In a world where meetings multiply and messages pile up through digital channels, the art of spoken communication often gets lost in translation. Many of us fall into the trap of treating speeches or meetings like written reports, focusing on our own delivery instead of forging genuine connections with our peers or audience. We often think that communicating well is all about preparing well. Right? It’s not just that.
People make three frequent mistakes when preparing for a big conversation, meeting, or presentation. They generate their content primarily by writing, not speaking; once they have their content, they fail to practice out loud; and they don’t warm up. Let’s look at each.
Stop creating content primarily by writing, instead of speaking
A speech isn’t a whitepaper to be handed out to an audience; it is made up of spoken words shared by a speaker with listeners. To craft content that sounds more like how people talk instead of how they write, try something I call “Out Loud Drafting.” It is exactly what it sounds like: you draft what you’re going to say by speaking it out loud rather than writing it first. To do this, simply give yourself an open-ended prompt to kick you off. Here are some good ones:
- What am I trying to communicate with this talk?
- What is the main idea I want people to remember from my talk?
Those are example questions to get you going, but make up others on your own. Use open-ended questions (what, how, and why are good starting words to ensure that). Ask questions out loud, and then actually speak the answers. Do the activity three or four times, getting clearer and clearer on your message. Once you’ve done that, then you can write down some of the ideas you’ve discovered. You can even do the activity while recording or transcribing yourself so technology captures what you say.
“Out Loud Drafting” improves the preparation process for most people in three ways.
1. It leads to content that sounds like speaking rather than writing. Word choice tends to be more vivid, more monosyllabic, and less filled with jargon; grammatical construction tends to feature shorter sentences.
2. It helps speakers internalize—or memorize, if necessary—content more easily and faster. By saying it out loud several times in its embryonic form before ever finalizing the content, speakers memorize the flow of argument and internal logic rather than word-for-word passages.