Points To Consider When Planning Your Retirement Speech

Retirement is one of the most crucial events of an individual’s life. Besides putting an end to the professional phase, it marks the beginning of a whole new chapter in your life. However, the thought of retirement speech, where you are supposed to address your friends, family and colleagues can bring you goose bumps. What if something goes wrong! To stay away from such concerns, it is advised to prepare your speech in advance.

If you want to make it a memorable experience for your listeners then, present it in a way that your audience feels like listening to you. To establish the relevance of your speech, given below are a few points to consider while planning your retirement speech:

• Add A Few Quotes: At such social events, people are already in a good mood to be the part of a light conversation and share your thoughts and ideologies. Thus, adding a few quotes from personal experiences like,” 65 years don’t they go by in a blink” can keep your audience engaged.

• Maintain A Balance Between Authenticity And Humor: Choose your words wisely. Don’t make it too formal to be boring or too humorous to be offensive. Maintain a balance!

• Be Concise: A retirement speech of around 5-7 minutes is more than enough because a long presentation often tends to doze off people. To earn their interest in your words, it is advised to present your speech like a story with nominal word length.

• Avoiding The Jitters: Getting nervous is quite natural. But in order to overcome those nerves, you can rehearse your speech well before delivering it. Practicing helps in making your retirement speech look original.

• A Genuine Thanks: Thanking all those people who supported you, believed in your strengths and helped you perform better, is a must. Moreover, talking about how they have helped you grow as a person will motivate them to value your ideas as a great human being.

Retirement speech is basically the last time you will be addressing your fellow team mates and other people from the organization. So, leave the professional angle aside and speak from your heart, add a few jokes and do not forget to give a special mention to all those people who were by your side always.

A conscious effort in ensuring that the aforementioned details are thoroughly fulfilled will guarantee your speech to be cherished forever.

So, leave an ever lasting impression on your listeners with your last professional speech!