TJ Walker tells speakers who come alive in Q&A but bore audiences with prepared remarks to restructure their speeches as answers to the ten most common questions. Tear up the script, write the questions, interview yourself, and use specific examples and stories to make prepared remarks as engaging as a live conversation.
Chapters
Have you ever seen a speaker who is frankly dull as dishwater giving the speech, the prepared remarks? Maybe he or she read from text and then the question and answer session came and they were great, interesting, riveting, fantastic examples, great connection with the audience. Let's face it, we've all seen that in other speakers. Maybe we're guilty of it ourselves. Here's the thing. Q and A is not easier than giving a prepared speech. It's just different. But here's what I believe. Anything you do that's interesting in a question and answer session, you can and should do in your prepared remarks. If you find you are consistently boring, boring yourself, boring other people in delivering your speech, but are interesting in the Q and A section, then here's my advice to you. Take your prepared speech, tear it up in little pieces, throw it in the trash can, and then simply Write down the 10 most common questions you get when you're speaking on this subject and toss out the question, answer it yourself. You're essentially interviewing yourself, and that's your speech. You can have a simple one sheet of paper. Ten questions. Interview yourself. That can be an excellent, fantastic structure and outline for many speakers. Let's step back for a moment and ask why is it someone would be good at answering questions but boring when giving a deliberate speech? It's because most of the time when someone asks you a question, your answer is focused just on that one idea. You're trying to make the idea more understandable, more interesting to the person. And so quite often you will go right to a specific example. You may even tell a story and you'll look to see, get it, make sense. Did I answer your question? So it's the singular focus. You're typically not delivering a whole bunch of data. You're certainly not putting up a wildly complex PowerPoint slide. If someone asks you a question, you're focused on one thing at a time. You're trying to bring to life an idea to answer that person's questions. You can do, and you should do exactly the same thing when you are giving your prepared presentation. So if you have ever been told your Q and A is better than your speech, or if you feel like it is, or if you're getting feedback from staff, then throw away the prepared speech. Instead, write down 10 questions. It will solve many of your problems and make you a more interesting speaker.
