On Fridays, we dip into the article archive and emerge with one of the most memorable articles. We’ll dust it off, shine a light on it, and consider it from a new perspective.

Today’s Flashback Article

This week, our time capsule returns to January 2010, when we began our 7-article series on the 2300-year-old theory of ethos, pathos, and logos:

So, what are ethos, pathos, and logos?

In simplest terms, they correspond to:

• Ethos: credibility (or character) of the speaker
• Pathos: emotional connection to the audience
• Logos: logical argument

Together, they are the three persuasive appeals. In other words, these are the three essential qualities that your speech or presentation must have before your audience will accept your message.

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If you could easily highlight key messages in your speech, would you do it?

If there were a simple way to be more memorable, would you do it?

If you could craft speech phrases that are more quotable, would you do it?

Epiphora is the key to spicing up your speechwriting. In this article, we define epiphora, cite several famous examples, and help you add this rhetorical device to your speechwriting toolbox.

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On Fridays, we dip into the article archive and emerge with one of the most memorable articles. We’ll dust it off, shine a light on it, and consider it from a new perspective.

Continue Reading »

Presentation Patterns: Techniques for Crafting Better Presentations uses an innovative format to illuminate the elements shared by strong presentations and the habits shared by strong presenters.

The authors — Neal Ford, Matthew McCullough, and Nathaniel Schutta — are highly experienced conference presenters with a knack for exposing the truth in presentations around us.

This article is one of a series of public speaking book reviews from Six Minutes.

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On Fridays, we dip into the article archive and emerge with one of the most memorable articles. We’ll dust it off, shine a light on it, and consider it from a new perspective.

Continue Reading »

In previous articles in this series, we learned how to plan and how to lead group discussions. In this article, we dig deeper into effectively managing different personalities that you will encounter as a discussion leader.

In an ideal world, everyone in your discussion group would actively participate, support the opinions of others, be respectful, and be a positive influence in all ways and at all times. The discussion would proceed swiftly and successfully towards achieving the objectives. Sadly, I have yet to lead a discussion group in such an ideal world.

In the real world, discussions can go awry in a thousand different ways. Often, the largest obstacles you will face come in the form of participants who exhibit traits of challenging personas. They may be doing so accidentally or they may be doing so deliberately; either way, you are responsible for managing these behaviors.

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On Fridays, we dip into the article archive and emerge with one of the most memorable articles. We’ll dust it off, shine a light on it, and consider it from a new perspective.

Today’s Flashback Article

This week, we’re headed back to June 2010, when we dissected Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 Rule, describing why the rule is both wonderful and terrible at the same time:

• 10 slides are the optimal number to use for a presentation.
• 20 minutes is the longest amount of time you should speak.
• 30 point font is the smallest font size you should use on your slides.

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Let’s start with three truths about feedback:

1. Most of the feedback you receive as a speaker is not very useful.
2. Useful feedback is hard to find and uncomfortable to receive.
3. To reach your potential as a speaker, you require substantial feedback.

These truths present a few conundrums:

• If most feedback is useless, how and where do you find useful feedback?
• If receiving feedback is uncomfortable, why would you want to seek it? How do you get in the right frame of mind to accept it?

In this article, we define useful feedback, describe how and where to collect it, and discuss how to adopt a mindset which embraces honest feedback.

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The first article in this series explained how to plan a group discussion.

In this article, we describe best practices when leading a group discussion.

There’s much more involved than simply getting people in a room, waving a magic wand, and declaring “Discuss now!” Your role as a discussion leader is complex and requires great mental dexterity and tact. How can you keep the discussion steadily flowing in a productive way at the right pace towards achieving your objectives?

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Six Minutes launched in 2007. We’ve published hundreds of articles from communication experts; tens of thousands of speakers around the world subscribe and follow via email, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. But, most of our precious readers — that’s you — haven’t been around since the beginning.

So, today, we’re launching a new feature on Six Minutes. On Fridays, we’ll dip into the article archive and emerge with one of the most memorable articles. We’ll dust it off, shine a light on it, and consider it from a new perspective.

How long will we go? 10 weeks or 100 weeks? That depends on feedback from you. Please let us know if you find this useful.

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Discussion groups come in numerous forms, including:

• committee discussions
• internal corporate meetings
• customer strategy sessions
• industry or academic conference panels
• brainstorming sessions
• classroom discussions
• book clubs

Discussion groups also range widely in terms of:

• group size — 5, 50, or 500?
• length — 20 minutes, 1 day, or several weeks?
• setting — living room, classroom, boardroom, conference room, political chambers
• consequences — discussion between friends versus international policy repercussions

Despite this diversity, all successful group discussions share one trait: a competent discussion leader. Leading a discussion is an essential skill for a well-rounded speaker.

In this article, we focus on how to plan a great group discussion.

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