I used to think that the good speakers were the ones who were practiced and polished.
They knew their stuff, and their delivery was perfectly timed.
I’m sure you know the ones I mean – they seem so smooth and confident, and everyone comes away from their talk feeling wowed!
Then I attended a training course on public speaking and noticed that it wasn’t all about polishing and presenting what you knew. Some people were doing this but there was still something missing – their talks felt a little hollow.
Fast forward a few years and I was brought to tears by a group of speakers who had no polish and very little intellectual knowledge. The way they spoke moved me and shifted the way I thought about things. This was a much more powerful approach to speaking!
Some of these speakers were nervous and stumbled over their words, and their message wasn’t always clear, but the impact was there. They were up there sharing the story of their experiences, and they were doing it from the heart.
That’s when I realised what had been missing during the training course – the speakers who had felt hollow had been copying a process and ticking the boxes – they’d lost the connection with the things that mattered to them and were trying too hard to impress.
But those who showed up with passion and soul, talking about things that they believed in, they were the ones that touched people. They were the ones with real influence!
Of course, those that speak from the heart can take their speaking abilities to the next level by adding some polish, but it’s not needed anywhere near as much as you might think.
If you want to have impact and influence when you speak, know that the message that will really reach people is the one that comes from the heart.
Don’t take my word for it, experiment for yourself:
- notice the people whose message moves you and inspires you, whether it’s a speaker on stage or someone you are talking to one-to-one.
- Are they always polished and knowledgable, or is there something deeper being communicated?
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