School Mom and Student

How’s your spelling? Pretty good? Then I reckon that you’d say that there was only one P in speechmaking. However, if you intend to make a speech, you had better remember that there are, in fact, three Ps in speechmaking - Pace, Poise and Polish.

And if you can incorporate these three Ps into your speechmaking, you will be certain of making a good impression on just about any audience you may come across.

Pace. This is a ‘make or break’ P, so don’t underestimate it’s importance. If you get this wrong, your audience will either be bored to tears and will be struggling to hide their yawns from you OR they will miss every third word you say as you race to finish your delivery.

Have you ever listened to a speaker who had been taught that speaking slowly allowed the audience to understand what you were saying better? If you have, you’ll know that there is a world of difference between easily understandable and excruciatingly slow! Even the most interesting topic will be made boring by a slow drawl and your audience will be itching to scream “speed it up, won’t you? I have to be in work tomorrow morning!”

Delivering your speech too slowly is guaranteed to make even the most generous audience lose their concentration and their patience.

On the other hand, if your pace is too fast, many people in your audience will simply lose the thread of what you are saying and listening to you will become too much like hard work. Your responsibility is to make the audiences’ task of listening to your speech easy, not difficult and you should be striving to give your audience the luxury of simply relaxing and letting your words seep effortlessly into their minds.

Deliver your words slowly enough for your audience to be able to easily absorb what you are saying yet fast enough to avoid your delivery becoming tedious. Remember that by varying the pace of your presentation, you will be able to retain the interest and attention of those listening to you.

Poise. Most speakers believe that the subject matter of their presentation is all that is important and spend most of their time worrying about the actual construction of their speech. They are happy to spend hours collecting snippets of information, organising it into an acceptible order, selecting an appropriate opening and closing style and making sure that the rhythm and flow of their words is just right.

And of course, all that effort is essential to producing an excellent speech. But it doesn’t stop there. How you present yourself is just as important as how you present your words.

Run through this checklist immediately before you step out in front of your audience:

1. Is your clothing clean, smart, appropriate and arranged correctly? 2. Is your hair neatly combed? 3. Does your body language convey the right impression?

Always bear in mind that your audience will start forming their opinion of you from the first moment that they see you and long before you have a chance to woo them with your words. Your poise - that is, the visual impression given to the audience - will influence their first impression of you and that is something that you must pay great attention to .

Make sure that your impression is a positive one.

Polish. This is what will make a good speech great! It is also the thing that will enable you to rid yourself of any pre-speech nerves. Thorough preparation is the key to most things in life and speaking in public is no exception.

Make time to rehearse your speech in front of a mirror, or better still, in front of your family or friends. Make sure that you become very familiar with the content of your speech. Practice until you find the most effective style of delivery and think about the incorporation of suitable gestures. Spend time on anything that you feel needs to be practised until it becomes second nature.

Closely scrutinise your stage outfit and pay detailed attention to your posture. How you stand will certainly display any outward signs of tension you may be feeling so don’t lean, don’t hunch, don’t slouch and don’t allow yourself lose concentration. Polish your performance until it gleams! In spite of all these efforts, you must strive to appear relaxed, confident and in control at all times - even if you don’t feel it.

If you can remember the three Ps in ’speechmaking’ - Pace, Poise and Polish, you will be certain that your speech will be delivered in such as way that any audience will be enthralled, entertained and enraptured by your performance.