How Anxious Are You About Public Speaking?

5580 (11/14/05)

How Anxious Are You About Public Speaking?

Analyzing the Audience

-  Who are the key audience members?

-  How much do they know?

-  What do they want to know?

-  What are their personal preferences?

-  Which demographic characteristics are significant?

-  What size is the group?

-  What are the listeners’ attitudes?

Questions you HAVE TO answer

Analyzing yourself as the speaker

-  Your goal

-  Your knowledge

-  Have considerable knowledge about your subject

-  Avoid a false sense of security

-  Your feelings about the subject

-  “You can’t sell a product you don’t believe in.”

-  How enthusiastic are you?

Analyzing the Occasion

-  Facilities

-  Seating

-  Lighting

-  Air supply

-  Presentation aids

-  Background noise

-  Time

-  Duration

-  Time of day

-  Context

-  Other speakers

-  Current events

Setting your goal

-  a general goal is a broad indication or what you’re trying to accomplish.

-  Three general speaking goals:

-  Inform

-  Expand the audience’s knowledge

-  Help the listener acquire a skill

-  Persuade

-  Trying to change what an audience thinks or does

-  Entertain

-  Helping the audience relax

Specific goal: outcome you seek

-  “I want (whom) to (do what) (how, when, where).”

-  Describe the reaction you are seeking

-  Be as specific as possible

-  Increases your chance of success dramatically

-  Make your goal realistic

Thesis statement: single statement that summarizes your message

-  Repeat the thesis several times during your presentation (3 is the magic number).

Increasing your credibility

-  When it comes to public speaking, what matters most is who you are, then how you say what you want to say, then finally what you say.

-  Winston Churchill (paraphrase)

-  Credibility: the persuasive force that comes from the audience’s belief in and respect for the speaker.

-  Demonstrate your competence

-  Knowledge of subject

-  Display your credentials

-  Demonstration of your ability

-  Earn the trust of your audience

-  Honest

-  Impartiality

-  Establish common ground

-  Vocabulary

-  Dress

-  Attitudes

-  Beliefs

-  Interests

Organizing your Ideas

-  Clarity is essential

-  Most presentations suffer by:

-  Taking too long to get to the points

-  Including irrelevant material

-  Leaving out necessary information

-  Mixing up ideas

-  Tell them what you’re going to tell them

-  Tell them

-  Tell them what you’ve told them

-  Research is almost always necessary

-  Company files

-  Interviews

-  Surveys

-  Internet

-  Library

-  Identify Main Points and Subpoints

-  “1-week later” test

-  Standard outline

-  Logical dependency tree

-  Thesis

-  Main points

-  Subpoints

-  Organizational pattern

-  Chronological (time)

-  Ex. instructions

-  Spatial (space)

-  Ex. Model

-  Topical (logic)

-  Ex. Reasons for change

-  Cause-effect (causality)

-  Ex. Event-event or circumstance-event

-  Effect-cause (reverse causality

-  Ex. Event-circumstance (reasons for decline in profit)

-  Problem-solution

-  Criteria-satisfaction (features you need)

-  Comparative advantages

-  Motivated sequence

-  Attention

-  Need

-  Satisfaction

-  Visualization

-  Action

Writing outline

Main points

-  state them in complete sentences

-  all develop thesis

-  no more than 5 main points

-  one idea per main point

-  use parallel structure if possible

Introduction

Opening statements

-  ask a question

-  tell a story

-  present a quotation

-  startling statement

-  refer to audience

-  occasion

-  humor

Conclusion

-  review

-  closing statement

-  incite your listeners

Transitions: connecting the segments

Verbal and visual support in presentations

Supporting material: anything that backs up the claims in a presentation.

Adds:

-  clarity

-  interest

-  proof

Verbal support

-  fictional

-  hypothetical

-  factual

-  statistics

-  comparisons

-  figurative

-  literal

-  citations: paraphrase the lengthy, restate the point

Visual

-  a picture is worth 1000 words

-  objects and models

-  photographs

-  lists and tables

-  diagrams

-  pie charts

-  bar and column charts

-  pictograms

-  graphs

Media

-  chalk, dry-erase

-  flip charts / poster board

-  transparencies

-  slides

-  handouts

-  computerized displays

-  videotape

Problems with the computer visual aid – waiting for it to be over

Your visual aid should not become the presentation!

Activity:

Discuss visual aids they have seen

Think of a chart or graphic you can use of your presentation.

MEDIA PITCHES

Book outline how to pitch to the media – one at a time, multiple times