How to Become an Impactful Speaker
Tags: Public Speaking, Impact

Concept by Benny Z. |Written by Moiz H. 3/21/2021|

One of the greatest tools gifted to mankind, over the course of time is the gift of voice. This tool is so powerful, it led to the creation of marvellous empires, countries, technology!

This article will be covering the most basics of creating an impact, and will go over on how to talk directly to the heart of the audience!

—

What is Public Speaking?

Although the answer seems fairly straight forward, public speaking is a fairly intricate form of communication. Public speaking in particular has such rules, and defined outlines, it deals with psychology directly!

As humans, sub-consciously a lot goes on in the back of our heads. One of the most important sub-conscious things which occur in our minds are emotions. A great speaker will trigger the emotion within most of the audience, and create impact from there.

Let’s Dive Deep.

What Triggers Emotions?

As mentioned before, emotions are one of the biggest things speakers leverage to get that sense of impact engraved into the audience. Here is a list of some of the most common emotion triggers:

The Topic Itself

The Humour

A Story

The Struggle

Encouragement

—

Let’s talk about each of these in more detail.

The Topic Itself

Now the topic itself is one of the biggest things which triggers emotional feelings within someone.

Topics that have to do with society being the most common. Things such as racism, and others are some of the main topics which people, without knowing the speaker much feel the impact for.

If the topic you are speaking on is an impactful topic, to convince the audience into feeling impact and emotion will be easier by great amounts.

A beautiful example of this is by Mr. Martin Luther King Jr. On this famous speech titled “I have a dream.”

Martin Luther King Jr. Giving His Famous “I Have a Dream Speech”.

The Humour

For most humans, the best feeling they experience day to day (socially) is the feeling of laughter. The joy laughter brings is huge! Speakers who leverage humour often talk to the heart of the audience the most!

Now, humour is not always about cracking jokes. In fact, cracking jokes is the least used way to stir laughter within the audience. The art of humour is incredibly intricate. To figure out how to incorporate humour into a speech requires experience.

Some of the best ways to get inspiration for Laugh Lines, or Humour lines in your speech is to incorporate a story.

One example is: “Y’know as a child, I was fairly curious. I’d open up toys, and all sorts of things. Like once I flipped some switches on the electrical board downstairs.. Sheesh, can’t imagine how that went..”

Now, the BEST way to be more humorous is to take inspiration from the masters of humour. Now that is a fairly wide scoped term.

So, we have narrowed it down to two of the best humour speeches on the internet (For your inspiration):

Example 1

Example 2

A story

With that being said, let’s introduce another important component to create impact. And that is, telling a story.

When it comes to speeches, especially the conventional speech with “The Mic and the Audience”, story telling doesn’t necessarily mean telling everyone a fairy tale.

Commonly, story telling in speeches is often portrayed as “How did I get here?” or “Why did I do that?”.

A common example is when someone tells a bit about how they came to be, and their history.

Here is a beautiful example (Elon Musk):

Elon Musk’s Speech — An example of Story telling in speeches.

What you saw up there (By Elon Musk) was an amazing example of how story telling is one of the big components, when it comes to creating impact.

The Struggle

The component of sharing “The Struggle” is commonly used by motivational speakers to trigger a sense of appreciation. What this means is that the speaker is sharing their life struggle, or how they came to be.

Although not every speech would be befitting for this technique, for the speeches that do make sense to have “A struggle” section, in the end create a huge impact.

Once again, Elon Musk is a great example for this as well. When It comes to sharing his struggle, he often during speeches shares it with such emotion, it makes people feel empathy, and a little sad, and for some, even brings a tear to their eyes.

A “Perseverance” poster to symbolise “The Struggle”.

Encouragement

Encouragement is something that works for a lot of speeches, but depends highly on the topic. In the world of speeches, there are 2 types of speeches, when looking at it in a “social way”. There is a happy/motivated/positive speech, versus a Sad/Negative speech.

During the “Negative” speech, or in other terms, a topic which discusses an “issue” often needs a hint of encouragement. For example, if someone is educating everyone about “Climate Change”, he will certainly start with a lot of negatives.

Examples of negatives are things such as “Climate change is now irreversible”, etc. But to the audience out of a sad/negative mood, encouragement or in other terms “Things are getting better” is always a great idea. Things like these create the impact!

A Sunrise to symbolise hope, or the “Sun after the storm”.

Let’s Explore Impactful Speaking Directly

Aside from including humour, stories, and other factors, a speaker still has what we call an Aura.

As mentioned, the impact comes from talking to the heart of the audience. Motivational speakers especially leverage that VERY statement.

But before one can speak to the heart of the audience, they must learn to speak from their own heart. It is unlikely for one to speak from their heart without having experienced, or been through what they speak of.

This doesn’t only account for motivational speakers. Even a scientist, who invented a new product can speak from his heart. We cannot deny that the scientist has passion for what he created.

“If he can create that passion into words, right then and there, he is speaking from his heart!”

So, to directly generalise how to be impactful, “Always speak about topics you have experienced, or are passionate about.”

Conclusions

So as we’ve explored in this article, creating impact takes into account the passion, and the emotions of the speaker. From this we can learn that:

The art of public speaking is so beautifully intricate, that a good section of it cannot be taught, but comes naturally. — Youth Speakers