How To Give A Motivational Speech

Hi. I'm Simon Bucknall, and in 2008, I won the European Championship of Public Speaking. At the Art of Connection, we help ambitious professionals to connect with their audience, and we do it by bringing world class communications expertise into the training room to enable our clients to persuade, influence, and inspire others.

Motivational speaking: Well, I don't know about you, but for me, that conjures up images of a certain type of speaker. It suggests that the speaker's going to 'do something' to you. Well, that works for some people, but not for others.

What I do know is that from having seen many people that describe themselves as motivational speakers in action, there are a few things that strike me as being important if you're going to do it effectively. The first is to recognize that you're trying to move people from where they are to where they want to be. Or put it another way, to get them to move from A to B.

And if you're going to do that, at least you've got to understand where they are right now. It's a bit like being a travel guide. You've got to understand where people are at right now.

You've got to meet them. You've got to meet the group before you can guide them anywhere. And that's something many people make the mistake of not doing properly.

You've got to spend time talking to them, finding out, suggesting what it is that they are experiencing or feeling right now. Once you've done that, once you've, if you like, shown that you understand and empathize with the circumstances they find themselves in, then you can start looking at the, if you like, the reasons for why they might want to move. They might even suggest some of those reasons.

But there's got to be a reason, ideally more than one, and those reasons typically will come in one of two forms. Either there's pain, anxiety, difficulties, negative feelings and emotions that they want to get rid of, or there are positive things, there are pleasures, there are dreams, ideas that they want to gain. Helping people to get clear on what those reasons are is, I believe, the key to effective motivational speaking.

Put another way, it's helping them to identify 'the big why.' Why should they move? And then finally, you might then have a little look at what that destination looks like. What is that 'B' that you're moving them towards? Help them to understand what that might feel like, because if they can picture it, see it in their minds, even start to experience what it might be like, there's a much better chance that they're going to have the motivation they need to work hard to get there. .