Speech Contest

Last night I was a judge for a speech contest. It consisted of 5 high school students. All 5 had exceptional accolades, are very active in their school and community, and will definitely be successful in life.

All 5 had fabulous speeches, the content was phenomenal, and they all had great public speaking skills. There were just two things that I feel they could have done to make the presentations much better.

1 - All of them read their presentation verbatim. If they had prepared more ahead of time, they would have known their speeches much better and would have been able to talk to the audience rather than read to them.

2 - Even though they all read very well, even though they were very articulate, and even though they projected out so everyone could hear them, the one thing missing in all of them, which I feel is the most important thing, was their emotion. There was no emotion. I see this often with many presenters. Whether they are teens or adults, having emotion means having impact. If you want your audience to feel something, YOU need to feel it and show it in your presentation.

7% of communication is words, the rest is vocal tone and body language. Emotion comes through in both. Feel what you are presenting and your audience will feel it too. Emotion is what makes your audience act. Emotion is what will get you the results you want from your presentations.