More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
No matter how well you can think on your feet, a completely improvised answer can rarely be better than a prepared one.
To become a great impromptu speaker you need to learn how to eliminate the impromptu factor as much as possible.
“Think about the impromptu speech as a game. Your attitude will change your frame of mind and instead of concentrating on the difficulty of finding the right words, your brain will deliver the perfect answer.”
If you become relaxed, excited, lively, open and confident simultaneously, you will get into the high-performance state and become dramatically more effective.
When actors play a role and want to convey a particular emotion of the character, they need to evoke it in themselves. They remember a situation from life when they felt this emotion clearly, relive it in their imagination and very soon begin to feel the emotion.
“I will definitely answer a question” and “I will not always have a stellar answer.”
The most important attribute for any impromptu speaker is a “can-do” state of mind.
No matter which answer you give, it is the best answer you could give in this particular situation and moment in time.
will not always give a stellar answer. I will begin speaking no matter what. My subconscious mind will suggest to me the best possible option for the answer at the moment I need it.”
What you already said is a done deal and was important at the time you said it.
During an impromptu speech, you may change the direction of your answer several times, but make sure that you don’t reject what you said earlier.
Once you are able to consistently fill 2-3 minutes with flow of consciousness, you can give an impromptu speech on any topic.
it is very important to gain confidence that no matter what the question is you can always find words for the answer.
you need to make a conscious decision about what question you are going to answer.
You can handle such a question by defining how you understand it and then answering a question in your interpretation.
First, you define what the most outstanding person means to you, then you give a speech about your grandmother.
Regardless of the original question, you can answer any question using this technique. Politicians use this technique during interviews and TV shows all the time.
It’s not always mandatory to answer the question completely; you can decide just to answer partially.
If you feel that slightly altering a question will help you to deliver a more valuable answer to the audience and to change their perspective, do so.
To make your speech sound smooth, you use special sentences that help to move from one idea to another.
The goal of this exercise is to develop a skill of making quick analogies and generalizations.
The goal of this exercise is to learn how to create analogies between completely unrelated objects. First, pick an animate being and an inanimate object. Then explain how this animate being is similar to the inanimate object.
Choose any object or term and explain what it associates with in your mind.
Now your entire impromptu speech can answer this question and it will sound very logical because of the transition.
A very powerful way to begin an impromptu speech is to call back to the common experience of the entire audience.
Call backs make your speech very personal and special for the audience. People feel that your impromptu speech is just for them.
In the body of your impromptu speech, always share a single point.
The more focused your answer, the stronger it is.
Even if you answer questions using only these 3 frameworks, all your unprepared speeches will be at a very good level.
A conclusion needs to summarize the takeaway message of the speech and restate your point.
To be clear, your point needs to be less than 15 words long
If your takeaway message is longer than 15 words, it is not clear for you, and if it’s not clear for you there is no chance it will be clear for your audience.
If you make some bad decisions during the fight, you can still win, but if you don’t have any strategy before the fight begins, it is almost impossible to win even with a great army.
Our brains remember information only in association with stories, visual examples or personal experiences.
If you remember just one thing from this book, I want it to be this: “Tell a story and associate it with a point.”
The best structure you can use on stage for the impromptu speech is opening, story and conclusion.
support your point. There is no limit to how creative you can be. You can say, “Imagine that” or “What if …” and let your imagination go wild.
For example, your speech may begin with, “I have never gone fishing, but I imagine that …” Let your audience know that your imagination went wild and tell a tall tale. You don’t necessarily need to tell the truth.
PEEP PEEP (Point, Explanation, Example and Point) is a very easy but effective and practical approach. If you struggle with finding an appropriate story for the answer, you can use this method. Use it when you need to give an opinion and back it up.
The Position, Action, Benefit approach is very useful when you report your findings to the board of directors or make a sales pitch to a CEO who has only 5 minutes to listen.
Your answer might not be remembered for years, but it will allow your audience to make an informed decision quickly.
Position: State your position on the question asked. Action: Tell which action needs to be taken to implement your suggestion. Benefit: Describe the benefit of your position.
Stories engage visual, auditory and kinesthetic senses of the audience. The day after your impromptu answer, the listeners
will remember only what they saw, heard and felt in their imagination while you were speaking.
Recall a final climax scene in a story, “The biggest secret of impromptu speaking.”
Details are the most important component of any story. Tell stories and make them detail-rich. This principle will make you a really good impromptu speaker. People like stories. People like details. People love speakers who know it.
If you don’t use dialogue in a presentation, it’s a news report, an article, a narration, but not a speech. Dialogue is an essential component of any story as it brings events of the past to life.
All world-class impromptu speakers use dialogues in their speeches because they know that dialogue is a magical tool that makes a speech engaging, real, and memorable.
Most speakers have too little dialogue and too much narration
Dialogue is what turns an okay speech into an outstanding one.
