The Strings to The After Dinner Speaker’s Bow
An after dinner speaker with plenty of experienced will be highly skilled in his or her art. These skills are especially clear when an after dinner speaker is compared with an amateur or beginner. This is because inexperienced speakers may not have finely tuned all the skills which are so vital to great presentations.
Of course, given the massive variety of different messages an after dinner speaker might be asked to get across throughout their career, communication skills are a must. However, the speaker must also be able to incorporate humour into their presentation to avoid the audience becoming bored. Because the after dinner speaker is expected to entertain the audience during what is a natural lull in proceedings, they must be humorous to prevent any after dinner lull. Aside from humour, brevity is another string to the after dinner speaker’s bow. Conveying messages without spending hours doing it always makes for a good speaker.
In-depth knowledge is also vital to the after dinner speaker. It is also very important that the after dinner speaker can demonstrate good, solid knowledge of the topic about which they are speaking. They must have a good grounding in their subject matter or else the audience is unlikely to take them seriously and will probably disregard their message. As far as knowledge is concerned, some responsibility lies with the person booking the after dinner speaker. Choosing a TV presenter to talk about training and management is unlikely to be a sensible decision. Still, even a knowledgeable speaker will need to be given some information about the company and the audience.
Another large part of the after dinner speaker’s skill lies in their understanding of an audience and their needs. This is of course not to say that organisers should fail to provide a background. Failure to consider the specific needs and position of an audience has caused many an after dinner speaker to put their foot in it, with inappropriate jokes proving common.