An important element of persuasive public speaking is personality. Does your personality attract or repel your audience?
Usually listeners can easily sense a presenter’s attitude toward them.
Does he like people or, while he speaks, does he have a hidden dislike for his hearers? Is his smile genuine? Does he really mean what he says, or is he merely putting on an act? Typically, although not always, an audience can spot this.
Ethical speaking is not acting. Instead it is a sincere transmission of a person’s truthful thoughts and feelings. Let a speaker be fair with himself and others. If he desires to act, he belongs in live theatre. There the audience expect pretense, but a convincing presenter should reveal his true self to audiences.
When a speaker’s congeniality and friendliness reveal a genuine liking for people – all people – an audience captures his spirit and is predisposed to react positively.
Will Roger’s passion for people – all people – was contagious. His genuine attitude, “I never met a man I didn’t like,” was highly persuasive and added much to his worldwide popularity. Although Rogers was a humorist and his speeches were
not always supposed to be persuasive, his personal quality of friendliness and congeniality is a convincing element which inspires an audience to recognize a presenter as a human being. And this of course is required before a person can wish to have his ideas and feelings acknowledged.
Listeners are normally willing to like a presenter who appreciates them. On the other hand they might ignore an unfriendly presenter.
Whenever a speaker does not like a particular person in his audience, his hatred or wrath is sensed by other listeners, causing them to question silently, “Why are you angry at me?” -
This is somewhat like an manager who, after having an disagreement with, his wife, passes his unpleasant disposition around to everyone in the office. Or like a businessman in a speaking training course who.stated, “I hate all females!” ‘His declaration was sincere. The hatred was clearly evident in his face and tone of voice. He really hated just 1 individual, but – his ex-wife who had left him suddenly to marry another man. However because his wife was a female he had shifted his hate for her to all women. And in fact the men in the audience sensed his undesirable attitude which is surely not a persuasive element in public speaking.
Do you consider how you feel towards an audience before you speak? If you want to know more tips on successful public speaking please sign up to our free e-course and follow up tips and resources by entering your details in the right side-bard
The words used in public speaking make a big difference to the effectiveness of a speech. Painting pictures with words.
Picture talk! Then minds meet minds. There is understanding, attention, interest!
Some words create only general pictures, but others etch vivid, concrete images. “I stood open-mouthed,” for instance, paints a picture of surprise, whereas, “I was surprised” paints nothing. Or so much the mind is cluttered.
Listeners can see a fat man waddle or wobble easier than they can see him go to the front door of his cabin.
A speaker should choose and use words that create vivid moving pictures which cause listeners to see and feel clearly
exactly what he means — words that cut, sting, stare, glare, grind, shock, slush, smother, soothe, or cuddle. Words as real as pizza
pie, soft as a maiden’s blush, or seedy as the hairy wart on grand pa’s weather-beaten nose. .
Never tell about an event, person, or thing. Show the event happening. Relive it. Picture the person as he really is. Make the thing so real listeners can see, feel, touch, taste or smell it. Create graphic colored, moving, mental pictures. And paint them red when necessary! Paint them gay and bright, blue, or as dark as midnight in a cyclone cellar, according to the mood which is suitable for the speech material.
Speaking should be clear and specific. An author, Rudyard Kipling, said his six “serving men” helped him in this respect. The servants he referred to are waiting to serve anyone. They are who, when, where, what, why, and how? When a speaker answers those questions specifically (not in any special order) in his illustrations, his speaking leaves the rambling weed fields of generalities to become as real and clear-cut as a row of Irish potatoes that has just been hoed by a careful gardener.
What words do you used when you are public speaking to an audience of one or to a larger gathering? Do you use picture talk?
Can you can become an exceptional presenter? I believe anyone can that is truly serious can become one. So does Timothy Koegel author of The Exceptional Presenter.
Timothy takes a wider view of presenting than just those situations where you are presenting in a formal occasion such as a keynote speech. His view is that we are always presenting whether we are one to one, small groups, leaving a voice mail. The book is for the average person.
Being able to an effective communicator is one of the skills that organizations are looking for and is the number one skill needed for career advancement in any field.
Below is a video that discusses the first 3 chapters of the book and gives a brief insight to how practical the book is to use.
The book is more than just a good read, it is like a workshop that gives you the information and exercises you can use to implement in becoming an exceptional presenter.
Exceptional Presenter Characteristics
To help Timothy Koegel uses an acronym – OPEN UP to provide the 6 steps to be an exceptional presenter
O – Organized,
P – Passionate,
E – Engaging
N- Natural
U – Understand
P – Practice
In summary, I think this is a book for anyone who is anxious when presenting and wants to calm those fears and improve their communications skills so they can give winning presentations whatever the occasion from public speaking to one to one situations such as asking for a pay rise.
Being able to speak well in conversation and public speaking are top reasons for advancement in a career. Being skillful in speaking gives your career a big boost to getting to the top of your field.
Consider many of the people at the top of their field and their speaking skills have helped them enormously – such as Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet and Oprah Winfrey. Here is a post that shows how Warren Buffet used public speaking to further his career: Warren Buffet And Public Speaking
Public speakers are looked upon as leaders. The people who lead a field are men who speak with confidence and fluency. More people have talked themselves into leadership than any other skills combined. Recently, the speaking talents of a young Senator from Illinois elevated him to the top job in the world today.
But many people fear speaking up and so this hinder their advancement in their careers or even stalls it. Being able to speak well and persuasively is not the only skill needed for promotion but without it you can be overlooked for the raise or job you deserve or being ignored by your boss.
Many people have been able to go from being poor speakers to being effective communicators to groups of any size. They have managed to overcome their fears of public speaking or speaking up in other situations. Others have managed to overcome stammers, e.g. Dan Kennedy, King George VI, Demosthenes, to be effective in public speaking.
To find out more about being effective in public speaking and conversation to help you advance your career and more, check out The Art Of Great Conversation
You’ve filled your speech with facts, illustrations and anecdotes etc, but there is still one more thing to do to convince your audience to act.
After a speaker has given an audience enough illustrations, quotations, and facts to convince a moron or a Philadelphia lawyer that his ideas are reasonable and sensible, that they should be accepted, to persuade he must make his listeners want to act upon his ideas. He should stimulate desire for the plan he has offered.
Hearts as well as minds must be won. But the method is somewhat different.
Perhaps the best way to stimulate desire is to picture the joy, comfort, security, satisfaction, or any other great benefit which will come as a result of doing the very things a speaker proposes. Desire is usually stimulated when a speaker looks in¬to the near future and paints vivid pictures of satisfaction. These pictures must, of course, be believeable but they should be painted brightly and with much positive spirit. They are most effective when listeners can actually feel in spirit, along with the speaker, the events happening.
Here, for example, is some “desire” from a speech called
Try Enthusiasm. It was prepared for an audience of young am¬bitious businessmen:
When you were unenthusiastic you’d creep out of bed hi the morning with a face like a dark cloud, frown your way to the window, peek around the shade and groan, “Good Lordl — morning.”
But you have become enthusiastic! You jump out of bed as if it were on fire, hustle to the window, throw up the shade, grin from ear to ear, pound your chest like Tarzan and shout, “Good morning, Lord!”
You whistle your way into the bathroom, sing in the tub, and grin at the big lug in the mirror.
You smell the bacon sizzling and the coffee perking. Mmmm, good! You know your sweet little wife is on the job.
Your voice is loaded with good cheer when you call, “Good morning, Dear! How are you?”
She may be too shocked to answer. But you don’t mind. You hum as you reach for the after shaving lotion.
This is not like the old you. Your wife, wide-eyed, peeks in the door and looks suspiciously. But she sees only a bottle of shaving lotion.
Your smile is about a foot wide and your voice is like bells as you say, “Are you looking forward to a good day, Honey? Gee, it’s great to be alive, isn’t it?”
The steaming coffee and prize bacon is waiting.
“Darling, this bacon is just right!” you exclaim. “I told the boys at the office yesterday what a wonderful cook you are. Here, have some toast!”
Yes, you are Mr. Enthusiasm, himself.
It’s time for you to go to work, so you kiss the little woman good-by. You see a new light in her eyes. Her arms cling tighter. And her kiss now, instead of being a dutiful wifely peck, is a lover’s good-by. Mmmmmm!
You walk as if you own the town, and you grab more than your share of God’s good air.
At the elevator you call to the boy, “Hi, Charley!” And you beam, while you work.
You know people are saying, “What’s come over the guy?”
But you don’t mind, because you know. You’ve simply be¬come enthusiastic about living and you don’t care who knows it.
A few weeks pass. And the Big Boss calls you into his office. He’s almost smiling.
“A raise? For me? Oh, boy!”
You hustle home and whisper the good news into your little wife’s pretty ear.
“Oh, Mr. Wonderful!” she cries. And we’ll have to censor that kiss.
That evening you take the family out again for dinner.
A few days later you drive home in a big new car. You toot the horn and the family rushes out.
“Why, what’s this?” falters your wife.
“Our new car!” ’
“But Dear, do you think we can afford it?”
“Afford it, Honey?. This is just a beginning!”
You are sure because you feel and know the power of real ‘ enthusiasm. Yes, Mr. Wonderful, you know because your nature is charged with the dynamite of enthusiasm.
This approach, for a casual reader or for someone who had not heard the preceding material of that speech, may seem to be too extreme but it was well-suited and effective for the young businessmen.
Let me know what you think about this? Do you think hearts do indeed need to be won?
