PATH 1 – Be Well Organised
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If your talk, presentation or speech is well organised it will be:
Easier to follow
Easier to understand
Easier to remember
The format for most methods of creating a speech is to consider the talk under the following headings:
Beginning or opening
Middle – main points with supporting material
End – conclusion
At the ‘The Speaking Well’ we consider that with most methods of preparing a talk, the more time, effort and research you put in, the more you try and cram into your talk, the more often you run out of time or put yourself under time pressure. This causes problems in presenting your talk and can affect your confidence.
So what is the key to your preparation?
TIME is the key.
You need to organise the content of your talk, presentation or speech from the point of view of time.
If you prepare and structure your talk really well, but you run out of time, for example delivering only half of what you wanted to say, then your preparation has not helped you.
It is like cooking a meal for a dinner party or family occasion and not allowing for the time needed to present it on the table before it is time for the guests to leave .You have the recipe, you have the ingredients, you may even finally have the meal, but everyone has gone home.
Your preparation has not helped you.
When you stand up and speak in public, time becomes precious.
A group of people have come together to listen to you and you have an allotted amount of time to speak.
So the organisation needs to be carried out from the perspective of the time you have available to give your talk. Do you have 1 minute, 6 minutes, 15 minutes, one hour?
Getting the timing right can be a difficult and time-consuming process with the talk rehearsed over and over again, honing the words to fit the allotted time.
However, the Memory Map that you learned about in the other parts of this site solves the time problem in a very simple clear way that enables you to know the content of your talk and the order in which you wish to say things.
For example, take a six minute talk.
Below is a blank Memory Map. You will recall that the Memory Map has six main locations.
click to enlarge
Each of the six main locations can be used to speak for one minute. So if you speak for one minute at locations 1 to 6 then your talk will last for 6 minutes.
At each of the six main locations you will recall that there are three locations for sub-points. Location 1 has locations for sub-points a, b and c that we call 1a, 1b and 1c.
So at each main location there are four places for putting what you want to say; for example at the first location we have 1, 1a, 1b and 1c, four separate places.
60 seconds divided by 4 = 15 seconds. This means you have 15 seconds to speak at each place within each main location.
This means that you could put together a six minute speech with each point taking around 15 seconds, at locations 1, 1a, 1b, 1c, 2, 2a, 2b, 2c and so on all the way up to locations 6, 6a, 6b and finally 6c.
You can have templates for talks of other speaking times, for example 1 minute, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, an hour.
When you prepare for your talk, presentation or speech you can if you wish choose to fit it into the following structure:
2 main locations for the beginning
2 main locations for the middle
2 main locations for the end and conclusion
We have here an example of a Memory Map for an hour that has split the time for the talk or presentation into six using 10 minutes per main location.
click to enlarge
If your talk is for an hour you could of course have whatever time you like at each main location as long as in total it does not run for more than an hour.
Whatever the overall timing you can learn your talk or presentation in short segments of time making it very easy to know what you want to speak about and for how long.
Most systems of putting a talk or presentation together show you the theory based on a beginning, middle and end but you have to put the timing, structure and order into practice.
The Speaking Well and the Memory Map shows you practical techniques that provide a clear time, structure and order in which to put your speech or presentation together. You just have to slot in the content for what you want to say.
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