Develop Better Delivery

The quality of the content of the speech is vital for an outstanding oratory. However, the best written speech will be ineffective if the delivery distracts or bores the audience.
There are two critical parts to the effective delivering your speech. The first part is the visible aspect and relates to movement, gestures, posture and appearance. The second part is the audible part and concerns the voice, nuances and pauses.

1.    Good Platform Appearance

Bear in mind at the outset that it is your ideas, not your peculiarities that you seek to promote. Eccentric apparel, a fancy vest, or a buttonhole bouquet attracts personal attention, but distracts from your speech. Wear ordinary raiment and just make sure before you are called upon that it is properly adjusted.

2.    Prime Your Personality

Although your delivery should be natural, like many things in nature, it is capable of being bettered. Just as the natural beauty of a tree may be improved by trimming its bad branches, so also your natural style of delivery may be improved by eliminating bad habits and propping up the good ones. Thus you prime your personality.

Improving your own personality comes naturally too, because all good people prefer to be inoffensive.

3.    Keep Your Eyes on Your Audience

As the speaker, you are expected to deliver information —not to put on a performance. The best way to keep from playing panther on the prowl is to look directly at the audi¬ence as one composite person—not as a collection of people —and to speak directly to that audience.

4.    Control Your Gestures

Gestures are not confined to the hands; they relate to any part of your body. They may serve a good purpose in illustrating your speech. Natural gestures should be encouraged, but if they are forced or overdone you become a "ham." While many natural gestures are better than no gestures, no gesture is better than an annoying gesture. Any annoying man¬nerism of twitching, grimacing, handling your nose or tugging at your lips eventually can drive the audience to distraction.

5.    Arresting Attention

An audience rarely pays attention automatically; their interest must be sparked and maintained by the speaker. Many factors may cause an audience to become inattentive. One offender is monotony. When the listeners' interest is obviously lagging, audience attention may be restored by attention arrestors. These are rhetorical questions the speaker puts out. He may ask, dramatically, "What are you going to do about it?" While he intends to answer that question himself, his technique arouses curiosity.
Show enthusiasm when you speak for it is highly contagious and if you enjoy your subject and your audience, the audience will reflect the same feeling toward you and your subject.

Good delivery is good manners and nothing more. By keeping your audience rather than yourself in mind while speaking, your personality improves. This is true in ordinary conversation and is likewise true in public speaking—for people are people whether you appeal to them singly or severally.

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