Many people who want to learn public speaking begin with a reasonable question: How can I speak without making mistakes? They worry about forgetting their lines, using the wrong grammar, losing their place, or looking nervous in front of other people.
I understand why. This is how many of us learned public speaking in school. You stood in front of the class, delivered something, and somebody graded you. Did you follow the mechanics? Did you pronounce the words correctly? Did you remember your lines? Did you pass?
So we learned to think of speaking as performance.
Even when we become adults, that old classroom can follow us onto the stage. We may no longer have a teacher holding a grade sheet, but we still imagine people evaluating us. We ask whether we sounded confident, whether they noticed our mistakes, whether they liked us, and whether we impressed them.
A few speakers go one step further and ask, How can I wow them?
It sounds more ambitious, but the speaker is still at the center.
There is another question I want you to learn to ask:
What do I want to make happen because I spoke?
That question changes the game.
As I explain in my Public Speaking Guide, speaking starts with you, but it is not about you. You bring the experience, stories, ideas, knowledge, and conviction. But once you stand in front of other people, all of those things have to become useful to someone beyond you.
From performance to transformation
Public speaking is a skill. There is nothing wrong with learning how to use your voice, tell better stories, make eye contact, organize your ideas, or stand with confidence. Those skills help you communicate.
But public speaking is bigger than performance. It is an opportunity to help another person move from one place to another.
Someone may move from not knowing to knowing. A person who thought something was impossible may begin to see a possibility. Someone who does not know what to do next may finally see a first step.
The movement can also be deeper. A person may question something they have believed for years. Someone who has been afraid may become willing to try. Someone who feels trapped may discover that the situation is not as permanent as it appears.
That is transformation.
I do not mean that the speaker transforms people. You cannot do that. People still decide what to believe, what to accept, and what to do with what they hear.
But you can create an opportunity for transformation.
This is one reason the preparation we discussed in Prepare Yourself for Public Speaking matters so much. You are not merely preparing yourself to perform. You are trying to understand what matters to you, what matters to the people in the room, and what matters to both of you.
Once you see speaking that way, the question is no longer only, How well did I speak?
You begin asking, Did what I offered help them move?
You may already have something another person needs
One reason people hesitate to speak is that they think they have nothing important to offer. They imagine that a speaker must be a famous expert, a bestselling author, a scientist, a CEO, or someone with decades of experience.
If they do not have impressive credentials, they assume they have no right to teach anybody anything.
But look more closely at your own life.
You have experiences other people have not had. You know things other people do not know. You may have expertise they do not have, but even expertise is only one kind of gift.
Sometimes the most useful thing you can share is something you do so easily that you no longer recognize how difficult it is for somebody else.
I see this with people I call naturals. One person can walk into a room and speak comfortably with strangers. Another can organize a complicated project almost without thinking. Someone can explain a difficult idea in five minutes while another person has been struggling with the same idea for weeks.
Because it comes naturally, the person thinks, Everybody can do this.
Everybody cannot.
What feels ordinary to you may be extremely valuable to another person. Your experience can be a gift. Your stories can be gifts. Your expertise can be a gift. Even the way you have learned to do something that others find difficult can become a gift when you make it visible and useful to them.
This is also why I built the larger Share Your Gifts body of work. A gift does not become meaningful simply because you possess it. Its value becomes clearer when another person can use what you contribute.
And you do not have to be a thousand miles ahead.
Sometimes you need to be only one, two, or three steps ahead of the person you are trying to help. If you can show somebody a useful next step because you have already taken it, you may already have something worth sharing.
But your gift is not yet the speech
Discovering that you have something useful creates another danger.
You become eager to tell people everything you know.
I have done this too. You know enough about a subject for a three-day program, but somebody gives you twenty minutes. Instead of deciding what twenty minutes can accomplish, you try to compress three days into twenty minutes.
You speak faster. You add more slides. You shorten all the stories. You squeeze five important ideas into a space that might have carried one idea beautifully.
The intention is often generous. You want to give people more.
But more is not automatically more useful.
The audience does not need everything you know. They need what can help them now.
Knowing what you want to make happen gives you a way to choose. It tells you which part of your experience belongs in this room, which story deserves the time, which explanation people need, and which excellent idea should wait for another day.
You may have fifty things worth saying.
This audience may need one.
People must first see that you see them
Before people follow you somewhere, they need a reason to trust that you understand where they are.
This is one of the most important things a speaker can establish.
People need a mirror.
They need to hear something in your speech and think, Yes. That is where I am. That is what has been happening to me. This person understands the situation.
Perhaps you know because you have been there yourself. You struggled with the same problem, made the same mistakes, or faced the same decision.
Your experience gives you one kind of credibility.
But your personal story is not the only way to earn trust. You may have studied the problem deeply. You may have worked with hundreds of people who faced it. You may have interviewed people, examined research, and learned what tends to happen when people remain in that situation.
In that case, your gift is different.
One speaker can say, I have lived this.
Another can say, I have studied this closely.
Both can help.
What matters is that the audience does not feel that you are speaking at them from some distant place. Before you tell people where they should go, show that you have made the effort to understand where they are.
Show where the road leads
Once people can see themselves, you can help them see what may happen if nothing changes.
Imagine that a school invites a former drug addict to speak with students. The speaker can tell them how it began. Addiction did not arrive all at once. Perhaps it began with curiosity, one taste, one invitation, one decision that did not seem especially dangerous at the time.
Then the speaker can tell what happened next.
He can speak about what became difficult, what was lost, what happened to relationships, and perhaps what happened to friends who continued down the same road. He does not need to exaggerate the danger because his experience already gives him a story people can examine.
But the speech should not end by showing students a frightening future.
Some of them may never have touched drugs. They need to know how to avoid the first step. Others may already be experimenting and silently wondering whether they can still turn back.
The same speaker can serve both.
Now imagine another speaker who has never been a drug addict. Perhaps that person has spent years studying addiction, working with young people, talking with families, and understanding what makes some interventions work.
That speaker can help too.
The gift is different. The responsibility is similar.
Help people see where they are. Help them understand where the present road can lead. Then help them see that another road exists.
Do not only show the mountain
This is where many speeches stop too early.
They create awareness. They explain the problem beautifully, tell emotional stories, make people feel the urgency, and convince the audience that something must change.
Then they end.
The audience leaves knowing that the mountain is enormous, but nobody showed them where to put their foot.
I think a speaker has another responsibility: make the first step visible.
The first step does not have to be dramatic. In fact, it is often more useful when it is small enough for a person to imagine doing it.
One conversation may be the first step. So may one decision, one person to call, one question to ask, one behavior to stop, or one thing to try tomorrow morning.
You do not have to help people conquer the whole mountain while you are standing on the stage. Sometimes the most useful thing you can do is help them begin climbing.
That is closely connected to what I mean by Move First. Important movement rarely requires us to complete the whole journey at once. A meaningful first move can give us evidence, experience, and a better view of what comes next.
Your speech can make that first move easier to see.
Know the first step before you build the speech
This is why I want speakers to ask a question that goes deeper than, What is my topic?
Ask:
What matters to me?
There are many legitimate answers.
Perhaps what matters to you is that people buy something after your presentation. Perhaps you are running for office, and you want people to vote for you. Perhaps you are a teacher, and you want students to understand something well enough to use it.
Maybe you are speaking with young people because you want them to avoid a dangerous choice. Maybe you are talking with managers because you want them to stop taking work back from employees. Perhaps a leadership team has delayed a decision for six months, and you want the conversation to finally move.
There is no single correct reason for speaking.
But you should know yours.
Otherwise, a speech easily becomes a collection of interesting things you know. Your stories may be good. Your slides may be polished. People may enjoy listening to you.
Yet the speech has nowhere in particular to go.
What matters to you is only half of the conversation
When I was teaching, several things mattered every time I entered the classroom. I was being paid to teach, so it mattered that I did the job well. Students needed to learn what was required in the subject, and of course they needed a fair chance to pass.
Those things mattered to them, to their parents, and to the school.
But I also had things that mattered personally to me.
I wanted students to think critically. I wanted them to become more creative. I wanted them to examine ideas instead of merely memorizing whatever the teacher placed on the board.
Those were part of my agenda too.
The challenge was not to abandon what mattered to me because students and parents had their own expectations. It was to accomplish what mattered to them while also bringing into the classroom something I believed would help them beyond the examination.
Public speaking has the same challenge.
You have something you care about. The people listening have something they care about. A useful speech finds the point where both can meet.
Find what matters to both of you
Suppose you care deeply about helping supervisors delegate better.
That matters to you.
But the supervisors sitting in the room may not wake up thinking, I hope somebody teaches me delegation today. What matters to them may be that they are exhausted. They cannot take a day off without receiving messages. Their employees keep returning decisions to them, and everything seems to end up back on the supervisor’s desk.
Now the speech has somewhere to meet them.
You care about developing capable employees. They care about not having to carry everything themselves.
Both concerns can live inside the same conversation.
Instead of simply teaching a framework on delegation, you can show them why people keep returning work, what supervisors unknowingly do to create dependence, and what first conversation can begin changing that pattern.
That is what happens when you ask three questions together:
What matters to me? What matters to them? What matters to both of us?
The third question keeps the speech from becoming either self-expression or audience pleasing. You are not abandoning what you believe. Neither are you forcing your favorite message on people who have no reason to want it.
You are finding the shared reason for the conversation.
It matters to me that they get what they want
This may be the most important sentence in this article:
It matters to me that they get what they want after the speech.
That does not mean blindly giving people whatever they ask for. People may say they need motivation when what they really need is clarity. They may ask for confidence when the real obstacle is lack of practice. They may ask for more information when what they really need is to decide.
That is why listening matters.
You try to understand the movement beneath the request. What are they actually trying to make happen?
If they want clarity, help them see more clearly. If they are trying to make a decision, help them understand the choice and its consequences. If they want to escape a difficult situation, help them see a way forward.
And if they want to begin, make the first move easier to see.
When what they are trying to make happen also matters to you, you have found something worth speaking about.
You can offer transformation, but you cannot manufacture it
A speaker needs humility here.
You cannot transform people by force.
You can hold up a mirror so they can see themselves more clearly. You can show what may happen if nothing changes. You can tell a story that makes another possibility believable, and you can offer a practical first step.
Then they decide.
Some people may act immediately. Others may reject what you say. Someone may understand the message only months later, when another experience suddenly gives your words a different meaning.
That is why I prefer the language of offering.
You bring what you have learned, lived, researched, and understood. You shape it for the people in front of you and offer it as clearly and responsibly as you can. They remain free to decide what they will do with it.
Their transformation belongs to them.
Your responsibility is to make the opportunity for transformation worth receiving.
Before you decide what to say
Before preparing your next speech, finish this sentence:
It matters to me that after this speech, they can __________.
Give yourself time to answer it. A vague answer will produce a vague speech.
“They will be inspired” is not enough. Inspired to do what? “They will understand leadership” is still too large. What should that understanding allow them to see or do?
Perhaps your answer is: They can recognize the warning signs before the problem becomes worse. Or: They can ask for help. Maybe: They can begin before they feel completely ready.
Perhaps you want them to have a conversation they have been avoiding, make one decision they keep postponing, or simply see that another future is possible.
Once you have an answer, ask whether that movement matters to them too. If you do not know, do not manufacture an answer from inside your own head. Talk to the organizer. Talk to people who will be in the room. Listen to what they are trying to accomplish and what keeps getting in their way.
Then come back to your speech.
Now you can choose the story because you know what the story has to reveal. You can decide what research is necessary, what example will make the possibility real, and which three good ideas need to disappear because they do not serve this particular movement.
You no longer need to squeeze everything you know into the time available.
You know what the conversation is for.
And when you finally stand before people, you will have a better measure than whether you remembered every line or received enthusiastic applause. You can look for signs that people saw themselves more clearly, understood what was at stake, recognized another possibility, and could see a first move they might actually make.
That does not guarantee transformation. Nothing you say can guarantee it.
But you have done something more valuable than simply performing well. You have taken something you can offer, connected it with something that matters to other people, and made a useful next move easier to see.
That is what I want you to know before you decide what to say.
You have something to offer. They have somewhere they want to go. A speech can help the two meet.