Speech learned by heart or read off notes

If you are reading this post,
chances are high that you are about to deliver a speech in the next few days and you may be doubting,
whether to learn the speech by heart or to read off the notes.

And,
that’s a very valid question.

If you are not sure about which option is best,
this post is for you.

What is better a speech learned by heart or read off notes?

None of those options is a good option.

They are a good option,
if you want to deliver a “sh#ty”.

However,
if you do want to make an “impact” on your audience, then none of the two options are good.

The perfect option for your speech would be,
the one when you are talking directly from your heart (not from your memory) to your audience.

One of the mistakes many of the speakers make while delivering a speech,
it is thinking too much about themselves,
instead of thinking about the audience.

PRO Tip: When you are preparing for a speech,
put yourself in the shoes of your audience and ask yourself for a moment.

What will my audience get out of my speech?

Once again,
this is important.

Put yourself in the shoes of your audience, and try to answer this question:
What my audience will get out of my speech?

If you are able to answer your question during your speech,
while talking straight from your heart,
you will without a doubt make an impact on your audience.

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Avoid Rehearsing your Text

I want you to imagine this.

I want you to imagine yourself standing in the middle of the stage while reading a paper in front of an audience of 70 people.

Do you think you will capture your audience’s focus and interest?
Probably not.

Your audience is not there to hear how you rehearse a text.

Your audience is there to see how you answer the question: “What’s in it for us?

Do you know the only way to answer that question?
The only way,
that question can be answered, it is if you are genuine and sincere in what you are saying.

And that can happen,
only if you speak from the heart, not from your memory.

We are not saying it is easy to speak from the heart.
Especially at the beginning,
you will need to be brave, and it will be hard.

On the other hand,
think about the impact,
you will inspire the people in your audience to do the same, making this world a better place.

Now that (I hope) you are clear that rehearsing the text is not a good option,
let’s see the option of reading your notes

Avoid Reading off your notes

There is a “disease” called Death by PowerPoint.
Quoting here the description of this disease as more infectious than COVID-19:
Death by PowerPoint occurs when the speaker fails to capture the audience’s focus and interest

Most likely you have had already this disease in some presentation you have recently attended,
where the speaker starts all the slides by saying:

In this slide
let me tell you in this slide
as you can see in this slide

Of course, people can see what it is on the slide,
that’s why you don’t need to repeat it.

Your task as a speaker is to answer the silent question that your audience is throwing you while attending your speech:
“What’s in it for us”.

Avoid the Death by PowerPoint,
by talking from your heart.

Mistakes will happen,
and that’s okay,

Your audience will prefer a natural speech with mistakes,
rather than a perfect speech that you know by heart or out of reading off from your notes.

Make it natural and human, and your audience will connect with you.
It works.
We are human, we love connection.

Now that you know what not to do, let’s discover what to do,
and how to build the perfect speech.

How to build the perfect speech

The perfect speech should consist of three parts.

Not one, not two but three parts.

  • Opening
  • Content
  • Closing

Let’s see in detail each of the parts

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Opening

This is key, and this is the second most important part of your speech.

At the same time,
it can be the moment when as a speaker you will be the most stressed.

It is the moment when you are getting the “feeling” of the speech.
The feeling of how the audience is reacting,
the feeling of how you feel yourself on stage…

Here it is okay to know by heart the first 90 seconds of the opening.
Only this.
After that, go with the flow.

Whenever the situation allows,
try to incorporate a joke or a funny comment during your intro.
It will make your audience relax and connect better with you.

What works best is laughing at yourself.
People will feel represented,
and they will be perceived as human.

And nobody is better at this, than oneself.

Example: We are Spanish, with a strong Spanish accent,
one good idea would be to say during the intro that:

“I hope everyone will follow my English British accent

What you achieve with this:

  • You play with the irony while playing with your audience
  • You are saying in a playful way that you do not have a perfect British accent, and you are okay with that.
  • and most importantly, your audience will have a laugh.

Content

If you have played the video game Sonic in the past,
you will know that to pass the game,
you need to go through some gates to pass it till the end.

The same can be done with your speech.

Think about the content of your speech as a videogame,
where you need to go through different gates to pass it.

After gate 1,
you go to gate 2,
and after gate 2, you go to gate 3… you get the idea, right?

Behind every gate,
you need to know the idea and the message you want to pass.

You don’t need to know the content of each gate to the detail.

Important. You need to know only the idea,
but not fully word by word what you want to say behind that idea.

And once you are done in that gate, you move on to the next one all the way to the closing.

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Closing

Without a doubt,
this is the most important part of the speech.

Same as in the opening,
here it would be okay to know by heart the last sentences of your speech.

Before telling you the why,
let me tell you a story.

Saying Harvard
is saying one of the elite educational institutions in the world.
And of course, they have classes in Oratory

Something interesting happened in one of the classes.
They did an experiment.

The experiment was simple,
students were attending a presentation for 30-min,
5min break to recharge,
and back after the break,
they were asked to summarize the content of the 30-minute presentation.

Do you know which % of people managed to summarize properly the content of the presentation?
Less than 25% of the people.
3 out of 4 people in the room were not able to summarize the content (and remember we are talking about people from Harvard)

What’s the lesson here?
Always close the meeting with a summary of what you talked about
(ideally make lists of three – why lists of three? discover in this post)
and whenever possible try to leave your audience with an open question.
An open question that will make them think, will challenge them… that’s works like knife in butter.