Monthly Archives: December 2010

Making the Already-Good Speech Superb

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We always want to improve our presentation skills. Here are some little acts which can take your presentation to the next level. Just one of the following can add quality to your speech.

               Choose a sentence from a significant part of your presentation and find a way to improve it by substituting a more descriptive word or phrase. Before President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the nation to declare war on Japan, he changed the first sentence of his speech from "Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in world history," to "… a day which will live in infamy."  That one-word change resulted in one of the most quoted lines in American history.

               Look for anything significant that happened on the day you will speak. You might be able to work that fact in to relate to your topic. On this day in 1900 the first Mercedes went for a test drive. But of course most remember today, November 22, as the day in 1963 when President John Kennedy was assassinated. Two of the many sites from which you can get a tidbit are  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history and  http://www.on-this-day.com .

               Make one more call. You have already asked the person in charge of the program about the audience and learned unique features of the audience or the surroundings. Make a call to the person who spoke last time, or ask for contact information for a person who will be in the audience. In both cases seek information about the audience from that person's point of view.

               Search one more time on the internet. Once you get to the home page of the client's organization, pick a link to their education program or to the personnel. Look for some information you don't already have. Even if you don't find information you can use, simply reading their materials will give you a better understanding of their culture.

               Use a different search engine to find a new source on your topic. Checking on something besides Google, such as www.dogpile.com or www.altavista.com, can sometimes yield a different nugget of information you might use in the presentation. This effort might also give you another angle on a point to discuss.

               Pick a subheading of one of your points and look for a "how to" or an "explanation of" article. For example, with my topic of presentation skills, I might look for “overcoming stage fright” to seek more information. "How to hold attention" might be a category for my "Be Present When You Are Present" program. Doing this might free you to go in a different direction with the point this subheading supports.

               Pick one less-familiar story or explanation from your presentation and practice that part aloud again. You might ask a friend to listen with the goal of making one suggestion to improve the piece.

               Don't be satisfied with a good speech. Make one more effort and you can change it from good to superb. As Vincent Van Gogh said, "Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together." 

Stephen D. Boyd, Ph.D., CSP, is Professor of Speech Communication, College of Informatics, Northern Kentucky University, near Cincinnati. He presents keynotes and seminars to corporations and associations whose people want to speak and listen effectively. See additional articles and resources at www.sboyd.com. To book Steve, call 800-727-6520 or email him through his website.

You Communicate Best When You Don’t Talk

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Recently in a seminar I had a participant who gave me excellent nonverbal feedback. She had a perpetual genuine smile and asked a couple of excellent, thought-provoking questions which initiated good seminar discussion.

          At a break I complimented her on this trait. Her response was intriguing. She said that she always wanted to raise the bar of interaction when listening to a speaker or a moderator at a meeting. She wanted to make sure there was a connection with the talker that made both the speaker and the listener work harder at exchanging ideas. She thought she could make the speaker even better with aggressive positive nonverbal reactions. She was very conscious of making that happen—thus the overt feedback.

          I've thought about that comment. You the listener can make the speaker more effective by "raising the bar" during the communication act by the way you respond. When you make such a conscious effort to contribute even when you are not to speak,  you  pay better attention and encourage the speaker even more to give his or her best in that presentation.

          Listening is not passive; you can be very actively involved in communicating, even when you don't speak. As Charles Dickens said, “Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.”