Most Keynote Speeches are Disasters. Here are 5 Big Ideas to Save Your Talk, Your Sanity, and Your Career on Stage

From Stephen Denny, managing director, Denny Leinberger Strategy, writing in Inc. Magazine:

There’s a lot of advice out there about public speaking, and not all of it is great. Having done keynotes and other high stakes presentations for the past two decades in venues from hotel ballrooms to conference centers, boardrooms, the occasional brewery, movie theater, and college lecture hall, I have an opinion on how to speak in front of large audiences.

I also come from a Broadway family– my mother was a big-time star on the stage in the 1950’s, my father a classically trained singer, and my brother a highly sought-after musical director and producer in New York. I was the black sheep of the family. I literally ran away from the circus and got an MBA and a job. They were devastated, of course, but along the way I learned a few things that might help the discussion here.

So in the spirit of insuring you do a show-stopping performance, here’s some tips that will ensure you not only do the right thing when you get in front of important audiences, but avoid the sort of catastrophic failure that can haunt a career for eternity.

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