The 5 stages of speaker development

Whether you’re a ham or a wallflower, an extrovert or introvert, you don’t become a skilled public speaker overnight. Everyone must traverse the hellfire that is the five stages of speaker development.

I didn’t invent this stuff. People smarter and more experienced did. That includes Olivia Mitchell of Speaking About Presenting. She didn’t invent this stuff either, but she summarizes it so well I’m going to share her take on the five stages with you, though I will permit myself some writer’s license in putting my own spin on her comments.

Read on with this understanding: Anybody can be a good public speaker. It’s not about innate talent. No doubt it comes more easily to some, just as some people have a greater affinity for learning math or excelling at golf. Still, those without a natural aptitude for those activities can still achieve a level of expertise.

With regard to public speaking, here are the five stages that we can look forward to. The better we understand them, the more quickly we can traverse them.

Stage 1: It’s all about the words. Most people at this level are concerned about connecting with their audience because it’s all they can do just to complete their presentation without contretemps. So they concern themselves with remembering everything they want to say and getting it exact, word by word. This is where the now proficient Olivia Mitchell found herself while starting out in Toastmasters. She tried memorizing everything she wanted to say. “All I achieved was transferring the script to inside my head – with the attendant risk of a total mind freeze,” she says. That’s the problem with trying to memorize your speech or presentation like a professional actor memorizes a script. Accidentally drop a single word, phrase or line and it can be so disconcerting you suddenly lose your place and struggle to regain composure.

Stage 2: I can talk. At this stage it dawns on you that speaking is more than just a script. You will likely start trusting yourself to work from notes rather than a complete script. Once you stop relying on memorizing and reciting a speech verbatim, two things happen. 1) You will become more concerned about the clarity and flow of what you’re saying. 2) You are likely to notice there’s an audience out there, even though you might not know how to regard or treat audience members. Mitchell urges us to “realize that a presentation or speech is about sharing ideas, not sentences.”

Stage 3: Hello audience. This is when you start interacting with your audience – addressing the audience as a whole, as well as individual audience members. You might even invite your audience to pepper you with questions throughout your presentation. Now you feel for the first time like you’re really giving a speech. Now you start concerning yourself with being interesting and engaging. “I made sure I knew my content well,” Mitchell says, “and then my focus was on expressing those ideas and thoughts to the people in front of me.” At this point you might become good at improvisation. That’s an ego boost, Mitchell says, but it’s not necessarily an effective way to pass on your message.

Stage 4: It’s all about the audience. This is the stage where you realize it’s not about you, it’s about the audience. The difference between stage 3 and stage 4 is this: in stage 3 you want the audience to be interested and engaged – because it makes you feel good. In Stage 4, you subsume your feelings to those of the audience.

Stage 5: Storytelling mastery. Stories and anecdotes make speeches come alive and make them memorable – provided they adhere to the rules of brevity, clarity, pacing and relevance. Becoming a master storyteller can take a lifetime.

What stage are you at?

You can move quickly through most of these stages with consistent practice and careful attention to effective techniques taught by the professionals.

Good luck. And let me know if you have any questions.

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