“Finding Your Speaking Voice” is a blog series focused on different speaking styles.

Within this series, Mark will attempt to give some strengths, weaknesses, opportunities for growth, and potential threats for each style identified. For more information about this series, you can read the introduction here.

If you have ever studied public speaking, you have probably come across a speech design pattern that divides a presentation into three parts:

You tell them what you’re going to tell them.You tell them.You tell them what you told them.

While such an approach has been attributed to various famous figures such as Aristotle or Dale Carnegie, it likely originated from a preaching conference in the early 20th century. This approach is a popular template among many speakers and, when evaluating a speech with a trained eye, is often visible as a speaker’s underlying structure.

But…what if that’s not how your mind works?

What if you think in images as opposed to structured blocks? What if your talk doesn’t fit the tried-and-true “rule of three” and instead you have a singular major idea you want to convey? What if you want to approach a topic as a personal journey of discovery rather than just presenting the destination?

While the “tell them” approach can certainly have value, there are many other ways to structure a talk. Here are just a few:

Here is a principle. Here are the implications.

This is an approach that can be used when basing much of a talk on a principle or ethical quote. Sure, the audience may agree with “a penny saved is a penny earned”, but what happens if they really live it out?

Here is a story…

“Come and listen to my story….about a man named Jed. Poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed…”

While these words are from the classic Beverly Hillbillies TV show, it would be easy to stop and offer lessons or implications as you move through different parts of the piece. The same could be said of fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood, religious stories like David and Goliath, or even a personal story that you are telling an audience for the first time.

While the structure of the talk itself will not feel as rigid, such a structure can still serve as an easy-to-follow approach for your audience.

Here is a timeline of events

I love to study history. Because while some get bogged down in the dates and minutiae, I see history as one immense story helping us understand how we got to where we are today. Perhaps your talk is focusing on current events. What if you structured your talk in a timeline-like way to help your audience piece together why current events are unfolding as they are?

A question with a variety of suggested answers

I like to think of this as the scientific approach, but not because it’s long and complex.

A question is posed to the audience in the opening portion of a talk. The following body, then, proposes various answers or ways people have attempted to answer that question.

“Some have said this…” How did they test their hypothesis? What was learned along the way?

Pose two or three incorrect ideas and what was learned. Your audience will be invested and want to know the answer for themselves.

Conclusion

While these are only a few examples, I hope you can see how a speech does not have to fit into a pre-formatted pattern.

So what about you? What types of unique approaches have you seen, or used, for a speech, lesson, talk, or sermon?