BLOG: Ten steps to mastering your next speaking gig
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Congratulations, you have booked your next presentation, workshop or the main event — keynote speech! Your planning and efforts have yielded the opportunity to make your expertise renown.
Let’s briefly review the steps that may help you go from good to great!
1. Ask questions of the organizers. It is key to understand the objective of the meeting/conference. This is especially important if you are part of a panel or being interviewed — ask for questions ahead of time, if possible. Know your audience. This cannot be overstated — are they trainees, students or faculty? Are executives or administrative leadership present? A simple question to ask the organizer is “Can you tell me about the audience members: size, roles, knowledge levels, preceding or following presentations?”
2. Be prepared, but do not memorize. There is a fine balance between memorizing every word of every chart and rehearsing your speech material. Make sure you spend time on the material so you can refer back to it or guide your audience to the resources. Memorization takes away from your audience connecting with you. It is okay to sketch an outline or notecards but avoid writing a speech.
3. Be a firework. We hear the fireworks blasting off before we see them. And, then the colors and glitter leave us awestruck. Engage the audience members with your voice — up front, share the reason for your passion, expertise or cause. You can opt to open with a question, quote or narrative.
Read the full blog post at Women in Medicine Summit.
For more information:
Ankita Sagar, MD, FACP, is a board-certified internal medicine physician. She is the system vice president for clinical standards and variation reduction at CommonSpirit Health and cofounder of the Women in Medicine Speaker’s Bureau. She can be reached on Twitter @sagar_ankita.
Collapse
Read more about
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts