Give Your Speech Without a Teleprompter

We've offered advice and suggestions on how long your speech should be. And we’ve also offered thoughts on lengthy speeches and long winded speakers. But how do you give your speech and make sure it's the right length? The good news is that you always have a number of speech prompters, from which to choose, when you have to speak at a conference or a seminar. And these prompters will certainly help you give a speech of the correct duration.

These speech prompter choices could be:

Give Your Speech with Style and Confidence

Of course you could avoid all of these and just wing it. Perhaps plan for an impromptu speech. But the thing is even an impromptu speech takes time and effort to organise. And note that some impromptu speeches can go wrong.

Your choice of teleprompter/ autocue will always be a hit. However, it does depend on you preparing a script and laying out that script ready for the teleprompter.

Your conference organiser will also approve of your choice of teleprompter. Why? Well, it gives your conference organiser the opportunity to firstly review your speech and secondly to ensure your speech meets the time requirements for your speaker slot.

So if you’ve been allocated 15 minutes to speak followed by questions, then that’s an easy thing to manage when your speaker uses autocue.

President Trump Gives his Speech Without the Teleprompter

That certainly came to the fore with the Donald Trump speech at the United Nations general assembly 2025. In that speech to the assembly the president was due to speak for 15 minutes. But the autocue didn’t work. Or was it sabotage? Was there an autocue plot? We will never know.

However, the president chose to wing it with his speaker prompts and the bare bones of a script. The net result? A speech that was close to one hour in length. His target slot was 15 minutes so he was 45 minutes over budget.

I don't mind making this speech without a teleprompter, because the teleprompter is not working.

And that way you speak more from the heart!

Perhaps the United Nations got their just dessert for failing to get the teleprompter to work properly or not preventing an act of sabotage that was signposted in the national press beforehand.

Whatever. When it’s your turn to give your speech at conference, and you have the opportunity to use teleprompter/ autocue, then use it. And if it’s your turn to organise the next Company conference and you can use teleprompter/ autocue for your speakers, then it really will save you time and effort. Because when you use teleprompter/ autocue, you can manage the time element of your conference so much more effectively.

When you need more public speaking hints and tips, then you can find more than 100 top tips for public speakers on the site. And when you have time to take your public speaking skills that little bit further, then you can always sign up for an online public speaking course or get in touch about coaching session or a corporate course for you and your team.