After Dinner Speech Do's and Don'ts

3. Offer an original point of view that will inspire the audience. Determine your goal:

• Do you want to inform the audience about important subjects, results, or thoughts?
• Or do you want to persuade them to change their values, beliefs or behavior?
• Or do you want to set a social agenda by choosing special or noteworthy topics in your speech presentation?

5. Practice out loud, time the length, rewrite and polish the note cards of your after dinner speech. Yes, notecards - leave written papers at home!

6. Using notecards forces you to organize your speech topics in a clear structure. Use transition sentences while speech writing to jump to another ideas and points.

THE DON'TS

1. Avoid religious humor, racist or ethnic, sexist, and even political humor that could offend or provoke individuals or groups. It can destroy your credibility and ambiance of the evening.

2. Do not ask for radical or dramatic changes in your after dinner talk. Only help them to think different sometimes.

3. Don't sound angry or negative.

4. Ask the hosts how long your talk may last. If they want you to speak for example 3 minutes, then stick to that timeslot. Don't be a party killer with a never ending after dinner speech.