How To Write A Speech For The Workplace

The key to any successful speech is connecting with your audience, understanding them, knowing them, making yourself your one of with them. And curiously enough, that may be harder in a workplace setting than anywhere else. You may think you know your fellow workers but you probably don't know them as well as you think.

There are things about even your closest colleagues that you don't know and don't understand. In a workplace setting, it's worth taking extra care to research the audience that you are going to be speaking to. Be especially alert for any social and emotional factors that may influence them.

In a workplace setting, anyone giving a speech automatically seizes to be a colleague and becomes an authority figure. That sets up a golf between you and your audience. It's especially important in a workplace setting to be honest with your audience, don't pretend to be one of them if you're not one of them.

If you're the big boss and head office, don't pretend that you are one of the guys on factory floor. But equally, don't pretend to be superior to your audience in anyway if you're not. Don't pretend to any authority or status that you haven't got.

Humor in any speech is a dangerous weapon and it's usually best left to professional comedians. But if you're using humor in a workplace speech, make sure it's directed against you, and not against your audience. Above all, remember that very few people, actually want to hear a speech in their workplace, they want to get on with their work.

If they don't want to get on with their work, they want to take a break, they want to socialize with their workmates or they want to go home. If there are refreshments available to them when you're speaking, they want to get at the refreshments. But all of these reasons make a workplace speech short.

Be ruthless with yourself, deliver your key messages, do the job your speech has to do. Presenting the retirement gift, switching on the new machine and then shut up. .