Comments on: 250 Things to Guarantee Your Speaking Success?

By: Joan Curtis

Joan Curtis — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:45:44 +0000

Thank you for paring down your list from 250 to 50! There is no way I’d read 250 suggestions. And, the ones I read were very redundant. How many times can you say the same thing? In my view there are three kinds of speakers:
1. Sender driven: The Showman who is more concerned with themselves than his/her audience or message. That’s how I felt after scanning your 250 points. Even though you said you were interested in the audience, I didn’t see anything that suggested you did anything that engaged them.
2. Audience driven. The Shrink. This presenter is too concerned with the audience. There are not as many of these, but they exist. They come to any presention looking unprepared and are willing for the audience to take over the content.
3. Message driven. The University Professor. There are many of these out there. They are so concerned about delivering the content, they forget the audience or themselves.
In simple words, what we need is a balance among these three styles.
Check out my blog
http://www.totalcommunicationscoach.com/blog/

By: Kia

Kia — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 01:47:31 +0000

Hi Andrew,

I’m amazed by your evaluation on Eric’s article and shared your insightful comments. I like the way you analyzed some of the points that shared by Eric.
As a Toastmasters for two years, I’m alway seeking tips to improve my public speaking skills. I visit public speaking blogs occasionally and found that most of the public speakers shared their opinion and experience in public speaking, the purpose is the same – wanting the reader to be a better speaker. Different people have different opinioin, I would say.
Some of the tips shared ONLINE are actually common sense or universal truth. But, sometimes, we really need to be reminded. That’s the reason why I visit public speaking blogs often. I want to be reminded…
I enjoy reading your blog and hope that I will be a great speaker like YOU one day!

By: Gene Thomas

Gene Thomas — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:15:37 +0000

For me successful has come to mean: 1) Knowing what your talking about. 2) Being able to do it without, or with very little, referring to notes. 3) Just planting both feet on the floor at shoulder width, and 4) talking to the audience. As to power point, use it only if it is NECESSARY. If you can describe it with words, so much the better.

By: The Public Speaking Blog » Top Five Public Speaking Articles To Read (9/11/2007)

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 09:23:05 +0000

[...] 250 Things To Gurantee Your Speaking Success? There is this blogger from Canada (Andrew) who wrote an extensive entry in response to the list I created early this week. Though I do not agree with all his pointers, it is still worth your time to look at it. It’s always good to hear from other people’s perspective. I am definitely going to bookmark his blog because Andrew has written quite a number of great posts relating to public speaking. If you enjoy seeing me ripped, this is the article you got to read. [...]

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 06:47:54 +0000

Hey Andrew, I am flattered that you took the time to analyze the list and kicked my butt. Ouch! What the list needs is some explanation of the context.

For eg, “treat your speech as a game”. It doesn’t mean that the speaker should not take his speech seriously… even games have rules and in this case, rule number one says audience always come first.

Having said that, what I want the speaker to do is enjoy the process of writing and delivering a speech (like what you do in games). Create your own thrills that will motivate you. In my case, I enjoy seeing my audience go “Ahh.. I din know that!” and so I will put in the extra effort to offer facts or figures that my audience are clueless about.

More about fun here:
http://blog.ericfeng.com/8-speaking-secrets-revealed-part-8/

I would be interested to read about your list of things that will help a speaker become a better speaker.