“I Can’t Come Up With A Topic!” How to Energise Your Speech Ideation Process

What is the toughest part of public speaking? Speaking before the crowd and finally delivering your content may not be the most difficult part of being a speaker. When you have your content locked down and memorised, delivering the same is a straightforward and uncomplicated matter. The main challenge usually arises at the start – coming up with the topic you wish to present for your speech. Today, we tackle one of the common complaints of our students, both adults and children alike – how to arrive at your speech idea.

While your daily interactions may not necessarily involve a typical public speaking scenario (i.e. standing before an audience on stage), the speech ideation process remains an important tool for most, if not all, your communication settings. Having a conversation in a networking session? Delivering a training segment for your company? All these settings will require you to come up with a topic for presentation, or at least, figure out how to angle and structure your content. When not done right, the ideation process may be a convoluted and frustrating experience.

To help you settle into a constructive and effective ideation mindset, here are 3 simple tips on how to energise your speech-planning process:

Tip #1: What Is Your Point?

While the intuitive step to planning is to sit, retrieve your laptop and churn out that speech, diving deep into the planning process without direction may lead you down a frustrating and endless path! Starting with a fixation on trying to ‘force’ your speech out may not be the best first step. Worst still, a confusing planning phase may result in an even confusing delivery even after you have come up with your speech topic to present.

Instead, take a moment to consolidate your thoughts, digest the various ideas you may have and extract the core message you want to share with your audience. One of the common questions I ask students, as they craft their speech, is to always have in mind one question: what is your point?

Challenging yourself to always have an eye out for your main message works twofold. First, it is a constant reminder of the direction you want your speech to head towards. Knowing where your speech is headed, right from the outset, ensures that your content (e.g. stories, quotations, statistics) is relevant and appropriate. Second, maintaining this mindset ensures consistency in your message. A speech with varying interpretations or convoluted permutations may turn your audience away.

Tip #2: Maximise Your Brain But Don’t Forget Your Senses!

It is a common experience, while planning, to sit and stare at that blank piece of paper for hours on end without making any headway. This is your quintessential writer’s block. Beyond preventing you from reaching your winning idea, a writer’s block is usually a precursor to various other habit-crushing effects, such as procrastination or inaction. Unlocking the ideation process is not as complicated as you may think.

One key way to overcome this initial inertia is by allowing your mind space and time to explore without critique or judgment. In other words, allow your brain to rain ideas during the brainstorming process instead of questioning and evaluating each idea as they come up. Having an open canvas for all these ideas will help you reach a particular topic or field that you resonate with to include in your presentation. Beyond working your brain, remember to engage all your five senses in the ideation phase. Walking around, reading or even just revelling in the experiences around you may help to unlock the flow of ideas. For example, during my ideation process, I engage in a simple visualisation exercise by placing myself in the position of a speaker and moving around as if I am on stage. This quick exercise helps me to transit into the speaker mindset and unlock some fresh ideas for both the speech content and delivery. You may even wish to have a recording device nearby just in case you manage to verbalise that winning idea!

Tip #3: Structure Slowly But Surely

After you have unlocked that mental barrier to find your general topic, it is important to manage the rest of the process well. While you may be tempted to celebrate and take a break after reaching a general topic, keep in place a set of structured deadline or plans to guide you through the crafting process. For example, breaking your speech or presentation into its individual components will help break your ideation process into bite-sized and digestible components. You can craft your speech sequentially by working on the introduction and bridge first before dwelling into the main content.

Having a clear timeline in place also prevents procrastination from kicking in. It is never a great idea to leave the substantive part of your speech planning to the tail-end of your timeline. Trying to arrive at your speech in a rushed setting is unlikely to be fruitful. Under time pressure, you may be tempted to sacrifice content or rehearsal timing just to ensure that you have an end product. This is something you definitely want to avoid!

Final Thought:

Overall, Avoid A Frustrating And Ineffective Path

Speech crafting may be a tiresome and frustrating endeavour, especially if you find yourself stuck. Beyond the three tips above, it is important to maintain a stable and calm mindset as you plan the various components of your speech. Take some time to recharge or reset if you find yourself immobilised by the frustration or inability to come up with an idea. Remember – there is nothing wrong with giving yourself as much time as you need to arrive at a well-prepared speech. I hope the tips above will facilitate and guide you through a comfortable and enjoyable speech ideation process!