While still on the idea of a speech, I want to share something else with you that I have thankfully learned at a whipper snapper age. In his book Give Your Speech- Change the World, Nick Morgan gives us a great historical account of speech giving dating back to the period of Greek Orators. In that stream of his book he talks about the paramount importance of literally giving your speech. He exposes the simple truth that our speeches are for our audience, not for us. When he talks about GIVING your speech, he tells us that we are GIVING our passion to our audience. If you have a message and someone has decided they want to hear it - your goal is to GIVE them something they can put into action and hopefully change the world.
We are in the season of massive political speeches of which I enjoy watching. With each party's convention a thing of the last two weeks, I could not help but think of Nick Morgan's advice as I engaged the speech buzz. Each party usually has an "up and coming" member slated to give a speech and inspire the citizens of said party. When you listen to the media, they talk much about how this and that person has their chance to be the "next big thing" in their party much like Barack Obama did in 2004 @ the DNC. He very much arrived on the radar screen with a great speech. I have an urk with this mentality. It is built up to be a speech that is all about the person and not the audience or the country for this matter.
Their talk is for their country and their party and that is where they should focus. The wording needs to be "for you" and "for us." Certainly these people have a chance to shine (not talking about the nominees) before the world, but they need to be all about their audience. If they have a powerful message to GIVE, that is just what they should do. Give it to their audience and not to themselves. If they are excellent communicators with an action oriented message - they will fare just fine in the future.
Whether you are speaking to a national audience or a nucleus of people at work - you are GIVING a talk, not receiving it. Do just that - Give your message and passion to your audience and move them to action.
For the best on audience centered presentations - check out Nick Morgan's Blog.
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