Time and again my Toastmaster's evaluators commented on the pace of my speeches. They liked many things about my speeches but found my speaking style too fast for comfort.
This is a problem with Indians in general.
Check out an earlier post on the world champion of public speaking who has similar advice
I continued to ignore and never acted on their advice...till one day when it really hurt.
I was delivering a speech that had a bit too much content to fit the 7 minute slot. Rather than chopping off some of the content I decided to just speak fast!!!
Needless to say I totally missed connecting to my audiences. This was my worst performance never mind that there were no stumbles, stutters etc. I was too fast for their comprehension. I lost my audience completely.
For the next speech I had the forethought to tape a practice session. I was taken aback by how fast I was speaking. I could not understand parts of my own speech!
Smarting from my poor performance the previous time and chastened by the visual feedback of my performance I managed to speak slowly and more deliberately for my speech project #7.
The result was spectacular. The impact on my audience between this and my previous speech was like the difference between day and night.
I received very positive feedback. In fact a Toastmaster who had witnessed both my speeches later left a voicemail commenting that my speech was ten times better than the previous one!
Perhaps you have a stumbling block in your own speeches as well. It could be that you are not projecting your voice, not moving around and so on.
Being aware of your weaknesses is not worth much until you act on it.
The payback is terrific. Trust me on that.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment