Book summary:
SUCCESSFUL PUBLIC SPEAKING
CHAPTER 1
Communication is a very important thing in our life where its multiply forms pervade today’s business environment such as job interviews, conference calls, meetings, product presentations, workshops and public events. From that, we must realize the importance of developing good interpersonal communication skills especially for our future. “Nothing in life is more important than the ability to communicate effectively” is a verse that revealed by Gerald R. Ford. Unconsciously this verse gives a lot of very deep meaning where when we apply that skill we might have the best product or services, years of experience or an outstanding business if we communicate with the target audience. Moreover, It also can enhance our professional growth, take our business in another level, or inspire, persuade and motivate other people to follow our lead, convey our ideas in front of a group of people in a clear, structuring, and captivating manner. This is show that the art of public speaking holds many practical benefits to our life. In addition, people take about three to five seconds to form an impression about someone they meet for the first time since they can make conclusion about our professionalism and character when presenting ourself.
Developing our communication skill and learning to speak in public:
- Opens up new opportunities for career advancement
- Positions you as an authority
- Sets you apart from your competition
- Attracts the right customers to your business
- Presents technical or business information effectively
- Produces a faster sales cycle
- Allows you to effectively market your business or promote your products to larger audiences
- Improves internal communication
- Helps you to easily assume leadership and train others
- Increases employees' productivity
- Prepares you for spontaneous speaking challenges (e.g. delivering a speech at short notice)
- Establishes greater credibility and helps your clients' loyalty
In addition, people take about three to five seconds to form an impression about someone they meet for the first time since they can make conclusion about our professionalism and character when presenting ourself. From that, we must improve our ability to speak in front of others and learn more about public speaking.
Other personal benefits of public speaking include: -
- Increase self-confidence
- Improve communication skills
- Increased organizational skills
- Greater social influence
- Enhance ability to listen
- Greater possibility of meeting new people
- Lesser anxiety and fear when speaking in front of others
- Improved memories
- Enhance persuasion ability
- Greater control over emotions and body language
CHAPTER 2 : Evaluation of Public Speaking
Public speaking is a process, an act and an art of making a speech before an audience. It is not only informing the audience or expressing your thoughts publicly, but also to changing emotions, actions and attitudes, and to leaving your listener moved by the words and touched by their meaning.
The art of public speaking was a long tradition back to Classical Greece where young men need to acquire and develop public speaking skills as a duty of citizen. Greek philosopher and teacher of Alexander the Great has elaborate the first rules of a public speech - Aristotle.
There is 3 Basic Parts of Persuasion
-Ethos (possess a certain level of authority and knowledge of the chosen topic)
-Logos (the message need to be delivered clearly, informative and logical manner)
-Pathos (establish emotional connection with the audience)
Public speaking techniques develop in Greece were copied and modified by the Romans. Marcus Tullis Cicero wrote his treatise called "De Oratore" where he explained his "Five Canons of Rheotic" as a process of eloquent speech preparation which consist:
- Invention
- Arrangement
- Style
- Memory
- Delivery
There is 3 Style of Speech which shown as below
- Impromptu speech - prompted by the occasion rather than planned in advance.
- Manuscript speech - written like a manuscript and is meant to be delivered word for word.
- Extemporaneous speech - speech that helps to establish emotional connection with the audience, where the material can be presented freely and make changes based on the audiences' reaction.
- An opportunity to speak in front of an audience, whether it is three or three hundred people, is the chance to sell your
business or service to potential customers or clients. However, one of the biggest obstacles that many business men and
women face is the fear of public speaking.
The Hidden Psychology behind the Fear of Public Speaking
- Psychologists know that the very fact of being in the spotlight often triggers the whole range of physical reactions that
we would experience in the face of real life-threatening danger as:
• Pounding heart
• Dry mouth
• Shaky hands
• Quivering voice
• Cold sweaty palms
• Stomach cramps
Two Biggest Myths about the Fear of Public Speaking
Myth 1:
Great public speaking skills are an inborn talent.
Myth 2:
Fear of public speaking is negative and undesirable.
Ways to Transform the Public Speaking Fear into Excitement
5 Practical Ways to transform it into unshakable confidence and excitement:
• Deep breathing
• Shifting focus outwards
• Visualizing
• Focusing on facts, not fears
• Building your speech on clarity, not complexity
CHAPTER 4
There are a few components of a successful speech that should be use by public speakers to deliver their speech such as storytelling, body language, tone of voice, pauses and visual cues. First of all, storytelling is one of most important component in public speech. The reason is, most audiences will not remember anything about the speaker or the data that the speaker had showed but they will never forget the stories that the speaker told them. Storytelling is a structured narrative account of real or imagined event that is commonly utilized in public speaking as a medium for communicating, interpreting, and giving the story’s content to listeners. By using this component, the speaker must consider some points such as the story must be relevant to the audiences, keep it short and simple and use appropriate body language and facial expressions. The speaker also should not use two or three stories in the same topic, use foreign terms and fill the stories with so many characters that could confuse the audience.
Besides, body language also a crucial component of successful speech. It can be defined as the process of non-verbal communication when our physical, mental and emotional states are manifested through unconscious and conscious body movement and gestures basically act as non-verbal communication. The right use of body language can give more impact to a speech and the audience could receive the message delivered with quality. There are few ways that a speaker could use in order to increase the effectiveness of body language. Firstly, the speaker must show the right body posture and not too intense while delivering speech. Body placement also important so that the speaker can establish connection with the audience for example, the speaker can move from the podium to the audience for some interaction with audience. The speaker also needs to have extra look on hand gesture and not using it excessively but do not ever hide it in the pocket. Last but not least is facial expression. The connection of the speaker and the audience can be established by a genuine smile from the speaker.
Public speaking is not just about talking in public. We need to know a suitable time to do a pause so that audience did not distract from what is being said and gives the impression of nervousness and lack of clarity. Especially, we fill our silence with meaningless words such as “uhm”, “like”, and “you know”.
Accomplished speakers are aware of this and often use the power of pause to:
- raise the impact of a remark
- bridge ideas
- underline the last thing that was said
- create anticipation for the next remark
- instill more humour and passion into the presentation
- give time for the listeners to absorb the information
- leave the room for reflection after questions
- Short Pause
- Spontaneity Pause
- Long Pause
- Pseudo Pause
- Multiplies understanding of the message
- Enhances retention level of the valuable information
- Helps the audience to organize complex ideas
- Allows the speaker to gain and to maintain attention
- Helps to illustrate the sequence of events
- Allows the speaker to add humour and create excitement
- Encourages gestures and movement on the part of the speaker that make it easier to establish a connection with the audience.
- Flip charts
- Overhead projectors
- Slide shows
- Handouts
- Prop
10 slides + 20 Minutes + 30 points fonts = Effective Business Presentations
CHAPTER 5
Preparation.
We should identify three key elements before we start preparing: the audience (WHO), our purpose (WHAT) and the direction (HOW).
The audience (WHO) are to be analyzed by understanding the people that will be hearing to us. What is their age? Their background, their gender, their race, and interests are valuable information for us to generate a speech that is super attractive to them. Imagine speaking on academic topic in front of hundreds of experts, telling fairy tales or jokes are probably not a good content choice.
Next, WHAT is the purpose of our speech? Speaking without a purpose will not provide a clear direction to the audience’s mind even the speech was so motivating and enthusiastic. We don’t want the people to have a “So?” in their mind after listen to us. Hence spend some time figuring out what is the speech purpose. Is our speech was delivered to entertain or persuade? Or to sell or change? Give the audiences a reason to listen.
Thirdly, how could be the most effective or best way to present the script? Professionals think about their HOW before they are going into their WHAT. The process is like directing a fictional movie, from the opening (could be a metaphoric one or just expose the main idea of the speech), what are the elements that could make the speech way more interesting? How should it ended to leave a mark within the audience? Giving a speech is way more difficult because we plan, we write, we direct and we act, but it’s interesting.
Also having a great plan is just the first step being a successful public speaker, next is to work with the time. Here is the formula, an hour for every minute of the speech, sound crazy but that is how most public speakers prepare to speak effortlessly on stage. Spend time on polishing the details, rehearsing the script, and exploring the right tempo, the hard work will surely pay off.
The SMART Speech Preparation Formula
First, Select Your Material.
- Start with what you already know. Write down all the information that might be interesting or relevant to your listeners.
- Choose 1-3 major points that you must get across to your listeners and organize your presentation around them.
- Remember, that the best speeches should leave the listeners with insights and "aha!" moments that they did not have before they went to hear you speak. Therefore, try to think out of the box and find a unique angle from which to tackle a particular event, topic, or story. This is not always easy to do but finding an effective story angle allows you to put a spin on your speech, making it useful and captivating at the same time.
- Conduct solid research to supplement your presentation with stories, examples, interesting facts, statistical data, and visual aids which should give you fresh ideas on how to make your speech even better. If you are intending to use statistics and financial data, make sure that they are meaningful, easy to understand and, above all reliable and up-to date.
The outline template should include these 5 basic elements
- Attention grabber (Hook) - to hook the attention of the audiences and incite their interest about the speech.
- Introduction - to prepare the audiences for the main parts, build anticipation, and tell the audience “Here I have something that you must know and care”.
- Body - to explain the key points stated in the introduction, supports the main idea, and bring various concepts together. Here are some ways to structure the elements.
- Timeline – in sequential order
- Culmination – in order of increasing importance
- Cause-effect – present a problem and suggest a solution with benefits
- Complexity – from broad perspective to specific details.
- Conclusion - to summarizes the core message of the presentation, recap the points, and restate the main ideas throughout the speech. Keep it within 10% of the speech and end it on a strong note.
- Call to action - to the audience “Ok you now done hearing my speech, this is what you should do now.” It could be buying a product or any action that the align with the purpose of the speech.
Do not write the whole speech from top to bottom like an essay, unless there are paragraphs that are important which you don’t want to forget or rephrase, possibly a quote or a poetry. Let your personality, your idea and your sense of humor works, not like a text reading robot. Also, avoid bombastic words and jargons, let your audiences feel that you are talking to them not, at them, or else you will hear snoring sound from the audience seats.
Then, Revise Your Speech.
After done writing the speech, beware, this is still imperfect and needs to be polished. Reread and improve sentence by sentence, like shaping a diamond.
- Consider making your sentences shorter
- For longer sentences consider putting the main verb early.
- Use memorable adjectives and adverbs to make your speech more powerful.
- Add strategically placed pauses for impact.
- Repeat the key idea repeatedly throughout your presentation.
- If possible incorporate stories into your speech.
- Include questions, phrases and stories that allow you to interact with your audience and establish an emotional connection with them.
Make sure the contents and parts are linked together well.
Now that you’re well equipped with your SMART Speech Preparation Formula, it’s about time for you to do some practicing.
Why should you practice before your performances?
- It allows you to identify the difficult phrases or word that you may have written at first
- It helps you to reduces your anxiety and nervousness as you may feel excited to recite your speech after several practice before your big day
- It helps you to keep on track with your speech timing
Practicing
1. Start by practicing alone.
Prepare some cue cards. Find yourself a place with less distraction and the lock the door, put your cell phone away and concentrate on the speech.
You might have heard the phrase “practice in front of a mirror”. However, research has proved that it might not always be the best choice to do as you can be easily distracted by your reflection.
2. Practice in front of other people.
Family and friends are a great target of audience for you to practice in front of larger crowds, as you may feel comfortable around them, use this opportunity to overcome your stage fright by constantly practicing around people.
Once you’re done with your practice, seek for remarks from them. Do bear in mind to be optimistic and take their critics in a positive way to improve yourself.
Some of the questions you might want to consider asking your audience while practicing are stated below:
- How convincing and intelligible your speaking was
- How interesting, useful, and clear different parts of your presentation were
- How well you answered questions at the end of your speech
- What was their overall impression of your performance?
3. Do the final dress rehearsal.
Despite all the self-practice, the final dress rehearsal will be your game changer. This is mainly because you will be given the opportunity to speak at actual place. The change in environment may vary from where you have conducted your practice, thus making it a little different for you in terms of hall space, venue, amount of audience, stage management. Fred not, here are some tips to consider to make yourself more comfortable on stage as you can prepare for these things
a. Will your audience see your presentation easily?
b. Will you be using a microphone?
c. Are you going to present with visual aids?
d. Is there a place to keep your notes?
4. More opportunities to practice
Join public speaking clubs such as Toastmasters International, Association of Speakers Clubs (ASC), Rostrum, International Training in Communication (ITC), Speaking Circles or POWER Talk International. There you could learn the art of speaking by observing, practices and excel from their training classes.
Performance.
Be as long-term optimist and a short-term pessimist. Prepare to accept unexpected mistakes or problems. Arrive on the place early, check every material, make sure the power points are working, especially the LCD. Watch your meal intakes to avoid sudden discomfort.
Always keep in mind that you should :
- Relax before you get up to talk.
- Greet your audience with a smile.
- Do not rush through your presentation.
- Make yourself be heard.
- Always face your audience.
- Talk to people, not at them.
- Claim attention.
- Do not stick your hands in your pockets
- Do not introduce a topic with "Just really quick.”
- Answer any questions as succinctly and briefly as possible.
- Do not diminish or underestimate your audience.
- Wrap up your talk on time.
- People rarely want to listen to someone, who talks longer than was expected.
- Never apologize for anything
- Be flexible.
- Be your best self.
- Have fun
- Connect with people after the presentation.
When your presentation is over, take some time off rest and calm yourself before reflecting back on your performances
Analyse your performance by asking:
- How effectively did you handle nervous tension during your presentation?
- What technique(s) has helped you the most?
- When did your listeners appear more engaged with your talk?
- What ideas, images, and stories did they complement on after the presentation?
- When were you most engaged with your listeners?
- How might you deliver the same presentation again based on what you now know?
Steve jobs, being one of the best public speakers in the world can amaze his audience in every of his speech. However, none of his speeches was unprepared, all he achieves is due to his precision and concern on every details. If a public speaker could be like him, or at least learn his attitude towards his speeches, the speaker, undoubtedly will also perform a speech that will win the audiences applause.