Hey Speaking Stars
We’ve probably all experienced a Christmas speech that leave jaws dropping and eyelids drooping. The Christmas speech to staff, family or clients can be a tricky one to pull off well.
Here are my top tips for delivering a Christmas speech that rocks.
I’ve got 4 points that I’m going to cover to help you deliver the best Christmas toast of your life.
The first point is be succinct. Keep it short, a short toast is a great toast. Waffling and going off into a long stories about your past or whatever it might be it really doesn’t work especially not on Christmas where people had a few drinks or if you are at a work party, if you presented a client, you’d definitely want to be succinct. If people are holding their arms up ready to toast then my Gosh! You need to make it really about 20 to 30 seconds long, really short and snappy! Otherwise, a minute or 2-minutes tops is the great way to go.
So tip 1, keep it short. Tip 2, remain positive! Now at Christmas where you’ve got your clients, when you’ve got your staff, or your team or you’ve got your family around it’s not the time to highlight all the issues, all things that went wrong. And the max that you didn’t hit for the year you leave all of those behind for the moment because now is not the time. What you do is you focus on what went well, the successes, the money you made, the way that you worked as a team.
So the second tip is remain positive, tip 3 is make sure you thank everyone and this is really important, if you’re going to thank specific people – be damn sure that you actually got everyone and you have to thank them all.
And the fourth tip to delivering for delivering a Christmas toast that rocks is to make sure that you finish on a high so that you celebrate the year, you’ve thanked people, you’ve talked about the positive things and you finish on a high is the only time that you’d refer to anything negative is by saying something like You know we’ve lost that contract but what I loved about that is how we all pulled together and made this year so successful despite the setbacks. So you might refer to a negative only in a way of leaving it as a positive so you’re going to finish everyone talking about what you hope for next year, how happy you are with you family, with your loved ones, or with your team, with the clients, how happy you are with them how much you look forward to going into the future.
Here are the 4 tips to delivering a Christmas toast that rocks:
1. Be succinct.
2. Be positive.
3. Make sure you thank everyone.
4. And Finish on a high!
I hope you have found these tips for delivering a fabulous Christmas speech helpful.
These tips apply for farewell speeches, welcome to our team speeches, project wrap up… you get the idea!
We’d love to hear what you want to master with delivering a toast:
– Is it speaking off the cuff (impromptu speaking).
– Engaging all your audience when they are distracted… ok possibly drunk!
– Keeping your structure tight and on track.
– Being succinct and not waffling
– Or something else??
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We wish you a wonderful Christmas and hope that the new year sees you speaking with confidence and class.