What It Takes to be an After Dinner Speaker

The skillset of any experienced and successful after dinner speaker will be varied. When compared to an inexperienced after dinner speaker, these skills will shine through. This is because inexperienced speakers may not have finely tuned all the skills which are so vital to great presentations.

Because the type of message an after dinner speaker might be trying to get across can vary so widely from one event to another, it is obviously important that he or she has strong communication skills. However, humour is a vital string to the speaker’s bow if he or she is to keep the audience from becoming bored. Due to the fact that the after dinner speech occurs at what is a natural lull in proceedings, the audience must be amused or lethargy may creep in. Aside from humour, brevity is another string to the after dinner speaker’s bow. The ability to get a message across succinctly is always important.

Furthermore, good, solid knowledge is very important for an after dinner speaker. The audience is unlikely to take a speaker, or their message, seriously if they appear to be lacking fundamental knowledge of the topic. As far as knowledge is concerned, the person who takes the decision of which after dinner speaker to hire must shoulder some responsibility. Choosing a TV presenter to talk about training and management is unlikely to be a sensible decision. Still, even a knowledgeable speaker will need to be given some information about the company and the audience.

Another major skill that any good after dinner speaker will be able to demonstrate is their ability to understand an audience and its needs. This is of course not to say that organisers should fail to provide a background. Failure to understand the needs of an audience has caused many an after dinner speaker to make gaffes in the past, with inappropriate jokes at the top of the list.