You may be called upon one day to receive an award or a plaque in recognition of your accomplishments. Are you ready to accept the award with due humility and sincere gratefulness? Being invited to a luncheon or dinner event in your honor leaves no doubt that they will be presenting an award to you during the auspicious occasion. Organizers normally inform the celebrants beforehand so they have sufficient time to prepare their acceptance speech. It is embarrassing and at times considered rude not to inform the affected persons. Having been duly forewarned, you can now take steps to be forearmed. Here are a few suggestions to help you prepare for your earthshaking speech.
Make the speech meaningful and relevant to the occasion. Practice your speech in front of a mirror or with the family and friends. If you are not accustomed to standing in front of an audience, now is the time to practice. It is not easy to stand in front of many people and give a speech while looking at the audience. Some people end up having stage fright and freeze at that moment. This is your moment and you should not waste it by standing there in a dumb-stricken manner. One technique is to single out one or two people from the audience and direct your speech to those selected people. Don’t make it obvious though. Scan the audience left to right but eventually rest your eyes on those one or two persons. It may ease your nerves and subconsciously you will not realize the number of people that you are addressing.
Give due recognition to the people who helped you in your accomplishments. In acknowledging the people, try to formulate some logical sequence, such as order of rank or position in society. People worked hard to earn their position in society. Give them due consideration. If your accomplishments were due to a team effort, make sure that each member of the team gets an equal chance to voice their acceptance or if time is of the essence, agree among yourselves on who should be making the acceptance speech for the team.
Have notes ready and refer to them as often as needed. It is noteworthy to deliver the speech from memory but you might forget mentioning a name or a vital incident in relation to your accomplishments. This is your time to mention everyone and everything you want. Check the notes to make sure you haven’t missed out on anything. But remember to keep looking at the audience. There is nothing worse than just reading the whole speech without looking at the people sitting in front of you. The notes are just ticklers to remind you of names, occasions and key words or phrases. It should not be the whole speech. Make sure your notes are legible and readable from a distance. Write your notes on small index cards which are easy to pull out and hide away. Be sincere and thankful for the award. Be clear and concise in showing your gratefulness. Having humor in the speech is a good icebreaker but too many jokes can also get tiring.
Lastly, watch the time. The people granted you time to deliver your acceptance speech. Don’t abuse and exceed it. People get turned off with a lengthy verbose speech.
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