***A Dynamic Delivery Can Make Even a Mediocre Speech Soar

Ideally, it should be your goal to deliver an excellent speech or presentation with enthusiasm and passion. However, if you had to choose, which one do you think would be better? A great speech with a boring delivery? Or a mediocre speech given with expression and emotion? There is no simple answer to that question; however, with a lifeless, dull and flat delivery, you will lose your audience no matter how great your words.

If you fervently believe in your topic, then it is your responsibility to display that excitement to your listeners. Many speeches or presentations are persuasive in nature. If you expect to change your audience’s opinions, if you expect to ‘sell’ them on your ideas, your products, or your services, then your job is to keep their attention on you by your vocal variety, facial expression and body language.

And, the informative presentation needs the same caliber of expression as well. Delivering a report on your company’s budget, your travels to Thailand, or the landscaping job you did for your firm requires the same imagination and dynamics in both the creation of your material and the subsequent delivery of that material as it would were you selling your ideas or products to prospective clients.

Speaking with expression is known as color – the life, the animation, the emotion you display which your audiences sees and hears. It is the same emotion you would exude were you relaying a story to your family and/or friends at the kitchen table, to colleagues at the office, or to acquaintances at a social function. You might smile, frown, nod your head, move your hands and arms, change your stance or lean back in your chair. This type of movement makes for expression; and, for most people, it is part and parcel of the way they speak.

Too often, those who are giving a speech or presentation do not allow for the same type of delivery that they would use in normal conversation. That is the mistake. Public speaking is the art of communication with an audience – it doesn’t matter whether that audience is sitting at your dining room table or at a conference table, in a restaurant or in an auditorium. In each one of these situations, your listeners are your audience.

Over 2000 years ago, Cicero, the great Roman orator, said that a mediocre speech with a dynamic delivery is more effective than a great speech given without effective presentation skills. Exciting your audience was as important 2 millennia ago as it is today. Don’t shortchange your listeners by placing more emphasis on your script than on your delivery skills. Both deserve the same amount of attention.