What a Good After Dinner Speaker Should Know

If you’ve found yourself agreeing to act as after dinner speakerfor an event, whether it be charitable, corporate or educational then you will most likely feel nervous whether you’ve done it before once or a thousand times.
Being an after dinner speaker needn’t be that hard. It’s quite likely that if you don’t work as an after dinner speaker but have been asked to perform as one then you are relatively familiar with the organisation that has asked you to speak. It might be that you have a senior position within the organisation.

Regardless of how it was that you came to be in contact with the organisation for whom you will be speaking, you have an advantage over speakers who are drafted in from speakers’ agencies. This is because you already know the group’s interests, hobbies, ethos and potential taboo subjects. In other words, you have already done the homework part. Speakers from professional agencies have to research that sort of thing.

After completing one fo the hard parts, it’s on to the challenge of making sure the speech is interesting. A good after dinner speaker knows how to combine the perfect amounts of humour, anecdotes, examples and factual information to make their speech informative yet still captivating.

The presentation is also worth practising. Even the most captivating speech will seem boring if it is read in a monotonous voice. This is just as important as content, so concentrate on intonation and don’t be tempted to read aloud from a sheet. If you’re really worried that your memory will fail you, use a short list of the principal points. You’ll be surprised how much you can remember using this method and it has the added advantage of making speech sound more natural and friendly.

Body language matters too. In order for your audience to enjoy themselves you need to be enjoying yourself too. So even if you don’t feel it, keep calm and confident. Use eye contact and natural hand gestures to look confident and calm.