Reading your speech

This week I had the opportunity to see Robert G. Miller speak. He is the owner of Future Electronics, a large distributor of electronic components.

For the past couple of years, Mr. Miller has rented the Bell Centre in Montreal, to put on a show for his clients, friends, and family. I was fortunate enough to attend this year, and I was not disappointed. Mr. Miller impressed me on more than one front, and I will be mentioning his name a few times on the blog and in a future newsletter.

Mr. Miller has a background in radio broadcasting. He is well-spoken, clear, and articulated. He spent part of the evening telling us about his background, about his company, about the passion in his life. All of this, he did while reading a script. The information was interesting, if a bit staid.

Then, something interesting happened. There was a slight delay backstage, and Mr. Miller's script had run out, so he had no more material to read. His response? "Finally, I can say something without reading from the script." And that's what he did.

For the next few minutes, he told us a story about Roberta Flack whom he had met the day before. When he did so, his voice was louder, he was more erect, he seemed more sure of himself. And you could feel the audience pick up on the change.

Reading a speech is more difficult than it looks. We often decide to write a speech and read it out loud, in order to say everything we meant to say. But that's just the content. Public speaking is about much more than simply providing the content.

Sure, politicians read their speeches all the time but they have to go through special training to do so. Nevertheless, you may notice that most political speeches are boring. That's because when you read a speech, you break contact with your audience. When you break contact with the audience, you remove the emotional link that binds you to them.

What if you have to read a script? What can you do?

• Make it easy on yourself by printing your speech in a large font. A large font allows you to see the words on the page without squinting or sticking your face on the sheet of paper.
• Print double-spaced for the same reason. If your lines are all bunched up together, it makes it hard to read. The harder it is to read, the more you tend to concentrate on the sheet of paper instead of concentrating on your audience.
• Practice, practice, practice. Having the script is not a replacement for preparation. If anything, you may need to prepare more because you are reading from a script. When you practice, put more emphasis on your tone of voice. Recording yourself may prove especially useful in this case.

While doing all of this, at some point, you may realize that you can do the speech without your notes. Great! Drop the notes, then. Trust yourself, you'll do better without them than you will with them.

Instead of reading the entire speech, write a few hints or cues on an index card and use that to jog your memory. Will you forget some things? Possibly. But who cares? Only one person knows what you're supposed to say: you. Everyone else only knows what you said. And that's plenty!