What Makes A Speech Great

As an aspiring speaker, I have been thinking what makes a speech great. To me, a great speech is not really a speech but a talk. In that sense, TED is really a modern time speech platform. There are lots of great talks there.

Chris Anderson, the head of TED pointed out the foundational concept of TED. It's all about ideas that are worth spreading. The tagline of TED is telling us exactly the concept very clearly.

Often aspiring speakers tend to focus on techniques and forget about the core value of their speeches. The core value of speech is the idea worth spreading. If the idea is not worth spreading, the value of the speech cannot be much valuable. So, the first step is to build an idea worth spreading. The second step is to craft your speech by using techniques effectively deliver the idea to the audience.

The idea should be something specific and not too common. If your idea is too general such as 'love is important', then it is not effective because everybody thinks they knows already. Also, this kind of general idea doesn't change audiences' way of thinking so much. The idea needs to be new to the audience and at the same time it should be understandable.

Speaking is a means to persuade people into thinking and behaving differently. It shouldn't be manipulative. It is a sincere communication between speaker and the audience.