Andrew Rondeau

Andrew is the owner of this website and has been a Leader, Manager, Coach and Consultant for the last twenty-five years.

How To Be An Effective Public Speaker

By Andrew Rondeau
Published 11/14/2007

Public speaking is not easy. It is a challenge, both an art and a science and to deliver a good speech it has to be effective and make an impact on your audience.

These are the steps which you need to take to ensure you make this impact:

You need to be prepared

You need to understand fully what you are talking about. Research and familiarise yourself with the topic and make sure you are presenting only one main idea, so that your audience are not sidetracked when listening to you and therefore forget what you are presenting. A good way to check your take on the topic, is to see if you would feel confident in answering any questions that you might get asked after your talk.

Organise your speech

Make sure your speech is organised into a logical sequence. This will make it easier for your audience to follow and understand you, therefore keeping them interested. They will also find it easier to remember. If you also back your speech up with solid evidence it will help to add credibility to your talk.

Write out your speech

The two most important parts of a speech to help captivate your audience are the introduction and conclusion. The introduction is the first contact the audience will have with you and needs to be strong and tempt them to want to listen. The conclusion of the speech will sum up your talk and be the last part that the audience hear. This needs to remind them that you were a great speaker and one that they would recommend to others and come to see again themselves. Therefore it is a good idea to write down on paper, your opening and closing words. It is also good to add real life stories as much as possible into the speech, as they go down well too with the audience.

Practice your speech

Once you have your speech outlined and your notes written out, you need to practice your speech, to make sure you are happy with the content, the flow of the words and check whether the timing is correct, ie. fits in the timescale allotted to you. Also, the more you practice, the more confident you will feel when you deliver. To make sure you don’t just read from your notes when you present, outline the main points on you sheet that you will need to prompt you. That way you can scan the whole room whilst you present your speech, involving your whole audience whilst speaking loudly and clearly.

You should now be ready to go out a give the speech the audience want to hear and you can be proud of!