Five how-to tips for improved speaking to a group and five more for improved speaking one-on-one
THE FIRST FIVE: Speaking to a Group
TWO IMPORTANT BASICS
by
George Atha
It is interesting how things coincide. Just as I was mulling over this series of articles on public speaking I heard of the recent death of my first public speaking teacher.
As I reflected on that public speaking class I recalled a criticism I got on completing my first speech for that teacher and my gawking peers. I waved my arms too much!
One of two things must have been true about my performance that day. Either my gestures distracted my audience so that they didn't get anything out of my enthusiastic sounding forth, or the quality of my speech overrode the quantity of my arm-waving. To my delight I found out that I'd scored well in my oratory.
In commenting on one of the circuiting candidates in the Republican Primaries someone on television said about a particular senator: "He couldn't articulate a message if he had one." It reminded me of the man who remarked after hearing a dynamic speaker, "If that guy had something to say he'd sure be able to say it."
Of course, proper gesturing is important. Yet one man I heard speaking to a group, though as dry as dust and as motionless as an unblown tree, held my attention because of what he said, not because of how he said it.
But I'm sure he was a rare exception to the rule. The way success as a public speaker usually goes requires a combination of verbal and non-verbal ingredients such as I'll attempt to convey in these articles.
For now here is what you should grasp as basic to all other parts of the whole recipe: 1) Know your subject; 2) Know your audience. If you don't have these basics in mind there is little use learning to polish your style of delivery.
If your subject is wrong you have nothing to deliver. You try bluffing your way through, which translates into botching your way through.
If your audience is wrong you have nobody to receive your delivery. This time you have bodies with absentee minds; next time in the same place you won't even have the bodies.
First: Know your subject. My public speaking is facilitated by my ministerial training, study and experience. Most of my public speaking has been preaching, telling people how to enter into the Christian life, and guiding them how to think, speak and act like Christians after they have come on board.
Your subject might be your own occupation, your hobby, your political views, your financial prowess--whatever. The thing is, it must be your subject. Indeed, it must be you!
Second: Know your audience. If you are invited to speak to a group you are not a part of yourself, ask the person inviting you to give you some idea of what the nature of your audience will be.
Then adapt whatever you have to say to the kind of audience you will be saying it to.
One general thing to keep in mind is that audiences are made up of people with emotions. Though you may know your subject well, your audience is not simply a place to unload your facts. You must feed those facts to hearts as well as to minds.
GETTING OFF ON A GOOD START
by
George Atha
A speaker I once heard at a graduation banquet at a theological school supplies us with a highly exemplary illustration of what it means to gain audience attention right at the outset of a speech.
The man who introduced the speaker catalogued in detail a string of his academic degrees and achievements. When the introducer was done turning an introduction into a palaver, he stepped aside to make way for his monument of intelligence to begin his speech.
The speaker stepped up to the podium and began with two well-chosen words: "Big deal!"
He could have stood up with false humility and said how unworthy he was to speak to us, or that some of the teachers on the platform could have done a better job in speaking on that occasion. But instead, without shrinking his own well-earned accomplishments, he minimized the focus on them and became one of us.
A good opening to a public speech should whet an interest in the speaker's theme. The spontaneous opening, such as that speaker gave in response to the accolades lavished by his introducer, whet an interest in the speaker himself.
When planning a speech we should always keep in mind the importance of knowing our subject and of knowing our audience. When planning the opening to our speech we should focus on one or the other or both of these.
We've all heard speakers begin a speech with a joke or story in no way related to their theme. While this isn't always a complete disaster for a beginning, it doesn't hone the interest of the audience in anticipation of what's to come.
There are two exceptions I can think of: 1) A contrast to emphasize the importance of what you are about to say; 2) A suggestion of purpose regarding personal responsibility.
First: a contrast to emphasize the importance of what you are about to say. Make your joke quite the opposite of what you have to say as your subject. Then you can say, "Now that's not the way it is with...[your theme]." Thus by extenuating the negative you can accent the positive.
Second: a suggestion of purpose regarding personal responsibility. One speaker I heard started out by saying, "I'm just shooting into the bush, and if I hear a flutter, I'll know I got my bird." Thus he was telling us that he was not only going to give us information, but that he would give it in such a way that our conscience would single us out and say to us, "What are you going to do about it?"
Here are some ideas to use for gaining audience attention right off the bat. Get off to a good start by:
1. Asking a question you are going to answer
2. Asking a rhetorical question (one that answers itself) you are going to elaborate on
3. Stating a problem you are going to address
4. Complimenting the group in advance as a lead-in to what you expect they will do about a challenge you are going to give them
Basically, anything that will peak curiosity about your theme will do. But remember, once you've peaked that curiosity you must follow through with the goods. You can't begin with a build-up and go on to a let-down.
SOME RULES FOR EFFECTIVE PUBLIC SPEAKING
by
George Atha
A friend of mine had been to hear a public speaker who began his speech by telling the people that he hadn't prepared. I asked my friend, "How did he sound?" His answer: "Like he hadn't prepared."
Every good speech begins before a word is spoken. Much thought goes into what will be an effective speech. Proper presentation depends on proper preparation.
Two of these rules for effective public speaking govern the preparation, and three govern the presentation.
1. PREPARATION: consisting of invention and arrangement
Every speaker must know his subject. Some know it because it is their area of expertise, others know it because of research. No matter. Preparation for presenting what we know to an audience is necessary.
If you are an expert on your subject, to you invention means the choice of materials you are going to use. Out of what you know what should you use? If you are a researcher, to you invention means the discovery of materials you are going to use.
Next comes the arrangement of your materials into one useful body of ideas. Now you minimize your ideas to avoid overloading your audience, prioritize your ideas to influence your audience, and harmonize your main ideas and supporting ideas to enlighten your audience.
2. PRESENTATION: consisting of memory, style and delivery
With all that preparation in place, you're on your mark and ready to go. You now step onto the speaker's mound for your pitch.
If you have familiarized yourself with your material you will be facilitated by memory. If you have memorized your speech and go noteless, beware of rattling off your speech like a talking robot. If you use notes know this: notes are for glancing at, not for reading.
As for style, the concern is the right choice and use of words in speaking. Use familiar words unless you are going to explain unfamiliar ones. Use concrete words that appeal to the senses of sight, sound and touch; let your audience feel emotion and motion. Use creativity and fresh ways of expressing ideas that must be repeated.
The last rule of effective presentation is delivery. Indeed, it is the presentation. Here is where practice never quite proves to make perfect. But in the ongoing process of development we keep on learning how to use our voice and our body together.
Our effectiveness as public speakers depends on the proper blending of our verbal and non-verbal manners. We should strive for vocal variety and intensity, using adequate volume and pitch, varying them for emphasis, and we should vary the rate of our speaking, but mainly keep it lively. In conjunction, we should maintain a scanning eye contact with our audience, and use gestures that direct or describe.
By the way, for the public speaker, going back to the drawing board means going back to the tape recorder and mirror.
CULTIVATION FOR POWER IN PUBLIC SPEAKING
by
George Atha
If you want to be a successful public speaker you must aim to be adept at your craft. Not only must you be sure you have something worthwhile to say, but you must seek to say it in the best possible way you can.
Public speaking can be a powerful vehicle. If you are earnest, interesting and practical, you can captivate an audience and move them to a profitable response.
You will not gain respect as a public speaker by the snap of your fingers. The art of public speaking must be developed, and its power endowed by that development. Ineptitude before an audience is overcome by experience with audiences and the willingness to listen to feedback and to accept criticism. Your cultivation comes both by others and by yourself.
It is said that Michaelangelo used make his own paint brushes with his own hands. So must you. You will get your bristles from others, but you must assemble them into the tool that brings out the best artistry in you.
Be resourceful. In preparing gather more material than you'll use. There is nothing like a well-stocked reservoir. For one thing, it is a good supply to draw from if you sense that your audience is conditioned for something in store that you hadn't planned on saying.
Speakers who try to speak extemporaneously when they could have prepared are without excuse if they botch it. But the well-prepared speaker has earned the right to turn spontaneous and will do that well too.
Arrange and correlate your data. Don't dump a load of jumbled facts on an audience and expect them to sort them out. They'd rather pick you apart than try to put together your mess.
Speak to yourself before you speak to others. Get used to your own voice. Stand in front of a mirror and use a tape recorder. This will let you hear the ums and ahs you need to work on eliminating.
The mouth is the organ of speech. Train yourself not to speak through your nose. Experts tell us it is to smell with.
Don't be a slave to memorization. If your mind goes blank during delivery, and you have lost your place in your notes, or don't have any notes, you should be able to wing it until recall.
At the risk of sounding trite I set forth the simple framework of good speech as: an introduction, a body, and a summary. First you tell the people what you're going to tell them, then you tell them, then you tell them what you've told them. Of course, the head and the tail are much shorter than the body.
If your introduction is a canon, when you fire it have more than a pea shoot out. Create an expectation and live up to it in the main part of your speech.
Your summary should be a cameo of the most important things you've said, stating those things in a new and memorial way, with one vital fact looming above all else. While you want you audience to roll the whole wheel away with them, one thing you've said has to be the hub and the other things you've said have to be the spokes rooted in the hub.
WHAT'S THE POINT?
by
George Atha
Not long ago my wife and I were walking our dog up a hill near our home when we noticed a car-full of teenagers stopped and attracted by something. As we approached that scenic spot at the first left curve in the road a girl who had stepped out of the car announced to us that they were looking at an eagle.
A moment later we confirmed for ourselves the sighting of a brown-body, white-tipped at both ends. It was a rear-view for us. And our eyes had to look down and off --oh, I don't know--maybe a hundred yards. We saw its back. And we saw its background: the beautiful Okanagan Lake. The elegant high-perched bald eagle adorned both the lake and a Ponderosa Pine.
The natural beauties of our area stood as majestic as ever, yet at that moment one specimen of God's glorious bestowal on our location out-splendored them all.
When it comes to public speaking we must have our bald eagle. We must have one specific attraction that will for the moment hold centre stage. We must have a single theme.
If we really want to be effective in public speaking, we, not our audience, should address the question: What is the point? It is up to us to be clear on one major thing we want to get across to our listeners. It is not up to our audience to try to figure out what on earth we're trying to say to them.
Be thematic; have a theme; stick to it; state it clearly as your topic; get to it right away in your introduction; relate everything you cover in the body of your speech to it; and underscore it in your summary.
The only exception to this rule I can think of is the politician on the hustings whose platform planks call for many themes.
I do see a parallel, however. It is this: The politician's platform is taken to be the politician himself (if he is believed); your theme is taken to be you yourself. People will form an opinion about you by what you have to say to them.
If you present them your theme in a bowl of multi-ingredient hash, what will they think of you? But if you spread it out for them in plain view like a simple diagram, what will they think of you then?
Though your diagram is not clogged with detains it still has its parts. But each part ties in with your theme. In your introduction you spread the diagram out for an initial general view. In the main body of your speech you make each part contribute to the theme. Finally, you recap, generally again, as you did in your introduction, but this time to reinforce the theme you have already successfully imparted to your audience.
Your theme, though single and simple, can also be comprehensive. To be simple does not mean to be simplistic. Just be sure to repeat the same thoughts in different ways, make your statements and arguments clear, give helpful illustrations and make diplomatic applications.
Even if a latecomer misses half your speech, after five minutes of listening to you he should not have to ask, "What's the point?"
THE OTHER FIVE: Speaking one-to-one
SPEAK WITHOUT GAPS AND GUESSES
by
George Atha
"Run that by me again," someone says. What we meant to get across didn't quite make it. Now if what we said ran by our listener in the first place, we certainly don't want it to run by our listener again.
Just as "There's many a slip between the cup and the lip," there's many a veer between the mouth and the ear. What is perfectly clear to us when we say it may not be anywhere near clear to the person we say it to.
Language may be foreign in more ways than one. We must not take for granted that we communicate with somebody just because we both speak the same native language. For instance, "That's what you said," often gets the defensive reply, "Well, that's not what I meant". A mutual language can be a muddled language at times.
Some won't even ask for a rerun. They just bob their heads. True, some who bob their heads are paying attention. But we must not simply assume that every bobbing head
tells us that our listener is following our train of thought. Sometimes we might just as well be standing on a seashore sounding off to some bobbing buoy in the water.
The way somebody understands our words is the way they use them themselves, which might be different than the way we use them. Sometimes circumstances and influences define more than dictionaries. What we have to say might have to filter through preconceived ideas, biases, and well-settled misinformation.
In textbook jargon, a speaker encodes and a listener decodes. Catching code--that's what it's all about: making sure there is no air pocket between the "en" and "de" of the codes.
The question is: How do we beat our message on somebody's eardrum in code of mutual understanding?
I suggest to you:
1. Anticipate the possibility of communication breakdown. Watch yourself cautiously and watch your listener carefully. Size up your listener and weigh what you say.
2. Invite feedback and interaction. Good conversation is a two-way street allowing us to know both how what we've said has been taken and how we can clarify what we've said if it has been mistaken.
3. Assume personal responsibility for fuzziness. It is better to say, "I guess I didn't make myself clear," than, "You're not getting my point." Then clarify.
4. Avoid using a vocabulary builder's latest words. Your listener might not be keeping pace.
We should not play hide-and-seek with our intended communication by taking simple things and making them hard to understand. Our choice of the right words will assure accurate, effective expression. The right choice of words will be the choice of simple words combined well to make clear sense.
We should try to prevent gaps and guesses, or at least try to narrow down the gaps and minimize the guesses. It matters how we put our ideas into words and how we put those words together.
When we waft our words does our listener get our drift? Remember, if something is worth saying it is worth saying well.
A HIGH RATE OF INTEREST IN CONVERSATION
by
George Atha
The gift of talking, I'm sure I have it. So how come so few have the gift of listening to me?
It's bad enough when nobody wants to listen to me, worse when I don't realize it. Realizing it, I should take a good look at myself and ask myself if I have a trowel-shaped tongue. After all, before brick walls are talked to they have been erected.
For the gab to grab it must be delivered from an interesting transmitter to an interested receiver. An interesting talker earns the right to be heard. He ticks as a talker and gains respect.
Do I have a bore's head on my shoulders? "Oh no, here he comes again! Well-oiled, well-sharpened, bound to bore long and deep."
Perhaps when I finally catch on that people I've once talked to now "Exit, stage left" when they see me coming, I'll do something other than beat it down the nearest alley and cut them off at the pass. That is if I want to impress them more favorably than I've just impressed my English Grammar teacher with my mixed metaphors.
So, how do I generate a high rate of interest in someone I talk to?
I know. It's all in my face. I must make sure I'm not deadpan. I'll smile from ear to ear. Aw, maybe that's not enough. Not everyone likes Cheshire cats.
How about excitement? Lots of enthusiasm. Well, yes, that makes sense. As long as I don't carry my zeal to the extreme. If I add a big mouth to my enthusiasm I'll be a conversational "racket"eer. Better that I realize that just as "no news is good news," no noise is good noise.
But wait. It comes to me now that if I actually have something to say it will help quite a bit. I'm never at a loss for words, but what if my speech is full of empty words? What's seems like everything to me might seem like nothing to someone else. It's hard to create an interest in nothing.
I must avoid wordiness; saying in many words what I could say in few. No more chain wording, link after link with no end in view, and with just as many holes as links. Rings of emptiness.
I must not be a babbler. For the word "babbler" Aristotle used "seed-picker," literally, "seed-picking birds." As a metaphor it found its way to "scavenger," or "ragpicker," somebody who makes their living by picking up scraps. Quite naturally it transferred into "chatter box," somebody who picks up bits and pieces of information, true or false, and gossips them.
As for me, if I find myself to be a chatterbox I'd better box my chatter until I learn respect for more profitable communication.
"To each his own," the saying goes. I have something on my mind I'm just itching to pass on to someone else. My intended listener has something on his mind that is on a different wavelength. If I really want to get anywhere what I have to do is fit into the situation as it really is.
In this situation my credentials as a worthy talker will be established as I gain a reputation for being a good listener. In this situation I must allow for an exchange of ideas.
If I am to arrest the attention, hold the attention and determine the attention span of the person I'm talking with, I must often give his ear a break and his tongue a chance. Also, I must watch for certain cues or indicators. Fidgeting, glancing from side to side, watch watching and the like let me get the other person's message that he is no longer getting mine.
Real conversation flows both ways. To promote a high rate of interest I must resolve to not even border on boredom.
LEARN TO LISTEN; LISTEN TO LEARN
by
George Atha
On this site you'll find links to audio and video products and services. These modern devises and conveniences are great aids to communication. But the basics of communication are writing, reading, speaking, and listening. And of these none is more important than listening.
There is listening, and then there is listening. If you know what I mean. It is possible to hear a voice without hearing what that voice is saying. Desirable hearing is receptive hearing. It hears both the sound and the sense of what is spoken.
Someone has suggested that most people find it hard to listen half the time, and then they only listen with half their mind. Of course, depending on our personal experience we'll decide if this is a rather generous estimation.
I won't be trite and say that listening is a lost art. Instead, I'll be candid and ask, "What are you, what am I, doing about recovering it?"
Yet, something tells me I should be trite after all and say that concentration is a lost art. If we could get back to concentrating we could get back to listening. It seems to me that this takes three things:
1. Interest
2. Visualization
3. Interpretation
Take interest: A proverb reads: "To listen is the queen of compliments; to ignore, the chief of insults." Listening should be a compliment to the speaker rather than a strained effort for the listener. Listen must be spelled i-n-t-e-r-e-s-t. There must be a certain intrigue in listening. Listening must and can be fun, a genuine joy to the listener.
Take visualization: Back in the radio days before television it took creativity and imagination to get the picture. Oral communication is more or less descriptive and calls for more or less visualization. We must catch ideas and get stamped with impressions by the conceptions we form of what we are being told.
Take interpretation: A well-prepared public speaker should, "tell us what he's going to tell us, then tell us, and then tell us what he has told us." But a private speaker just speaks "off the top of his head." Since there is no precise organization in this kind of speech, we must interpret. It falls to us to organize the spoken words as we hear them. As we sift and sort and connect this thought with that, we should ask for clarification of anything that is doubtful or just does not make sense to us.
But let's not confuse interpretation with interruption. Let's be careful not to second-guess. Let's not to be in a hurry to finish lines for the speaker or to supply words he is groping for. We should afford our speaker such courtesy that he will never have to correct us with a spoken, "As I was about to say," couched in a resentful unspoken, "before I was so rudely interrupted."
When we open our ears, we open our minds. We learn to listen, and listen to learn. Paying attention to what others have to say pumps valuable information into our own reservior of knowledge.
Someone has suggested that God has endowed us with two ears and one mouth so that we will listen twice as much as we talk.
DOWN WITH ONE-UPMANSHIP
by
George Atha
Trying to upstage somebody else in oral communication is known as one-upmanship. Let's not be guilty of it. After all, good conversation does not translate as dropping a heavier load than somebody else.
Getting our own message across will depend on how we treat the other person's message. In fact, it's a matter of how we treat the other person.
To share our I've-got-one-better-than-you is not the point of good oral communication. It doesn't pay off in the long run. It turns people off and makes them steer clear of you. Remember, companionship is better than competition.
So what, if we have a nothing-like-it adventure to report? If we're simply contesting the other guy's topic of the day, so what? Better that we let him wag his scrawny `tale' than that we wag our bushy `tale' if all we're doing is trying to get the jump on him.
The strength story: I've had a bigger challenge than you and have had to exercise more strength. The weakness story: I've found myself in a more helpless situation than you. The mishap story: My accident was worse than yours.
There's a joke that asks the question, "How do you make horse and rabbit stew?" The answer to the "I don't know," is: "50-50; one horse and one rabbit."
Well, when it comes to chatter stew some of us can't wait to throw in our horse. So while the other person is talking on the outside we are balking on the inside. Oh yes, we nod our head and force our smile, but clench our fist all the while. Imagine having to keep in the greatest story never told!
We'll break up if we can't break in. Just wait 'til he comes up for air. Then I'll have my chance. Then the semi-final will be over and the main event will begin.
The problem is that, when we finally get our say, if we try to top the other person's story we impress nobody but ourselves. We undo whatever the other person has said and while vying for the spot in the limelight we perform in an empty theatre.
Think it over. Do we want momentary captivation or momentous consequences? One-better may conquer for the moment, yet lose a lifetime of getting along with someone.
We should learn to appreciate the importance of someone else's story in such a way that our own can wait until another time. We're not competitors; we're communicators.
DO YOU HAVE PARALYSIS OF THE TONGUE?
by
George Atha
I've read: "We are all prisoners of our personalities." I'm quick to add, however, that we don't have to stay locked up in the solitary confinement of timid muteness.
Oh sure, I know that creation hasn't endowed us all alike. Not everyone has come from the Tommy Talker mold. But it just isn't natural to be mum all the time, no matter how prone our personalities are to keeping quiet.
So, your middle name is Shy. But don't kid yourself that you are verbally anti-social. Though you may muffle the desire to socialize through speech, I'm going to assume that you have woven into the fabric of your personality the desire to speak to somebody at least once in a while.
Again, I'm going to assume four things about you: you think, you feel, you want to be recognized and you want to recognize others. And since these four urges are satisfied to a great extent in oral communication, you, yes even you, need that vehicle of expression for these urges of yours. You need to talk.
Of course, the number of words you speak is neither here nor there. What counts is that you at least speak your words worth. Maybe when you were a kid you got let off with somebody's, "What's the matter, cat got your tongue?" But you can't get let off with that now. Communication is a vital part of self-fulfillment. So too timid to speak is too timid indeed.
Maybe you have paralysis of the tongue. But look deeper. The need to talk is one of our vitals. Talk we must, or bust. Moments of inspiration come to all of us, even to the most shy of us.
As human beings we think. Our thoughts must find expression, expression they can only find in speech. These throbbing thoughts refuse to crouch nakedly in the corner of our minds away from public view.
Our tongues are not the tongues of shoes to be laced down. They are tongues of persons with inner pulsations to be made personable. So our tongues:
Are not intent
On being pent,
But must give vent
To messages begging to be sent.
Yet, up crops a tug-of-war. On the one hand your want-to; on the other hand your I-don-t-want-to. The urge of self-expression versus the damper of self-repression. The one pushing, the other hushing.
The good news is that you don't have to let self-repression come off the winner. You don't have to let your urge to talk get smothered by a retiring, retreating force, locking you up in solitary confinement in a cell of unnatural restraint.
Go where people are. Become part of their conversation by listening. Then gradually take part in their conversation yourself. At first, your heart doesn't need to pour out its contents, just drip out a few words at a time.
