Good question. Yes, notes are a great option. My only caveat with notes is to be sure you don’t end up talking to your notes instead of your listeners. When you need to check your notes, give yourself permission to look down and read silently, then look up and speak to your listeners.
In general, you should know what you want to say but not how you’re going to say it.
The easiest way to get better at this is to start visualizing the “structure” of your message on paper BEFORE you verbalize it. This shouldn’t take you more than 5 minutes.
At the top of your paper, write down your main ‘take home’ point (this is your entire message summarized in a single sentence). Then, underneath, write a bullet point for each of points you want to make that will support that ‘take home’ point (high level, no detail). And finally, at the bottom, write a closing thought (can re-state your ‘take home’ point or have a specific call to action for your listeners. That’s it!
Because you took a few minutes to internalize the structure of your message, you’ll find it much easier to speak on it off-the-cuff, filling in necessary details as you go.
I’m going to film a video about this next week and will post on this blog!
5 stars: A keeper.
Thanks, Michael!
Thanks for the reminders , simple but so affective & important with communication .
Regards Di ….. QLD Australia
Thanks for reading and commenting, Di!
Good question. Yes, notes are a great option. My only caveat with notes is to be sure you don’t end up talking to your notes instead of your listeners. When you need to check your notes, give yourself permission to look down and read silently, then look up and speak to your listeners.
In general, you should know what you want to say but not how you’re going to say it.
The easiest way to get better at this is to start visualizing the “structure” of your message on paper BEFORE you verbalize it. This shouldn’t take you more than 5 minutes.
At the top of your paper, write down your main ‘take home’ point (this is your entire message summarized in a single sentence). Then, underneath, write a bullet point for each of points you want to make that will support that ‘take home’ point (high level, no detail). And finally, at the bottom, write a closing thought (can re-state your ‘take home’ point or have a specific call to action for your listeners. That’s it!
Because you took a few minutes to internalize the structure of your message, you’ll find it much easier to speak on it off-the-cuff, filling in necessary details as you go.
I’m going to film a video about this next week and will post on this blog!