So many professional female speakers are very focused on proving their knowledge when they give a speech. They recite statistics, facts, data, and academic material. These are essential for many speeches but they don’t ultimately make for a truly great speech. The best speeches touch the audience in a way that leads to them remembering that speech for years to come.
What’s the best way to touch your audience? Include a story about yourself. The best stories and the one’s that carry the most weight are what many people call a victim to victory story. This story tells your audience about how the information you are about to give them helped you change from a victim to a victor.
So what if you are giving a talk on accounting principles? Tell the story of how the consistency and stability of accounting helped you overcome a struggle in your life. If you are talking about communication, tell the story of when learning how to become confident and express yourself led to a career that you love. Or tell a story how ending a relationship led to joy and independence that you had never known.
If you are giving a talk about something, then surely there is a way that you can relate to the topic in a way that is meaningful to an audience. Women often believe that it is self-centered to talk about themselves in a speech. Yet if you do so in this way it is neither self-centered nor boring for your audience. You will hook them immediately in this way and then they will be receptive to the information that you are about to give them.
For your next speech have a victim to victory story ready to go. Good speakers will have more than one story in case they are addressing repeat audiences or delivering a variety of topics. Don’t be shy about inserting yourself in the talk, it will be the reason that your audience gives you their attention and why they will want you to come back time and again.
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