Style versus Substance

This is an interesting question that you need to ask yourself when you are preparing a speech. Should I focus more on the style of my presentation or should I focus more on the substance of the speech itself. Ideally you would have both in your speeches.

A speaker who is eloquent and has something interesting to listen to will be more successful than his contemporaries. However, those speakers are few and far between - most of us have to work hard to reach those heights.

This is what I tell my clients who I work with: focus on the message and we'll work on the presentation. Your message should be the most important part of your speech. If you don't have the substance, it doesn't matter how much style you have. You might be successful at first with just style, but sooner rather than later, people are going to realize that you are not telling them anything useful and will leave.

However, I also stress not to ignore the style part. It is essential in winning over your audience and getting them to listen to you. Bad habits can become a distraction - the audience is now focusing on that part of your speech instead of what you are telling them. This has happened to a lot of speakers.

Does this mean you have to be flawless? No. You don't have to be Winston Churchill. What you do want to become though is comfortable. If you are relaxed and love what you are speaking on and believe in it, the audience will see that and listen.

To me, substance wins over style, with a caveat: make sure your style is not distracting from your substance. If you don't have anything to listen to, people will not listen even if you are flawless in your delivery. If you do have something interesting to listen to, just keep working on that delivery and you will continually build up an audience.

Travis

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Comments

[Jon Thomas]

Excellent post Travis. I so agreed that I wrote a post about creating PowerPoint presentations under the gun of which I referenced your post.

Too often people worry about the design/delivery of their presentations/speeches without spending ample time crafting the story and figuring out what their message truly is. As an audience member I would much prefer sitting through an average delivery of great content vs. a great delivery of poor content.