: “You need to understand the art and science of persuasion. You are still alive. Your life has a purpose. You were born for greatness. Don’ sabotage your potential because you can’t communicate your ideas…there is nothing more inspiring than a bold idea delivered by a great speaker. Ideas, effectively packaged and delivered, can change the world.” – Carmine Gallo