It was a beautiful Saturday here in the UK,  sunny and warm yet I spent three hours of it in a hall listening to some of the best speakers in the South of England at a Toastmasters  speech contest.  Why?  Because I  learn so much from listening to and analysing great speakers.      Iain Upton, from Solent Speakers in Fareham Hampshire won the international speech contest with a presentation entitled Spice up Your Speech.  In it he argued that  many speakers are lead to believe that “delivery is everything” and he wanted to redress the balance by making sure that content and language were given at least equal billing.

I think he has a point.   Presentation coaches, including me, bang on about the importance of great delivery and perhaps we are giving people the unintended message that content doesn’t matter.     Listen to many of the political speeches in the media here in the UK in the run up to the general election and you can see the problem.   Many are a triumph(?) of style over substance.

Of course any presentation coach worth his or her salt will agree that content is critical.   Listening to a great speaker without good content is like eating a chinese meal. It fills you up at the time but after a few hours you can’t even remember eating it.     The reason we put so much emphasis on the delivery side of things is because great content on its own is not enough either.      Both are needed  for effective and long lasting communication.

So as a presenter or budding speaker make sure you spend time on both aspects of your speech.  get the content right first.  

  • Set yourself a clear objective
  • Next assemble a compelling argument which you can support with evidence that will stand up to intellectual scrutiny.   
  • Choose your language with care and avoid  falling into the trap of repeating  well worn cliches.

Iain’s powerful message hit home with the audience and with me and so I hope it will with you too.

Posted in Presentation Skills, Public Speaking and tagged , , ,

1 Comment

  1. Fred E. Miller on 19/04/2010 at 11:58

    Good points here!

    I’ve heard the expression: “I could be very, very entertaining – and say NOTHING!”

    True, but if you don’t have substance to your talk, they won’t have anything to take away but a ‘warm fuzzy feeling’.

    Don’t count on getting invited back, or referred, if you have nothing to say.

    Thanks!

    Fred E. Miller

    Reply

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