How to be a Great Keynote Speaker

You hear the MC say, "Please welcome to the stage, our keynote speaker."

Is your heart racing? Are your palms sweaty? Are you wondering what you're actually going to say?

Public speaking is often cited as the number one fear, ahead of the fear of death itself. So why would anyone want to be a keynote speaker, and if you do, how do you get good at it?

I've been a global keynote speaker for over 25 years, and I've coached and mentored hundreds of executives and upcoming speakers to present with poise and confidence, and to leave a lasting impact on their audience.

Keynote Speaker, or Main-Stage Talk?

The term "keynote speaker" gets misused constantly, a bit like someone who's posted one article on a business site calling themselves a "columnist."

A keynote speech is a presentation, usually 20 to 60 minutes, that establishes the main underlying theme or big idea of an entire conference. That's distinct from every other main-stage or breakout talk that addresses a specific topic or business update within that theme.

Recently, I was the keynote speaker for Deloitte's Southeast Asia Partner Conference in Bali. The conference theme was "legacy," so my speech framed legacy in terms of professional services and Deloitte's own values. Just last month, I gave two speeches at a company kickoff in San Diego: a keynote on "A New Day," since the company was rebranding, and a separate main-stage session on executive presence, a topic I'm a subject matter expert on.

How you prepare depends entirely on which type of speech you're giving. Find out as early as possible: the type of speech required, your audience (size, composition, needs), the length, and the venue.

Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance

Spontaneity on stage takes practice. The average TED speaker rehearses an 18-minute talk 40 to 60 times, and that's on top of the many rounds of rewriting it took to get the content into an idea worth spreading.

Planning and preparation aren't only about the ideas and information in your speech. They're about your physiology, your gestures, your pauses, your intonation, your empathy, your engagement, and finally your slides.

That can feel overwhelming. So where do you actually start?

Ideation

Once you know the conference theme or have settled on your topic, it's time to brainstorm. I'm old school, I like flip-chart paper, and I build a mind map of everything I know about the subject. I research the key ideas, look up the etymology of the words I plan to use, group ideas into clusters to find the real lessons, and reflect on my own personal insight.

Once I have the ideas, topics, lessons, and takeaways, I transfer them to slides so I can start working on the flow.

A Great Keynote Speech Is a Three-Act Play

This structure has been used in storytelling for centuries, and it works just as well for a keynote: setup, confrontation, resolution.

Act I, the Setup, introduces the main characters and ideas. The speaker sets the stage for the audience. My favorite way to open a speech is with time, place, and emotion:

"Let me take you back to the year 2000. I'm standing in a coffee shop, and I'm not happy."

You can watch this opening here. Notice I don't start by introducing myself and my credentials. I put the audience directly inside the story, the way a great film drops you straight into its world before a single character has been formally introduced.

Act II, the Confrontation, is where the characters face a challenge and have to learn something new to overcome it. As a speaker, this is where you invite the audience to learn or discover something about themselves. You lay out the old model or way of thinking, then introduce your new one.

In my webinar masterclass, "Cracking the C-Suite," I contrast an old model of influence built on power, position, and budget, with a new one: whoever sets the frame wins the game. You can watch it on my YouTube channel.

Act III, the Resolution, is where you lay out your conclusions and make an emotional call to action. It's a natural place to close the loop on the story you opened with. I sometimes open a speech with the story of my business disruption in the year 2000, and close it years later with how I've applied those same lessons raising my own children, illustrating perseverance and staying true to your values, something every audience member can relate to.

What Makes a Keynote Speaker Great, Not Just Good

Structure gets you on stage. What separates a forgettable talk from a genuinely great keynote speaker is what happens inside that structure:

• A real point of view. Audiences can tell the difference between borrowed wisdom and something you've actually tested. Speak from what you know, not what sounds good.
• Specificity over generality. "Believe in yourself" is forgettable. A concrete story, a real number, a named moment, those are what an audience repeats to a colleague the next morning.
• Physical presence. Your pacing, your pauses, and your stillness communicate as much as your words. Silence after a key line is one of the most underused tools on stage.
• A single idea worth remembering. If your audience can't summarize your talk in one sentence a week later, the speech had too many ideas, not too few.

In Summary

Speaking is a genuine opportunity to showcase your thought leadership while positively impacting an audience. It's not something to be afraid of. It's something to get good at.

A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step.

If you liked this, you might also want to read Presentation Skills - Training Tips and Using Metaphors for Change, Growth, Coaching, and Leadership.

Looking for a keynote speaker who can bring this same structure and substance to your event? Get in touch.