How to Read a Speech and Still be an Effective Speaker

Do your speeches and presentations take wing? Or do they remain earthbound, kept there by some heavy-handed delivery of data? Here's another scenario that will ensure listeners won't be excited by what you're telling them: any attempt to 'read' a speech. We tend to forget (because we spend so much time writing then polishing our talking points) that reading and speaking are entirely different animals—in terms of both the speaker and audience's experience. You can perfect your manuscript to your heart's content. But when you step into what I call 'the oral arena' of public speaking, you might experience what Dorothy Gayle conveyed to her dog Toto when her house finally landed in The Wizard of Oz: "I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." Indeed, you're not. Your job now is knowing how to stay fully focused so audiences have complete confidence in what you say. That flat-out beats presenting information without letting the audience know why it matters to them.