Like any other skill, knowledge of how to be a motivational speaker and understanding the concept requires lots and lots of practice. I think I’m almost offended sometimes when people come at me after a speech and say boy your natural born storyteller, I wish I had that. It’s not the case.
It takes effort just like anything else, anybody listening to this must be really confident. The key to making a great speech as a motivational speaker is that you have to rehearse so that you can make it appear as if I’m just telling a story spontaneously, off top my head. I think there has to be some tension in the story that you are telling. There’s got to be some built-in tension, there’s a struggle. There’s got to be a reason for the listener to say my gosh how is this going to work out, what will happen here?When you get that going, now they’re listening and even pulling for you. One of the biggest things is to paint a picture as a motivational speaker.
If I can tell you a story and without even realizing it you are there, you are actually visualizing it. You’re walking with me on the side of the you’re watching the fire burn in that house, that’s the key. If you can get there, your stories will captivate. Ask yourself as a motivational speaker , ‘do I always have a story for every point’? Absolutely you should! I think people learn through stories. Whether or not you’re religious you have to accept this, Jesus Christ decided how can I get my message out to the whole world. He told stories. People relate to that and identify with them. I don’t know the cannot to many stories to be honest. In a 45 minute speech there’ll be one longer story, maybe a signature story, it’s can be five minutes long. But there are other stories that are 90 seconds long and there may be as many as eight or 10 of them in one keynote speech.
A signature story can be the one story that comes to everybody’s mind when you think of that speaker. Les Brown talks about the time that he became a DJ, as his all-time dream job of being a DJ. He tells us so wonderfully well, I’ve heard him tell it 10 times. What would really open up the hearts of listeners and they would relate to you and that would be the biggest part is that they would be pulling for you. If they’re pulling for you to succeed. Stories are what we want in our jokes, songs, movies and the books we read. The best motivational speakers are also the best story tellers.
This truly answered my dilemma regarding public speaking, thanks a lot!