Public Speaking For Effect

One of my students wanted to interview me with regard to public speaking skills. The following are the interview questions and my responses gleaned over years of presentation experience. I’m passing this along to readers as some practical guidance rather than actual instruction in public speaking.

1. Before you began your career as a professor did you take a course in Public Speaking? If so, how did it help you?

A: In high school, I was a member of the Choir, Theater and Debate team. All of these areas were ways I learned how to speak and act in front of an audience. Of course, I had lots of training in public speaking throughout my undergraduate and graduate degree days, considering that I later became a minister and college teacher and had to take courses to develop the art of preparing and delivering presentations. So, I’ve had a lot of rich experiences in public speaking dating back to my teenage years that preceded my career as a college teacher.

2. What do you do to combat nervousness when speaking in front of a new audience?

A: This may sound strange, but I don’t have a particular technique for relieving stress when speaking in front of a new audience. In fact, I don’t give WHO I’m speaking to a lot of thought at all. My job as a public speaker is to offer my audience information that will help them in their lives, whether the speech is a lecture in a classroom, a consulting seminar or a sales pitch. My focus is therefore, audience-centered rather than personally centered and I’m often not aware that nerves play an important part in my delivery or demeanor on stage. Basically, I’m confident about the importance of what I offer others and about my delivery skills.

3. If you had to choose only three skills to utilize during Public Speaking, what would they be?

A: The most important skill is presentational preparation, which means taking the time to fully flesh out what you are preparing to speak about. Related to preparation is the idea of the speech topic. I rarely speak on topics with which I am unfamiliar. There is no greater disaster for a public speaker than attempting to speak on a subject with which he/she is not well-familiar or in which he/she lacks experience. So speech topic and intense preparation, including outline and keynotes are critical to performance success.

Another skill is developing rapport quickly with my audience at the beginning and end of a presentation. I do this in various ways either at the outset of the speaking engagement or before the engagement begins. I find it helpful to arrive early and greet people coming into the room where the speech will take place. During the opening of a speech, I take a few minutes to cite the reason I’m speaking to them, use a little self-effacing humor or offer a narrative or anecdote as I present credentials in order to make participants feel comfortable with me and get used to my rather booming voice. My goal in the opening moments of a speech is to get the audience’s attention, to feel that they like me enough to be attentive (but not necessarily agreeable) to what I’m telling them.

A third skill I think is important for every public speaker is to use affect display, body position and good paralinguistic skills to get an audience’s attention. I’m a positive person, so it’s natural for me to smile a lot and to be enthusiastic about what I’m doing. My affect display shows others that I love what I’m doing and most especially, I care and have a high regard for them.

If, during a presentation, I feel that my audience is not responding to me nonverbally, or if I am looking for a different type of response, I often take a few steps toward them (repositioning is one way of offering an audience a high regard) and lower my voice. This almost invariably works because an audience gets used to hearing a speaker’s voice early on in a presentation, and, as you know, mine is rather forceful. When I lower my voice and get quiet to emphasize a point, the audience’s attention is quickly drawn to me, which is where I want them.

So maintaining good affect display (smile or be enthusiastic), practicing body position, and good paralinguistic skills are essential skills for an effective public speaker.

4. Do you think it feels different speaking in front of students than in front of your peers or co-workers or on the consulting jobs?

A: The short answer to this is “no”. All audiences are essentially the same. That is, they are comprised of people. What is different is the context. Speaking to a group of students in a classroom is a slightly different skill than speaking at a consulting seminar or speaking to influence people to purchase a specific product. So the public speaking environment is dictated by the context in which a presentation is to be delivered.

Again, it would be inappropriate for us to compare group dynamics of public speaking with interpersonal communication skills. These are two different modes of communication that require similar but different skills. We talk to groups of people in very different ways than we would talk to another person (such as one’s peers) one-on-one.

5. If someone had poor public speaking skills but still wanted to teach, what would you suggest?

A: The most important aspect of teaching is love for the profession and an energizing, driving desire to want to educate students. The real question with reference to teaching is: “If there were any other profession I would want to do other than teaching, what would be that profession?” If the answer is “teaching”, you are probably headed for a career as an educator. If the answer is some other profession, you should probably pursue that instead, because teaching is a very demanding, self-giving and is a relatively low paying career. The intrinsic rewards are enormous but without the drive and desire to give yourself away to students, you will probably not be a very effective teacher. Having said that, some advice I would give to new teachers with poor public speaking skills would be as follows:

First, until a teacher is familiar with the material he/she is presenting, they should make extensive use of instructor resources including prepared lectures, classroom discussion, power-point presentations, audio-visual aids and classroom exercise material. This takes the pressure off the teacher by giving them a track to run on and therefore, increases his/her credibility and self-confidence.

Second, teachers should strive to develop rapport with a classroom of students and treat the entire class as one person with unique educational requirements and learning outcomes. The more relaxed the students are with the teacher, the more self-confident the teacher will become and the easier it will be to present difficult pedagogical material.

Third, with the pressure removed by using instructional materials and solid rapport development, the teacher can slowly begin to discover what verbal and nonverbal styles work for them in a classroom environment. There has to be some awareness of what styles are effective and which are not in order for the teacher to become a confident presenter.

Having said all this, I have met teachers, ministers, company CEOs and others who are, in some cases, deplorable public speakers but who are otherwise very effective in their careers. So public speaking is not a panacea. Other things such as attitude and the ability to develop good classroom and interpersonal communication skills should also be considered when entering a teaching career. But many of the skills associated with good public speaking are learned through experience over time.