Emphasizes the main ideas

Preparing a speech is a complex task, especially when it comes to establishing a series of main ideas and messages to convey during our presentation. The longer our presentation is, the more tempted we will be to address a greater number of elements that may be unrelated or even contradictory to each other. The core of a speech should revolve around its main ideas. These ideas must be concise, clear and previously defined. The space for improvisation is very limited during our presentation, unless we already have a great experience that allows us to make use of this resource with ease.

In order not to lose the essence of our speech and start drifting into unimportant elements, it is important to learn to emphasize the main ideas of our presentation. During the development of this session, we will be addressing this topic a little more, where we will analyze the importance of knowing how to emphasize the main ideas of our speech.

How many main ideas should my speech have?

Regarding the number of main ideas that a speech should have, we can find different opinions. Some speakers believe that a speech should only contain one main idea, which is precisely why we use the adjective main. Several complementary ideas can be derived from this main idea. Although this criterion has a logical basis, we believe that a speech can have more than one main idea. There is nothing to prevent several concepts of equal hierarchy and importance from being addressed within the same speech. These concepts may be related or not, without affecting the essence of the theme of the speech.

As a recommendation, we defend the criterion of addressing up to a maximum of three main ideas. To deal with many essential ideas within the same speech, although not impossible, will be extremely complex to handle. When we focus on two or three main ideas, it is more likely that these will have a greater effect on the audience and, therefore, the message will be better perceived.

Emphasize the ideas: It is not enough to have previously conceived what our main ideas will be. If we are not able to emphasize these ideas, it is likely to generate confusion among listeners. If the audience is unable to define the key points of your speech, they will tend to relate them, confuse them or ignore some of them because they consider them complementary. To emphasize the main ideas of our speech, we can use the introductory part of it.

During the introduction, we can take advantage of the space to highlight the points to be addressed, making a brief summary of them. In case you use slide presentations, you can also choose to highlight these ideas in the Power Point slides.

Complementary ideas: A complementary idea is an element of your presentation that is derived from one of the main ideas. The difference between a main idea and a secondary idea is that the secondary idea will depend unequivocally on the pre-existence of the main idea. If we eliminate one of the main ideas from our speech, the rest of the main ideas will not be affected, since they have their own content and space. The elimination of a main idea will make the secondary ideas that derive from it disappear.

It is understood that this can be a confusing issue and that is why we must work so that the audience is able to easily distinguish which are the central messages of our speech and which are those that complement and harmonize, without becoming part of the central objectives to be addressed.