Leadership Skills Training: Public Speaking

Public Speaking Basics Reminders

Advantages of public speaking include:

  • Creating an awareness of what you have to offer.
  • Generating an understanding of your message.
  • Impacting and persuading your audience.
  • Motivating your audience to take a certain action.
  • Increasing your credibility and building your image.
  • Generating exposure for your message.
  • Increasing your own satisfaction and confidence.

Fear of speaking in public can:

  • Make you feel less competent.
  • Keep you from sharing your ideas.
  • Keep you from volunteering or applying for positions you want.
  • Prevent you from preparing enough for your speech.

Fear can come from:

  • Future-orientation anxiety.
  • Perfectionism.
  • Stage fright.
  • Procrastination.

Anxiety is easily triggered by:

  • Not having enough time to prepare.
  • Using unfamiliar technology.
  • Being assigned to give talks about unfamiliar subjects.

The four steps to speaking in public include:

  • Preparing.
  • Introducing.
  • Delivering.
  • Concluding.

Preparing Reminders

Ask these questions to determine the purpose of your presentation:

  • What is the subject of my presentation?
  • Why is it this subject?
  • Why am I giving this presentation?
  • What are the goals of my presentation?

Things to know about your audience:

  • Their interests.
  • Their goals.
  • Their size.
  • Their dress.
  • Whether their attendance is voluntary.

Determine if you need to make arrangements for:

  • Photocopies.
  • Room reservations.
  • A microphone.
  • Food.
  • A computer and a projector.
  • An overhead and slides.
  • A projector screen.
  • Name tags.
  • A TV.
  • A VCR.

When checking the room in which you will be presenting, check out:

  • The room’s size.
  • The microphone.
  • Noise.
  • Lighting.
  • Temperature.
  • Electrical outlets.
  • Equipment..
  • Furniture.
  • Coffee and/or food.

Rehearsing Exercises

Breathing:

  • Place your hand on your stomach.
  • Inhale deeply and feel your diaphragm and stomach expand.
  • Exhale and feel them both contract.
  • Try inhaling and exhaling through your nose and your mouth, and feel yourself start to relax.

Relaxing:

  • Sit in a chair with your arms hanging.
  • Let your feet stretch out in front of you.
  • Allow your head to drop down.
  • Let your brow and jaw relax.
  • Starting at the tips of your toes, focus on every body part one at a time.
  • At each muscle group, consciously tense your muscles and then let them relax.
  • If you need to laugh or giggle, do so because it means you are becoming relaxed.
  • Relax in this position for a few minutes.
  • Open your mouth and yawn.
  • Let out a deep sigh and then slowly sit up.

Speaking:

  • Focus on a far away spot and try to get your voice to reach that far.
  • Put one hand on your stomach and feel it expand while inhaling.
  • Pull your abdomen in and your diaphragm up while verbally counting to five, one breath for each word.
  • Keep your shoulders and chest steady.
  • When speaking, keep your cheek muscles up and your mouth wide to aid articulation.
  • Keep your pitch warm, not high or nasal.
  • Keep your throat and back of your mouth open to help resonation.
  • Practice speaking in this way until you can complete an entire sentence in one breath.

Introducing Reminders

When preparing an introduction, consider the speaker’s or your own:

  • TheirAccomplishments and honors.
  • Educational achievements.
  • Background information.
  • Media attention or publications.
  • Extracurricular or service activities.

Capture attention by:

  • Asking questions.
  • Making a surprising statement.
  • Telling a story.
  • Giving a piece of news or a statistic.
  • Asking your audience to participate in something.
  • Telling a joke.
  • Giving a demonstration.

Build rapport by:

  • Acting naturally and spontaneously.
  • Knowing your material well.
  • Not standing behind a lectern the entire length of the presentation.
  • Allowing your audience to participate.

Example Introduction

(Slutsky & Aun,1997)

Capture Attention:

Our speaker today titles [sbp1]his presentation, "Confessions of a Street Fighter," and shares with us some of his streetwise secrets on how we can outthink our competition... not outspend them.

Establish Credibility:

With a background in both advertising and public relations, Jeff Slutsky had an opportunity to practice what he preached when he became part owner of a nightclub and later a health club. With the marketing dollars now coming out of his own pocket, he soon began to discover and develop result-oriented, low-cost tactics to build sales. This unique combination of shrewd thinking, innovative problem solving, budgeting on a shoestring, and a lot of hard work, came to be known as street fighting.

Jeff is the founder and president of Street Fighter® Marketing in Columbus, Ohio, and he is the author of six books, including Street Fighting, which is part of the Street Fighter's Profit Package, a complete video- and audio-training program with telephone consulting.

His Street Fighting program has received a great deal of national media attention, including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Success, Inc. magazine, CNN, and Sally Jessy Raphael, and Jeff is a regular on the PBS series Small Business Today. Jeff's street fighting client list includes AT&T, McDonald's, American Express, Walt Disney, Pizza Hut, Honda, Sony, Goodyear, Marvel Comics, the city of Dallas, the state of Arkansas, and the country of India.

Preparation and Call to Action:

Please help me welcome a real street fighter, Jeff Slutsky.

Delivering Reminders

To maintain the audience’s attention:

  • Ask direct questions.
  • Ask rhetorical questions.
  • Tell a story.
  • Act out parts of your story.
  • Bring visual aids.
  • Distribute handouts.
  • Ask for physical movement.
  • Acknowledge audience responses.

The benefits of using multimedia include:

  • Helping your audience understand your message.
  • Increasing retention of your message.
  • Maintaining your audience’s attention.
  • Increasing the speed of understanding.
  • Controlling your nerves.
  • Keeping your presentation on track.

Avoid gestures that:

  • Over exaggerate.
  • Send mixed signals with your words.
  • Look contrived or are unnecessary.
  • Are not appropriate for your audience or environment.

Use appropriate verbal communication by:

  • Emphasizing important words or points with a loud or soft voice.
  • Making sure to articulate.
  • Speaking in complete sentences.
  • Not reading visual aids to your audience.
  • Using proper grammar.
  • Using vocabulary appropriate to the audience’s background.
  • Not overusing fillers such as “Um, like or anyway”.
  • Keeping a pace that is fast enough to be interesting but slow enough to allow for note taking.

Concluding Reminders

Thoughtful ways to conclude your presentation:

  • Tell a story.
  • Tell an anecdote.
  • Give a quotation.
  • Give a piece of news or a statistic.
  • Ask your audience to participate in something.
  • Tell a joke.
  • Give a demonstration.

Get feedback on your presentation by asking yourself these questions:

  • What went well and what did not?
  • How was the time spent?
  • How did the audience react?
  • Were they confused? When?
  • Were they excited? When?
  • Did they participate?
  • What questions did they ask?

1

[sbp1]1tI think this should be “titled.” Papers are “entitled.” I think that’s the difference.