Best Public Speaking Articles: Weekly Review [2008-12-06]

On Saturdays, we survey the best public speaking articles from throughout the public speaking blogosphere.

Just a few of the topics featured are:

• speech critiques;
• commonly mispronounced words;
• using maps in presentations; and
• underdressing when speaking.

Week in Review: Six Minutes

Two articles were featured on Six Minutes this week.

The first gives you suggestions for dozens of public speaking gadgets and gifts; the second gives you tips on how to land a new job so that you can enjoy dozens of public speaking gadgets and gifts.

• Gifts Public Speakers Really Want: Dozens of Christmas Ideas
• 9 Steps to Conquer Nerves and Communicate Clearly in Interviews

Week in Review: Public Speaking Blogosphere

Speaker Resources

• Speechwriting expert Brian Jenner reviews the bestseller The Lost Art of the Great Speech: How to Write One — How to Deliver It by Richard Dowis.

His book on the lost art of a great speech is one of the best books I’ve read on the subject. […]

He mentions the role of the subconscious. Speechwriting is one of the few activities where you can go away and do something completely different and make a case that somewhere in your brain a gremlin is still working on your script. […]

The book focuses on the things that many speakers pay no attention to, like how they will be introduced. […]

[…] this will take pride of place on my bookshelf.

Speech Critiques

• Rowan Manahan analyzes visuals, body language, vocal variety, humor, and passion in a speech critique of Mark Gungor.

The stage is a strong, simple setup, which helps position the ideas. A woman’s bust on the left side, a man’s over on the right. Pleasing, familial backdrop […] Strong, clear repetition and reinforcement of his ideas. And the whole thing underpinned with laughter to lock the messages home.

• Olivia Mitchell provides a detailed speech critique of Malcolm Gladwell.

As I’ve done with other presenters (Al Gore, Seth Godin) I’ve analysed the proportion of evidence (examples and statistics) to points/discussion in his presentation.

Evidence made up 76% of Gladwell’s talk.

In Al Gore’s presentation, 60% of the presentation was evidence, and in Seth Godin’s case 67%. These are all great presenters – take a look at this metric for your own presentations – and benchmark yourself against these guys.

Delivery Techniques

• Sue Hershkowitz-Coore describes a speaker who knows how to present data.

Rather than simply spew meaningless research, before providing “answers” she asked questions. Kind of like Jeopardy but totally different. She said: Tell me what you think. Do you think X went up or down? Do you think Y was better or worse? Do you think Z was more prevalent or less? After each question, she waited. And you know what happened? The 750+ attendees answered. Down. Better. Worse. And then, with her data, she confirmed or corrected. With her data!

• Maeve Maddox highlights 50 words commonly mispronounced which may damage your credibility as a speaker. For example:

13. chaos – The spelling ch can represent three different sounds in English: /tch/ as in church, /k/ as in Christmas, and /sh/ as in chef. The first sound is heard in words of English origin and is the most common. The second sound of ch, /k/, is heard in words of Greek origin. The third and least common of the three ch sounds is heard in words adopted from modern French. Chaos is a Greek word. Say /KAY-OS/, not /tchay-os/.

Visual Aids

• Cathy Paine explores the issues of using maps in presentations.

Maps get over-used because they can be a lazy way to “add some more graphics” to a presentation. […]

Maps are a unique category of infographic. Unlike charts or graphs, which look nothing like the real-world data they represent, maps reflect the shape of the real world acting as a two-dimensional data view of a three-dimensional reality.

Speaker Habits

• Holly Buchanan adds fuel to the debate: what message are you sending if you underdress for public speaking?

You see, Guy [Kawasaki in his book Reality Check] feels that underdressing communicates this message:

“I’m smarter/richer/more powerful than you.  I can insult you and not take you seriously, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Wow – how interesting.   I always feel that underdressing communicates this message:

“I’m not professional enough or smart enough to want to dress in a way that will impress you.”

Toastmasters Articles

• Olivia Mitchell’s latest article describes how to get the most out of Toastmasters. [Sara Marks and Jeff Bailey responded.]

For new Toastmasters

1. Take every opportunity to speak.
2. Ignore your assigned evaluator (most of the time)
3. Find a trusted mentor to give you feedback

For experienced Toastmasters

1. Don’t copy the Toastmasters way of using PowerPoint
2. Videotape yourself
3. Pretend its a different audience
4. Repeat a speech several times
5. Speak at other clubs and conferences
6. Enter Toastmasters competitions
7. Experiment