At the heart of any successful speech is passion.  To be sure, there are lots of other elements that become important when you get ready to deliver.  And the difference between great and mediocre is often in those details.  Like any demanding discipline, successful public speaking is always about paying attention to the pesky little details.  But the heart of speaking is passion. 

That means you have to be very clear about what you’re going to say, and then figure out what your emotional attitude is toward that.  Only a very few great actors can successfully pretend their way to emotion.  For the rest of us, it’s essential to focus on our emotional attitude toward the message.

The hard part is that you can’t just think about it for a little while, say, a week before the speech.  You can’t phone a speech in.  You have to be there, in the moment, feeling the emotion, so that it will show up in your voice, your face, your posture, your gestures, and your words. 

As I’ve said before, speaking is performance art.  That means you have to show up each time, ready to feel your anger, your excitement, your hope – whatever the emotion that fuels the speech. 

Business people often ask me, what if I just don’t feel much about this particular speech?  What if it’s about 3Q numbers and it’s dry as dust and the only emotion I can conjure up is blah?

Then you shouldn’t be giving that speech.  The heart of any successful speech is passion.  No passion, no heart.  If you don’t care, the audience won’t either.  If you do care, you can change the world.