There are a number of different types of WOW Speeches: Informational, Stories, and most importantly, Motivational. In a motivational speech, it is your desire to motivate your audience to believe something or take some action because of your speech. Many Toastmasters attempt to do this through there speeches, many Toastmasters also fall flat when trying to motivate their audience to action and I am going to tell you why.

The first mistake is that the speaker does not speak with convection. If you read my last post, you would understand having passion and a compelling message. Once this is mastered, then you have the convection to motivate your audience. That is important, but it is not going to motivate your audience unless you get at least some of them to disagree with you.

That is correct. The most major mistake that most speakers make is that they try to speak so that they are agreeable to everyone. If you are agreeable to everyone, then you are boring. Think about the speakers that resonate most with you. Do you remember them because you agree with everything they say, or do they challenge your beliefs? It is the speakers that challenge your beliefs that spur you to action.

The final mistake that I find most speakers making is that they don’t give a clear idea of what they want their audience to do. If you have engaged and challenged your audience, you need to give them a clear idea of what you want them to do. It is easy to tell someone to clean up the environment, but if you don’t tell them to buy energy efficient light bulbs, drive smaller cars, and recycle, then they will leave feeling motivated but not have an idea of what to do.

With respect to giving ideas, try to challenge your listeners, but don’t tell them to do something too easy or too hard. If you tell someone to jump off a bridge, they are not going to do that, but if you tell them to just think about it then that is too easy. To motivate someone to action you must be compelling, challenge their beliefs, and give them something doable to do.

I challenge you right now to get out your pen and paper, write down the activity you are most interested, and the next three things someone can do to take action and do that activity. For example, I love fine cooking so to get people into it I can tell you about an amazing deal I found for food lovers, why it is important, and how you can make reservations to experience an amazing meal for an amazingly low price.

Does that sound good? Then get out there and do it, because you are starting to put me to sleep.

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