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    The Elements of Great Public Speaking: How to Be Calm, Confident, and Compelling
    The Elements of Great Public Speaking: How to Be Calm, Confident, and Compelling
    The Elements of Great Public Speaking: How to Be Calm, Confident, and Compelling
    Ebook149 pages2 hours

    The Elements of Great Public Speaking: How to Be Calm, Confident, and Compelling

    By J. Lyman Macinnis

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    About this ebook

    “A practical guide to thumb through before every speech, whether it’s your first or 500th.”—USA Today

    “A must-read guide to delivering a memorable speech and leaving the audience wanting more.”—Hon. Frank McKenna, former Canadian ambassador to the United States

    Great speakers aren't just born; they prepare and they practice. The Elements of Great Public Speaking takes the fear out of taking the podium, distilling essential techniques and tricks for just about any speaking occasion.

    Experienced businesspeople, nervous students, and eulogists alike can benefit from the author's simple, direct, and tested advice on everything from body language and word choice to responding to the audience and overcoming stage fright. Because there's no such thing as a boring topic—just boring speakers—The Elements of Great Public Speaking shows how to look, sound, and act like someone worth listening to.

    “A great book that really does set forth how to deliver high-energy presentations.”—Mark M. Maraia, author of Rainmaking Made Simple: What Every Professional Must Know
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherClarkson Potter/Ten Speed
    Release dateFeb 17, 2016
    ISBN9780399578748
    The Elements of Great Public Speaking: How to Be Calm, Confident, and Compelling

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      Book preview

      The Elements of Great Public Speaking - J. Lyman Macinnis

      Introduction

      TALK ISN’T CHEAP

      The adage says that talk is cheap. Well, it isn’t. Talk can be extremely expensive, both literally and figuratively.

      The next time you attend a business presentation, make a guess at how much in salary it costs to have all those people attend. Now factor in the probable salary cost of preparation; it would have to be at least a few thousand dollars. Add to that the actual out-of-pocket expenses of preparing and putting on the presentation. Then consider what the lost cost is if the presentation is not as effective as it could be, or worse, if it fails completely. Taking the time to properly plan for and deliver a presentation may make or save your organization more money in an hour than is achieved in a year of routine work. Superior communications lead to such increased profitability that it’s impossible to put an accurate dollar value on them.

      Sit through twenty business presentations and you will find them almost indistinguishable. Business presentations tend to be too long, poorly delivered, and completely forgettable. This is usually because the people designing and presenting them aren’t sufficiently trained in the skills required to properly prepare and deliver an effective and persuasive talk.

      And it isn’t just for corporations and professional organizations that talk isn’t cheap. Competent, well-educated, talented people often find their earning capacity limited because they can’t effectively communicate their ideas, particularly when standing in front of a group. How well you communicate determines whether you’re memorable or forgettable, boring or interesting, and whether people will ignore you or listen to you. Poor eye contact and mumbling have been known to sidetrack careers. The inability to organize and clearly articulate their thoughts has prevented people from all walks of life from achieving their goals and reaching their potential.

      People are attracted to articulate, well-organized, forceful speakers. If you communicate well you will do well. But if you communicate best (meaning that you look, sound, and act like someone who is worth listening to and following) you will flourish.

      Business leaders and professionals can no longer maintain low profiles. They now have to function effectively in an omnipresent communications environment that used to be restricted to celebrities and politicians. Today’s business leaders are wide open to public scrutiny and, like politicians have had to for decades, need to gain the support of a number of constituencies, including peers, employees, clients, suppliers, shareholders, regulators, consumer activists, and occasionally the most important of all, the media. A successful business leader must have the ability to relate to people both within and outside his or her organization.

      Concerned citizens wishing to make a difference in their communities need to develop the same speaking skills as do people in business. Taking the time to properly prepare and deliver an effective talk may result in persuading your local council to install those traffic lights that could save lives. Or you might successfully raise the funds to build a much-needed playground. Perhaps you simply want to do a good job of welcoming your new daughter-in-law into your family, or, as president of the PTA, pay a nice tribute to a respected teacher who’s retiring. Whatever your purpose, a properly prepared and effectively delivered talk will considerably increase your chances of success and at the same time enhance your reputation as a leader.

      You can’t be a real leader if you don’t have the power of persuasion. There’s little point in knowing how to solve a problem if you can’t communicate the solution in a way that will encourage people to act. You must be able to organize your thoughts to convincingly present your case. If you can’t communicate effectively, you will have great difficulty making things happen, and you certainly won’t be able to make them happen the way you want them to or when you want them to.

      Whether you’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, an upcoming professional in a thriving practice, a struggling young entrepreneur, or that person who simply wants to make a difference, you will find that one of the most rewarding experiences in life is standing in front of a group of people and bringing them around to your point of view. Every speaking opportunity is a chance to influence one person, some people, or perhaps thousands. Perception really is reality. If an audience, whether of one or hundreds, doesn’t perceive the speaker to be an effective person, then that speaker is going to fail in his or her main purpose, whether that is to inform, persuade, motivate, or entertain. Effective speakers will become today’s leadership elite.

      To be an effective speaker you first have to know what you’re talking about. You must have sufficiently prepared yourself, through experience or study (preferably both), to talk about a particular subject. You also have to care about your topic, and you have to want to convey your message to others.

      Then you need to understand everything you possibly can about your audience, whatever its size. Next, you have to craft your message in your listeners’ terms. To persuade an audience to your point of view you have to clearly show them what’s in it for them, not what’s in it for you; to do this you have to present your message in a way that they can easily understand and relate to. Finally, you have to develop a winning style, encompassing what you do and how you do it, what you say and how you say it.

      Few of us are born with the necessary skills to achieve all of this, but, like playing a musical instrument, swimming, or riding a bicycle, these skills can be acquired and developed through study, coaching, and practice.

      Then there’s an important bonus. Nothing builds a person’s overall self-confidence as much as acquiring the skills to give an effective talk in front of a group. Once you become a comfortable public speaker, the resulting self-confidence will spill over into all aspects of your life, with the result that you will become a more successful and effective person in everything you do.

      Poise makes you the master of any situation, and poise can be learned. This book shows you how.

      In a nutshell…

      1. Business presentations cost a lot, both in money and hours.

      2. Most business presentations could be vastly improved.

      3. People are attracted to articulate, well-organized, forceful speakers.

      4. Many people’s careers are blocked because of poor speaking skills.

      5. Effective speakers will become today’s leadership elite.

      6. You can’t be a real leader if you don’t have the power of persuasion.

      7. It isn’t only businesspeople and professionals who need to be effective speakers.

      8. One of life’s most rewarding experiences is convincing an audience of your point of view.

      9. Public speaking skills can, like any other skill, be acquired through study, coaching, and practice.

      10. The confidence gained by becoming an effective public speaker will spill over into all aspects of your life.

      Chapter

      1   

      THE RIGHT TOPIC

      The key to a successful public speaking experience is the right topic, and there is a very effective formula for choosing it. The formula is so effective that if your topic meets all three of its criteria, your success is absolutely guaranteed.

      The three criteria are:

      1. You must have significant knowledge about the topic you’re going to be speaking on.

      2. You must sincerely care about the topic you’re going to be talking about.

      3. You must have a strong desire to impart your knowledge and feelings to your audience.

      Dale Carnegie, the patron saint of public speaking training, began using this approach to identify appropriate topics almost a century ago. The way Mr. Carnegie put it was that you must have earned the right to talk about your topic, you must be excited about your topic, and you must be eager to talk about your topic. No one has since developed a better approach.

      You’ve probably seen this formula at work. It might have been a business presentation where the presenter clearly knew the subject well, was fired up about it, and let his enthusiasm spill over to the audience. Maybe it was a fire-and-brimstone sermon that made you sit up and take notice. Or perhaps it was that town meeting where one of your neighbors, who you never thought could make a compelling speech, carried the night by convincing everyone that speed bumps should be installed on your street. Think back to every really effective speech you’ve ever heard and you’ll discover that all the speakers knew their topics inside out, they all felt strongly about what they were talking about, and they all clearly wanted to get their messages across.

      If you know everything you need to know about your topic, you’ll have enough confidence that distractions, interruptions, or losing your train of thought won’t bother you. If you really care about your topic, you won’t worry during your delivery about how you look and sound; you’ll be too busy concentrating on the message you want the audience to go away with. If you’re really looking forward to the opportunity to get your message across, you’ll do so with feeling and enthusiasm, and your audience will catch your mood. In short, you’ll succeed.

      On the other hand, if you try to make a speech on a topic you don’t know enough about, you will fail. It’s not possible to have a successful speaking experience when you don’t know what you’re talking about. So, how do you gain enough knowledge about a subject to feel confident it’s the right topic? There are two ways: study and experience. If your remarks are based on both these criteria, you will definitely be speaking on the right topic.

      People often have trouble deciding at what point their study and experience have sufficiently qualified them to speak about a subject. Well, one reasonable rule of thumb is that if you know more about it than will most of the people in your audience, you’re qualified to speak on that topic to that particular group. If most of your listeners know more about the topic than you do, there isn’t much you can accomplish (unless, of course, you’re bringing a completely new approach or angle).

      Don’t worry about the possibility of some people in the

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