SPEECHIFY

As a legal professional or Managing Partner, you will be giving public addresses or speeches. Whether it's at a roundtable or at a public forum you will get up and put out your ideas.
Putting out your speech starts with what you are trying to communicate, the central idea or ideas and then you fashion out how actually say the words and which words you will use. Again, the most important part of your speech is the idea you want to put across to whoever is listening to you, the rest is the vehicle.

A few questions to help you get in the right frame of mind for a speech that achieves what you set out to:

1. What do you want your audience to think, to feel or to do after hearing your speech. This matters because a speech is a work of art and your intention during planning or preparing will be very very obvious to whoever listens to you.

2. In your choice of words keep it simple. This is more difficult than it first appears because you may be used to certain words and unconsciously refuse to bring it down. Try to aim for primary school understanding or as Einstein said Keep it as simple as you need to grasp and understand but not any simpler.

3. The idea of the opening joke, the joke references during the speech e.t.c may not be relevant. Put out your ideas clearly and be careful of the jokes, if they are relevant.

4. Read it out aloud because the written speech may be glorious and may totally bomb when the audience hears it. It has nothing to do with your intelligence or artistic ability, it's just that the word written to be read and the word written to be spoken are two very different things.

At the end of it, the idea you are putting out there is the most important part of your speech and all the rest are the means to do so. Remember this and you'll do alright.