Reading a Speech is a Skill we all can & should Learn.
Jeff Bezos of amazon.com is Reading a Speech at Princeton University. Watch and listen to him read his speech, then let’s identify the Teachable points that can benefit us in our future Presentations.
1. He is talking about personal events from his childhood which He knows well. Yet, He delivers his Speech by constantly referring to the Speech pages on the lectern in front of him. Here is a classic example of “Reading a Speech”. It illustrates several reasons for you to avoid this delivery choice. Lets see what they are…
2. In order to Read the Speech, He constantly bobs his head up & down as he refers to the Speech. This can be very distracting to the audience, drawing attention away from his message. Consequently,
3. His eye-contact with the audience suffers. He could have better served his audience and his Speech by using Note cards or even a Tablet as his Guide. The result then, would have been that his story would have seemed more Conversational and more Personal, resulting in making a better Audience connection.
4. Notice too that He is making many paper handling movements: Picking them up, holding them, and shuffling them are distractions to the Audience. Additionally, an embarrassing incident could occur if the speech papers had dropped off the lectern landing at his feet or worse, blown away. These things do happen. But more importantly, all this paper shuffling is another example of taking the attention away from his Message.
So, Remember the Goal you wanted to accomplish when you decided to Speak at this event. Anything you can do, anything under your control, should be well planned, well designed, and well executed. You are there for a specific reason or reasons. Make Your time and effort spent produce a success by ensuring your Delivery is polished.
note: begin viewing the video at about 6 minutes
into the video and you’ll avoid a long introduction.
This video is a teaching tool, not a derogatory
comment on Jeff Bezos, simply an analysis
of his speaking style at this Event.
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