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Good speeches have shape. The sparkline is a creation of Nancy Duarte and can be seen in more detail in her excellent book: resonate.  Here I am applying a simplified version (leaving out the laughter, Clapping, and Verbal Clues tick marks contained in the fully dressed version) of the sparkline concept to Speech Projects 9 and 10 from the Toastmasters Competent Communication Manual.

The important part of the sparkline (in my opinion) shows three types of contrast in a speech. The three are:

• Content Contrast
• Emotional Contrast
• Delivery Contrast

All three are necessary for a memorable speech and should be worked into the speech structure within the speech’s time limits.

The two hardest speeches in the Toastmasters Basic Manual (i.e. Competent Communication Manual) are Project 9, Persuade with Power and Project 10, Inspire Your Audience. The reason they are so hard is that the speaker must not only convey a message but one so powerful that the audience is transformed either in thought or action. Most audiences just want to be entertained, they don’t  expect or even want to be changed themselves. But there are guidelines that a speaker can use for the trasnformative speech:

1. Keep the message simple
2. Make the message concrete
3. Make the message credible
4. Appeal to the audience’s emotions
5. Tell a story

The most powerful story template I know of is based on “The Hero’s Journey”  or “Monomyth.” The Hero’s Journey in turn is based on Jungian Psychology and the mythological studies of Joseph Campbell. The term monomyth simply means that the basic pattern for the story can be found in many cultures over several millenia. The audience, not the speaker, should be the hero in the transformative speech. (Who wants to listen to a speech where the speaker constantly uses the words “I” and “Me.”

Here are two identical documents one in Powerpoint herosjourney .pptx and one in PDF format herosjourney .pdf that describe the Audience Journey in the transformative speech along with guidelines for the speaker to facilitate the journey. Your speech should keep the following in mind:

• There is a flawed hero in the audience (possibly everyone in the audience)
• Your story should take your hero on a journey from their ordinary world into your special world; from the known to the unknown, and back again.
• The audience makes the conscious decision to cross the threshold, they are not forced.
• The audience will resist adopting your point of view and will point out obsticles and roadblocks.
• The audience needs to change on the inside before they change on the outside. In other words, they need to alter their perceptions internally before they change the way they act.

Does the Opening – Body – Conclusion formula for your speech organization leave you flat? Well watch this video and see how truly memorable talks are structured. Then if you want to learn more, buy the book.

I am a veteran observer of many Toastmaster International Speech contests at the club, area, division, and district level. I have seen some good speeches, a lot of not so good speeches, and even some truly horrible speeches. I don’t remember many of them. But last Saturday, I saw a speech that moved me to tears and I know I’ll remember it for  a long time because of the effect it had on me.

The speaker was a young woman who talked about her Grandmother who harbored a Jewish couple in the crawl space underneath the roof of her house for fourteen months during the Nazi occupation of Poland. Her grandmother didn’t even let her husband know about it for fear that he would talk too much while drinking. The story was compelling and the young woman delivered it well.

In their book Made to Stick , Chip and Dan Heath provide six principles of why some ideas survive and others die.  The six principles are: 1) Simple, 2) Unexpected, 3) Concrete, 4) Credible, 5) Emotional, and 6) Stories.

This speech had all six.