PlusPlus. Florian Mueck
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on. If they haven’t learned it after about a minute, they’ll rapidly start getting uneasy.
My recommendation for you is to mention your key message, the point of your talk, at the end of your introduction.
Example: a speech about “Friendship”
Have you ever missed your friends when you needed them most? Have you ever let a good friend down? Have you ever cried for a friend you lost?
Friends are one of the most valuable treasures we have in life. Today I want to encourage you to invest more time into this treasure.
From that point onward you present your arguments and reasons, stories and anecdotes. But your audience will know right from the start what your speech is all about.
Boost your content even more — cement your key message in the audience’s mind by mentioning it by the end of your introduction.
GOOD-BETTER-BEST
Think about one of your favorite movies. Think about one of your favorite books. Is there a climax in “Star Wars”? Is there a climax in “The Usual Suspects”? Is there a climax in “Perfume”?
Apart from “Pulp Fiction” — a movie with at least 534 climaxes — good movies and novels, and even New Yorker articles, have a climax.
Climax, a rhetorical device, is based on the good-better-best structure. I’m frequently amazed that so few people exploit this dramaturgic tool.
Why would you speak first about the passion of your employees, but then conclude with a detailed exposition of the company’s IT infrastructure? Believe it or not, there are people who do.
From now on, especially in the body of your talk (the three pillars of your Speech Structure Building™), you’ll want to use a structure that includes a climax.
A = GOOD B = BETTER C = BEST
Example: on “The benefits of Barcelona”
What I really like about Barcelona is the weather. We have an average of 300 sunny days a year in Barcelona, and, considering how important sunshine is to our well-being, it’s no wonder people walk around smiling all the time.
What’s even better about the Catalan capital is its cosmopolitan lifestyle. People from all over the world come together for tapas, business, or Toastmasters meetings.
For me, the absolute best of Barcelona is the beach. Very few major cities in the world can boast a four mile long sandy beach right near the center of town. After a tough day, sitting at a beach bar at night listening to chillout music and sipping a fine Priorat by the light of flickering torches is simply priceless.
The climax structure works in the body of your speech, and smaller climaxes will work for a certain number of shorter points in your talk (within the A-B-C pillars). Always move up the ladder of excitement. Your audience will be thrilled, waiting to hear what’s even better than what came before.
Boost your content even more by building at least one climax into your speech.
FROM CATERPILLAR TO BUTTERFLY
A caterpillar turns into a cocoon. A cocoon turns into a butterfly.
These two evolutionary steps happen with smooth transitions. You can tell that a change is happening, although you may well be surprised by the result.
Many public speakers underestimate the importance of good transitions between the parts of their speeches. Many don’t use transitions at all, which is guaranteed to make for a bewildered audience. Where does one part end; where does the next part begin? Without transitions, the audience can’t follow the flow, the logical argumentation, of the speech.
In the Speech Structure Building™ I strongly emphasize smooth and clear transitions.
Here are some generic examples of logical transitions:
Apart from A there is also B.
Now that we have discussed issue A, let’s take a look at issue B.
What connects A and B is C.
Where does this lead? To B.
A is not the only aspect. B is also an important factor.
Here are some examples of more creative, not necessarily logical, transitions:
After a long pause, move to different position on the stage.
Show the titles of A, B, and C on sheets of paper, like in a boxing ring.
Recite a short poem between each speech block.
Your creativity is only limited by your imagination. Nothing is impossible in public speaking. Or are you a dead fish?
Boost your content even more by creating smooth and clear transitions.
THE DRAINPIPE
According to the 2009 World Champion of Public Speaking, Mark Hunter of Australia, it’s not the foundation that makes the Speech Structure Building™ special. Neither is it the three A-B-C pillars — the speech body. Nor is it the rooftop, which caps the three pillars, completing the Greek temple form of the Speech Structure Building™.
Mark says, It’s the drainpipe.
The key element of this speech structuring model is the drainpipe, which connects the closing of a speech with its opening.
Two examples of drainpipes:
Szymon from Krakow spoke in one of my seminars about his greatest fears in life. He held a balloon in his left hand. He moved gently towards one of his colleagues. Then - BOOM - the balloon burst right in front of her face. Szymon yelled,
What did you see in her face?
Fear! shouted another colleague.
Szymon replied: Exactly — fear!
What a great opening!
But - when his speech came to an end, Szymon missed out on a great opportunity to use a drainpipe. His message was that we should change our perception about what we fear, that fear only exists in our heads.
In the feedback round after Szymon’s speech, I suggested that he could have picked up another balloon and, without bursting it, passed it to the same colleague, and said, Change your perception!
That balloon would have made a magnificent drainpipe by connecting back to his beginning.
On another occasion my friend, conflict mentor Tobias Rodrigues, used a wonderful drainpipe based on chiasmus, a rhetorical device of reversed repetition. It was his icebreaker (his first speech) at our Toastmasters club in Barcelona.
Tobias opened his speech with the words, My life in your hands.... He reinforced the phrase by using hand gestures — from touching his chest to reaching out to his audience.
Tobias ended his speech by saying, Your hands in my life....
As he said this, he reversed his hand gestures.
I just loved Tobias’ chiastic drainpipe.
It’s the drainpipe which makes your speech round, that brings it full circle. And — as you can see by the two examples, there are no limits to the creative possibilities when it comes to drainpipes.
Boost your content even more by constructing a drainpipe.
WHY SHOULD THEY CARE
You can have the best content, the best delivery, the best slides, the best sound system, the best moderator to set the stage for you, and the friendliest audience. But if your speech is not relevant to your audience, it’s nothing but