6 Questions to Build Speaking Skills

Hey guys, welcome back to the Speaker's Edge podcast. The podcast specifically designed to help you to learn from some of the world's very best speakers and communicators so you can learn to master your message and inspire your audience every single time you speak. I'm your host for this podcast, Roddy Galbraith. And if you want to become a better communicator, which I hope you do, then you're in the right place. Because on every episode, we build on the simple idea that communication is a learnable skill. And it's a skill that you definitely want to learn. You should learn, I think, because it would do more for your business, more for your career, more for your self-confidence than any other skill you can develop. Because as a species, human beings are better together and we're stronger together.

And in fact, we need each other. And for us to get along, we really need to be able to communicate. And so it's no exaggeration to say that getting better at communicating with other human beings is a great skill to develop. And getting better as a communicator really is getting better at life. So we're going to talk about one way that you can do that. In today's episode, we're going to look at how you can go from good to great. We're going to look at specifically six questions that you can ask that are going to help you do that.

But before we get to that, if you haven't downloaded the companion resources, then simply go to MaxwellLeadership.com/TheSpeakersEdge. You can download the companion resources. And if you enjoy the show, we'd love it if you rate and review the show. If you enjoy the episode, we'd love it if you rate and review and recommend it maybe too. Thank you very much.

All right, so tomorrow I'm off on the city tour with Chris Robinson from the Maxwell Leadership Certified Team. We're going to Dallas, Nashville, Chicago, Toronto, Washington, West Palm Beach. Very exciting. Going to see many Maxwell Leadership Certified Team members there. So really excited about that. It's great to see so many people coming in from all over the world. It's such a global community, but so many people coming in and staying plugged in and looking at how they can continue to get better and better and better. And one way that we can do that is to ask great questions. And so I thought that would be good for us to talk about today.

If you want to get good as a speaker, then these are six questions that you can ask yourself that are going to help you do that, help you get good as a speaker. And if you're already good and you want to be great, then I think the same six questions are going to help you go from good to great.

All right, let's dive in then, to question number one. Question number one to help you become good as a communicator is, can I do this? Can I do this? And this is a good question for us to start with, isn't it? Can I do this? And if you're the sort of person that likes to take notes, make a list of all the questions. And I'm going to give you a keyword that helps you remember the question as well. So the keyword: fear. Can I do this? Because very often we're afraid that we're going to mess up, aren't we? And this is a natural question to ask ourselves, really, if you think about it. Because we want to make sure that we can do it before we try, don't we? We don't want to look foolish.

We don't want to make any silly mistakes. We don't want to waste the audience's time. And we definitely don't want to bomb in front of the audience, do we? So we need to ask ourselves, are we able to do this? Can I do this at the beginning? This is a good question to ask. And the keyword that's going to help us remember this question is fear.

Okay, so that's question number one. Can I do this? Question number two then is, what will I say if I decide I'm going to do it? Then what am I going to say when I get there? So question number two, what will I say? And the key to help you remember this, the keyword, is information. What information am I going to share with my audience? So that's another good question. Don't stand up to speak until you've got something to say.

And when you've said it, sit down again, don't keep talking. If you've run out of information, don't keep talking. So this is a good question to help us think about. What are we going to say? What is our message? You've got to have something to say before you stand up to speak. In fact, John says, content is king, doesn't he? Content is king. You've got to have something to say. What's the information that you're going to share? So this is a good question for us to ask.

So two questions, they build on each other. The first one, can I do this? And the key word there is fear. And then the second question is, what will I say if I'm going to do this? What will I say? And the keyword there is information.

All right, we're off to a good start. Let's look at question number three then. You ready? Question number three. What will they think of me? What will they think of me? And the key word here is rejection. Because very often we are worried about what people think about us, aren't we? We want to do a good job and we don't want them to negatively evaluate us in their mind. And so rejection is a good way to kind of capture the essence of the question.

This is a good question, if for nothing else, self-preservation, right? Because unless you've been professionally trained, if you're going to go out and speak and you bomb, then very often there's a big emotional price to pay for that. And you carry that failure, if you like, with you, unless you're able to frame it in the right way, unless you're able to control the way that you think about it. Because John says failure is not fatal as long as it's not final, as long as you don't give up. So it's not really failure as long as you keep going. Then it can be very useful information, if you like, because you're gathering information about the process.

Now it may be that there's nothing that you could have done to change the outcome. If you feel like it didn't go well, it may be for reasons beyond your control, but it may be that there's something that you can learn about your preparation and your process. So it could be good information. It's a bit like nobody wants customers that complain, but those customers that are complaining can really help you get better, can't they? If you send out questionnaires or feedback forms, no one wants bad scores. But even though it's unpleasant sometimes to read people's perception or what they think about your service, it can help you get better as long as you hold it in the right frame of mind and you do something about it. So I think bombing is a very emotive word, isn't it? But it can give us good information about our process if it's held in the right context. So it's not as bad as you think.

So that's question number three. All right, question number four then. You ready? How can I impress them? How can I impress them? And the key word here is impressive. Because we want to do a good job, don't we? We want to give a good account of ourselves. We want to make an impact on our audience. And so if we can impress them, we think that that is going to be first prize. That's going to be first prize. So how can I impress them? And the keyword here is impress.

Here is a neat question for us to ask ourselves. Number four. So the first four questions then. Number one, if you're taking notes, can I do this? And the keyword is fear. Number two, what will I say? And the keyword is info. Number three, what are they going to think of me? And the keyword here is rejection. And then number four, how can I impress them? And the keyword here is impress.

And question four actually leads very nicely onto question five, which is how can I over-deliver? How can I over-deliver? And the key word here is more. How can I give more? Because I know, you know, you're probably thinking to yourself, I know a lot. I know a lot. I know I can help them. I know I've got a lot of things that I can share, a lot of things that I can say, all this stuff in my head, and if I can just get everything I know into their head, then it's really going to help them. I can really over-deliver. Then they're definitely going to be impressed with me. Then they're definitely going to accept me. Makes sense, doesn't it?

So question number five. If you want to do a good job, how can I over-deliver? That's a good question to ask yourself.

And then finally, question number six. How long should I prepare? How long should I prepare? Because I want to do a good job, but my time is important. So how long should I prepare? And the key word there is my time. My time. How long should I prepare? How much of my time should I use? Because time is my most precious resource. We say that to ourselves all the time, don't we? This is my most important resource, my most precious resource.

And I don't want to be a perfectionist and spend ages on this if there's no need to do that. So how much time should I spend? It would be useful to know if I'm going to speak for 20 minutes, how much of my time should I invest in the preparation? I don't want to waste my time unnecessarily. How much time should I spend for this audience? I want to make sure that I'm being efficient.

So there's six good questions then. Number one, can I do this? Number two, what am I going to say? Number three, what will they think of me? Number four, how can I impress them? Number five, how can I over-deliver? And then number six, how long should I prepare? And the keywords then for number one: fear. Number two: info. Number three: rejection. Number four: impress. Number five: more. And number six: my time. My time.

All right, so they're good questions that we can ask if we want to become better communicators. But there's a fundamental shift that I want you to think about now as you develop as a speaker, because to be good is good, but if you want to keep going, then there's a quantum leap that you can take. A really fundamental shift in your perception, the way that you look at yourself speaking and other people. And that is to realize that it's not actually about you when you're communicating.

It's not about you. It's not. It's always about the audience. It's about the audience. It's always about the audience. How do we know it's about the audience? Well, if you just think about who decides how well you did. Who decides if they got anything out of it? It's not about you. You already know this stuff. So you're saying it, but you already know it. You're not saying it for you, you're saying it for them. So it's about adding value to the audience.

So these six questions are good. They're good, but only to a certain level. If we want to take it to the next level, then we've got to change that perspective. And the perspective is not about us so much, but it's about the audience. Now, if we look at those six good questions with that particular perspective of it's not about us, it's about the audience, we can see where the limitation is. Number one, can I do this? I, I, I. Can I do this? Number two, what will I say? It's all about me, isn't it? What will they think of me? Me, me, me. How can I impress? How can I over-deliver? How long should I prepare? This is all me-focused. It's not about the audience at all.

And so if we can change that perspective, the questions then change. Because on the one hand, to be able to stand up and deliver a competent, confident presentation, it sounds like, yeah, I take that, doesn't it? My daughter, when she was 14, she got a principal's award at school for a speech that she'd given. And she was good. She was calm and confident and competent, concise, composed, very capable. But she was really just summarizing information and then sharing it with the audience. The next level is to create a really powerful learning experience so you can really add value to the audience, not just share information. And that's much more difficult.

So if we take those six questions and we tweak them a little bit, then we can turn them into questions that are more about the audience and not about us. So question number one, we said, can I do this? And we said it was all about fear. We can change that to how can I help them? How can I help them? And we can make it about helping and them, not fear and us. See the difference? So we're going to cross out fear. We're going to cross this question out. If you're taking notes, can I do this? We're going to change it to how can I help them? How can I help them?

Number two, what will I say about the information? We said, didn't we? What will I say? It's a good question. We're going to think about the information. But a better question is not so much about the information, but the experience that you're going to create. So how can I create a powerful experience for the audience? Is a much better question to ask ourselves than what am I going to say? Information is okay to a point, but a powerful learning experience is much better. See the difference?

So, number one, how can I help them? Number two, how can I create a powerful learning experience? Number three, how can I add value to them? So instead of asking, what are they going to think of me and are they going to reject me, think about how you can add value to them. How you can add value to them. Number three.

Number four, rather than asking yourself, how can I impress them? Because that's what you can take from it, isn't it? Them being impressed with you is what you want to get from it. So rather than thinking about what you can get from it, how can I connect with them? How can I create that foundational layer for influence to sit upon? How can I connect with them so that I can help them, so that I can add value to them? So, number four, let's cross out how can I impress them? It's not about us impressing them, it's about us connecting with them. So how can I connect with them? Is a much better question to ask.

Question number five, how can I over-deliver? How can I over-deliver? How much information can I share with them? How can I get all of that information out of my head and get it into their head? Well, they don't want that. They want you to help them in one particular area. So it's not about you telling them everything you know, it's about you making a lasting impact. So it's not about more. Actually, it's about less. So a better question than how can I over-deliver is how can I make a lasting impact? And so instead of more being the keyword, the key word is less. Less is more. Less is more.

And then finally, number six, how long should I prepare? How much of my time should I use for this audience? So how long should I prepare and my time? A better question to ask is really, it's not about you and your time, it's about them and their time. So how can I make the best use of their time? Remember, if you're speaking to 100 people, for every second you're talking, you're consuming 100 people's seconds. So it's not about your time, it's about their time. How do you treasure every precious second of their time? By spending your time to bring value to that time. So it doesn't matter whether it's an hour or 10 hours or 100 hours, you've got to add value to them, otherwise you're not going to be effective as a communicator. So it's as long as it takes for you to add value to them with the time that you sensibly have available.

So it's not a certain amount. I'm going to speak for an hour, therefore I should spend at least two hours preparing. You need to spend as much time as you need to spend to add value to them. And so it's not about your time, it's about their time. You see the difference.

So to take our speaking then not just to good, but from good to great. The first question we want to tweak a little bit to make it much more powerful, help us take that quantum leap forward with our communication, is how can I help them? How can I help them? Number two, how can I create a powerful learning experience for them? A really powerful learning experience for them? Number three, how can I add value to them? How can I add value to them? Number four, how can I really connect with them? Create that foundational layer. How can I connect with them? Number five, how can I make a lasting impact? And number six, how can I make this the absolute best use of their time? And if you do one of these things, it's going to make a big difference. But if you do all six, then it's going to make an extraordinary difference to your impact as a communicator.

All right, before we wrap up then, I just want to quickly tell you about the Maxwell Leadership Certified Team. You hear me talk about it all the time. If you're interested in being a coach, a speaker, a trainer, you want to develop your leadership skills or really you just want to move your career forwards, then it could be a great next step for you. It's so much more than just speaking and communication, but as speaking and communication is my lane and my responsibility on the team, then that's what I talk mainly about. And so if you're interested in developing your speaking, it really is a no-brainer. I've been working with John Maxwell on the Maxwell Method of Speaking since 2010. I believe it's the best system of speaking anywhere and the Maxwell Leadership Certified Team is the best place to learn that. There's almost 60,000 now, I think, coaches around the world, so you're not going to be the first. I think 168 countries are represented with Maxwell Leadership Certified Team coaches as well. So check it out. Just go to MaxwellLeadership.com/Speak and find out more.

All right, guys, that's it for this week. Don't forget to download those companion resources. As I said, just go to MaxwellLeadership.com/TheSpeakersEdge and remember, communication is one of the most important skills that you can develop and it's a learnable skill so you can develop it. Keep learning and you'll learn to master your message and inspire your audience every single time you speak.

Thanks for listening today. Look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Lots of love. Take care. Bye bye. God bless you.

Ep. 048 — 6 Questions to Build Speaking Skills (and 6 to Master Them)

Release date: January 26, 2026

Hosted by Roddy Galbraith

A Maxwell Leadership Podcast Network production

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Full Transcript Ep. 048 — 6 Questions to Build Speaking Skills (and 6 to Master Them)

Released: January 26, 2026

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