Play to Your Strengths as a Speaker

I recently gave an assignment where the students had to use exaggerated gestures and body movement to describe how to do something--such as eating a piece of pizza or changing a tire. One of the students in this class is a quadriplegic, and I was uncertain as to how he would handle the assignment. He responded in a marvelous way by showing how he taught his niece to wiggle her ears! He gave a lively demonstration from the neck up. The audience loved it and he did an outstanding job. He demonstrated a powerful principle in speaking: play to your strengths.

In attempting to improve our speaking, we often concentrate on overcoming our weaknesses. On a video playback of a speech we will look for all the mistakes and think of ways to improve. There is nothing wrong with doing that—if we also will evaluate what our strengths are and work to accent our strong points as a speaker.

For example, if you tell stories well, be sure to include stories in your speeches. If you use humor well, include it whenever appropriate. If you have a naturally lively delivery style, don’t stand behind a lectern when you speak; stand to the side or in front of the lectern so you can accentuate your delivery. If you have an uncanny ability to elicit audience participation, then allow time for that in any speech you deliver.

The logical conclusion is that if you play to your strengths you will eventually weed out the weaknesses not by dwelling on them. Instead, squeeze them out of your speech by relying strongly on your strengths. Playing to your strengths will increase your self-confidence in speaking and will provide more energy in delivery. You will feel good about the things you do well in speaking and know you are including them as you speak.

To improve your speaking, identify your strengths. You can do this by observing your audience response to your speech, asking friends what they think your strengths are, and by identifying the places where you feel most comfortable when speaking. A mature speaker is one who knows what he/she does well and seeks to emphasize those strengths every time he/she gets in front of an audience.

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One of the first concerns for a speaker during preparation is making sure the content makes sense to the audience. This is called reasoning, which is simply how we put our evidence or support together to develop a point.

In speaking, deductive reasoning is the best way to reason or to make sense to the listeners; this is reasoning from the general to the specific. We want to start out in the body of our presentation with an assertion or a generalization. "It is important to develop our presentation skills in order to develop in our occupations" might be an assertion to start a speech on speaking. What follows naturally would be examples of people who have had occupational success because they improved their speaking skills, which is your evidence. If you start out with success stories in speaking, soon the audience may become restless because they don’t see the point you are making and will stop listening before you make your point.

The deductive method grabs the attention of the audience and motivates the listeners to be alert to evidence that supports the assertion. How much evidence or support you need in this type of reasoning depends on the strength of the assertion. If the point draws on new ideas or material, then the speaker will develop several pieces of evidence. If, however, the point may already be generally accepted or seems to be common sense, a couple of pieces of evidence may be all that is necessary. Spend the most time on points least likely to be accepted or easily understood by the listeners.

Don’t attempt to develop too many points in a speech because the audience will not remember them all. In a thirty-minute speech three or four points are usually enough.

The only exception to the deductive method would be when you have a position which you think is unpopular to the audience. Then you might use the inductive method, which is reasoning from the specific to the general. If you use deductive reasoning and thus give the main point first, and the audience disagrees with it, audience members may shut you out at the outset. If, however, you begin the point by a startling statistic or a particular vivid example, they may not be able to resist staying with you mentally when you do draw your conclusion. You’ve hooked them to your speech by the powerful evidence you provided before asserting your point.

We typically speak in conversation by using the deductive method, such as saying to friends, "It is a beautiful day." You would not greet them with the current temperature and then conclude that it is a beautiful day, which would be the inductive method. Generally conversations are not as structured as presentations, but the deductive method works well in both conversations and in presentations.

So in your next presentation make your point and then give your evidence. Doing so will insure your success in helping an audience understand or be persuaded. 

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