Claude Thomas Public Speaking

By Michael Jeffreys

A persuasive speech is one of the many forms of public speaking. This type of speech is delivered with the intention if affecting the audience enough to make a decision that they were initially not willing to make. It also aims at getting people to accept a different idea or theory. Making a persuasive speech is not as simple as it sounds, the speaker must have the ability to strike a deeply affect his audience in such a way that they consider acting upon his suggestions.

The Successful Persuasive Speech

For a persuasive speech to be truly effective, the speaker must appeal to three components that were once described by Socrates:

• Ethos - which refers to the speakers own features i.e. his educational background and his style of presentation
• Pathos - which aims at striking an emotional chord with the audience; and
• Logos, which makes an appeal to the rational side of the listeners. For logos to work effectively, examples and experiences may have to be used.

For a persuasive speech to have the desired effect, each of these components must be utilized. In addition, the speaker must be clearly audible to all members of the audience, structured and organized, and highly skillful in presentation and delivery.

You CAN learn how to successfully deliver a persuasive speech!

It goes without saying, for an effective persuasive speech; the speaker must be a master at the art of capturing audience attention with his oratory. He must then continue to hold the audience’s attention for as long as it takes for them to accept his beliefs.

Persuasive speeches should key on topics that interest the audience. The most well written speech is a disaster unless it appeals to audience interests. No audience will connect with a speech that the speaker himself does not completely believe. In other words, the speaker must be passionate about espousing the virtues of his cause, using masterful oratory techniques. Nothing puts off an audience like the notion that a speech has been prepared by someone else and that the speaker is merely quoting it from memory. Even if the speech has been prepared by someone else, the speaker needs to deliver it as if he had thought up the ideas on his own! This is, by no means an easy task and requires a good deal of training and practice.

Further, the speaker delivering a persuasive speech must be well versed in the art of using emotional nuances and inflexions to connect with an audience. Making use of voice modulations and inflections, knowing when to pause and when to raise his voice are all important skills that help create the perfect persuasive speech. Besides the voice and tonal modulations, the speaker must take care to control gestures and hand movements. Too many of these may damage his credibility and can be a distraction to the audience. Finally, the speaker should not go overboard with the use of exaggerated speech delivery techniques. Such gimmicks are unnecessary and will cause the audience to assume that he is insincere.

Luckily, the art of persuasive speech, although difficult, is not impossible to learn. There are a number of seminars and training programs out there that will help you build your speech delivering skills and equip you with techniques to become a master at commanding and retaining audience attention.

By David Portney

If you’re new to public speaking, then let’s start with an easy way of understanding presentation skills.

Simply put, presentation skill is the process of efficiently, effectively, and elegantly communicating and transmitting your message to your audience.

Your message may be simple or complex.

Presentation skills can vary depending on why you’re speaking in the first place and what you’re trying to accomplish: you may be attempting to persuade and influence your audience, or you may be trying to inspire and enlighten, or you may be required to impart new skills and abilities, or you may just be there to report facts and data.

Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, you can use various presentation aids such as a flip chart, PowerPoint presentations with a projector or a whiteboard or flip chart.

In some cases nothing at all is just fine, again depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.

The tone of your presentation may be more or less formal depending on the context. If you know everyone in the audience such as a work meeting of coworkers, that’s different than if you’re making a presentation to a group of people you’ve never met before.

Of course the beginner public speaker may need to deal with stage fright. See my other training articles if you have fear of public speaking.

Presentation skills boil down to using various techniques that are very easy to learn. With a little practice, anyone can become a polished presenter.

The best way to develop terrific presentation skills quickly is simply to take a very good presentation skills training (see my training articles on how to evaluate public speaking training).

Here are some tips to help you with your presentation:

* If you use PowerPoint, have a one-page bullet-point outline of your entire presentation handy in case the computer crashes, the projector doesn’t work, or for any reason you can’t use your PowerPoint presentation.

* Use the “Rule of 3″: distill your presentation down to 3 key points you want to cover. Tell them what you’ll tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you’ve told them: design your presentation in 3 parts: first an overview of your key points, then the details of your presentation, then a summary (basically a recap and repeat of the overview in the beginning).

* “Use the 5 Minute Rule” to conquer stage fright: most of my students report that any lingering fear of public speaking goes away within the first 5 minutes once they get rolling with their presentation.

* If you use PowerPoint, never read your slides out loud: the audience can already read them. Just put up bullet points that remind you of what you want to talk about.

* Openings and closings are most important: psychologists call it “primacy / recency” but really the last thing you say is the last thing they’ll really hear and remember, so hammer your main points at the end and then say “thank you” and you’re done.

Best of luck in all your public speaking!

By Lisa Russell

Retirement speeches will always be remembered by the retiree. If you want your speech to be fondly remembered follow these simple but essential guidelines.

1. Not everyone retires at the official retirement age, unfortunately some people have to take early retirement due to ill health or company restructuring. Whatever their reasons for retiring many retirees are often apprehensive about their future. When composing your speech avoid topics that might highlight any fears and worries they may have.
2. Retirement speeches often contain facts, for example, dates of when the retiree started work, events that occurred whilst they were there and different job positions they held. If you are going to include such topics make sure you have the correct information. The retiree will certainly know the correct details and you don’t want to look a fool in front of everyone if they correct you.
3. Organize your list of ideas into a logical order. Successful speeches follow a set outline of a beginning, middle and end. The main content is in the middle and the toast at the end. Put your information into the right section.
4. Retirement roasts are a great way to spice up a retirement speech BUT only if the retiree would appreciate them. If you have been asked to give the farewell retirement speech hopefully you would know the employee well enough to decide whether or not a roast would be suitable. If you have any doubts err on the side of caution. The last thing you should do is create any embarrassment or unease not only to the retiree but to those present.
5. If a roast isn’t appropriate consider including a favorite quote, or saying of theirs. However don’t fill your speech up with other peoples’ words, you need to allow time for your own words.
6. Using your own words and sentiments adds more credibility and sincerity to your speech. A retirement speech delivered with sincerity will be appreciated by the retiree much more than hollow praise. Those listening will also respect you for your honesty. Even if you have difficulty finding positive honest things to say, persevere. You will probably find you can add some light humor to even the most negative of traits.
7. Consider who will be in your audience. Will you be speaking at a retirement dinner or party where there may be family attending? Ensure your content and vocabulary is suited to match your audience.
8. Are you presenting the retirement gift in your speech? If you are, keep it nearby or arrange for someone to collect it when you give the nod. Find out beforehand what the gift is, so you mean what you say when you hand it over.
9. Don’t leave your speech preparation till the last minute as your lack of preparation will be evident. Advance preparation can save you alot of stress and result in a more professional presentation.
10. And finally finish your speech with a positive and upbeat toast.

By Dennis Kwan

Public speaking is a common source of stress in the modern workplace. Whether you work alone or with large numbers of people, the chances are great that you will need to speak in public at some point no matter how much you might wish to avoid the experience.
If your project or career goals include taking a leadership role in your organization, you will almost certainly need to speak regularly to groups, large and small, on your road to achieving them. Here are ten common causes of public speaking anxiety, stress and some tips for avoiding them.

1. Believing that public speaking is naturally stressful. Public speaking need not be stressful at all. If you correctly understand the causes of public speaking stress and take care to address them, with practice speaking in public will become an invigorating and satisfying experience for you.
2. Having the wrong objectives. Public speaking is about having an effect on your audience - to educate, motivate or persuade them. This is where your focus and purpose should be. Concentrate on what will benefit your audience, not yourself.
3. Trying to cover too much material. Don’t try to accomplish too much in the time you are given. Instead, be realistic with your speech objectives given the time you are allocated.
4. Trying to please everyone. People are diverse. It is likely that each individual member of will respond differently to your presentation. It is unrealistic to expect to please all of them and you should not try to.
5. Accept the fear, don’t fight it.The worst thing you can do when you’re nervous is to notice your own anxiety and start worrying about that too. Just accept any nervousness you feel just as you would accept that the carpet is blue or the walls are white. Trying to force yourself to calm down or hide signs of nervousness can backfire and make your problem worse.
6. Trying to emulate or imitate other speakers. You’ve likely attended more than a few events where you’ve listened to professional speakers or trainers give a presentation. Don’t be stressed up and make the mistake of trying to duplicate or clone their speaking style. Instead, simply be yourself. This will allow you to concentrate your full attention on your material and your audience.
7. Failing to be personally revealing and humble. Telling personal stories to illustrate your points can have a profound impact on your audience and their receptiveness to your message. However, few things will isolate an audience more quickly than arrogance. Instead, be humble when speaking about yourself and your achievements and experiences.
8. Talk to the audience. If you don’t know your audience already, have a chat with a few members before you speak. This can give you a bit of extra familiarity with the audience by knowing you have a few acquaintances in the crowd of strangers.
9. Thinking your audience will be as critical of you and your performance as you are of yourself. Your audience will want you to succeed and will give you every opportunity to do so. Mistakes and hitches which may appear glaring to you are likely to pass unnoticed by the majority of your listeners.
10. Practice - For every successful oratorical activity, there are three things a speaker has to put in mind: first is practice, second, practice, and third practice again. No one can underestimate the power of a constant yet effective speaking drill. This helps you memorize your lines and master them paving the way to creating adlibs as you go along the way.

If you get up in front of a group and find the experience stressful, don’t let that stop you. Instead, find out what you did wrong or what you didn’t remember. Then go back out and speak again until you get it right. It may take time, but the rewards will be well worth your effort.

By Rod Low

Here are some strategies to improve your already good guitar skills.

1. Surround yourself with better players (or at least with those on your same level.) When you started out playing guitar, everyone was better than you, but now you have grown and there are less people better than you than before. The better you get, the harder it will be to find others who are superior to you to hang around or jam with. But no matter how good you get, there will always be something you can learn from someone else. Seek out those people, get to know them, jam with them, discuss music and guitar with them. Be willing to give as much (or more) as you want to take. If you are fortunate enough to be above the level of other guitarists in your area, seek out great bassists, pianists, violinists, drummers, etc. You can learn from them as well. (Even if you are not better than your guitar player friends, seek out musicians that play other instruments as well anyway).

2. Find out what inspires you and soak yourself in that. For me, going to concerts to see great players or bands inspires me to practice more. Listening to great singers inspired me to refine my vibrato and phrasing. Listening and studying the music of great classical composers inspired me to study music composition. I wanted to write great music. Watching the movie Star Wars when I was a kid, reading Lord of the Rings, etc. inspired me as well. There are lots of non musical things that have been inspiring to me. The greatest source of inspiration has been my own personal experiences in life and within myself. The desire to express that was (and still is) a constant burning desire and powerful force that thrusts my desire to improve forward. Know what truly inspires you, seek it out, surround yourself with it and soak and soak there.

3. Define your purpose. What is your definite purpose? Do you really know what it is? If I were standing in front of you right now and asked you this question, could you give me specific answers and explanations? Can you write it on paper in specific terms? This is critical to setting goals, planning strategy and monitoring the results, etc. When all the enemies of progress start to creep into your mind, you will need to bring your definite purpose to the forefront of your thinking. I have seen procrastination, fear of failure, self doubt, lack of motivation, temporary setbacks, and other negative things bring people with great potential to a halt. Knowing your definite purpose and reminding yourself of it when a negative thought comes into your mind will help you overcome it.

By Cathy Miles

Did you know that many professionals have learned to sing with the help of singing software? That’s right, not everyone has hundreds of thousands of dollars to learn to control their voice, fluctuation and expression, so they turn to a more affordable effective alternative. Singing software can be used by anyone either wishing to learn to sing, improve their voice or enhance their sound. There are no limitations and the built in coaching system are impeccable. All of the professional secrets are at the disposal of the software user. Giving them all that is needed to learn to have a great voice.

Imagine having a personal coach anytime day or night. Regardless of whether a person is in their pajamas or standing with the brush in front of the mirror, the software can be used any time. Try calling out a singing coach in the middle of the night or when you get home from a long hard day at work. Singing software is designed so that anyone can learn the basics of voice and how to control their sound, at their own pace.

Singing is like any other talent, it is a process of learning. Without the help of professionals and the understanding of the art of voice control it is more difficult to be successful. That is the exact purpose of singing software, to give individuals the tools, knowledge and ability to sing like the stars. Everyone must start somewhere and the help of a private coach with excellent tools is the best way to start. Most software is reasonably priced and can be purchased for those wishing to learn to sing, enhance or improve their voices.