Moses Cherrington asks:

Is there a most common problem associated with public speaking, according to your point of view and experience in public speaking?

There is, sadly, an abundance of common problems which afflict speakers. In this article, we’ll focus on three of the worst which sabotage many speakers.

Problem #1: Lack of Purpose

I frequently have people ask me to review their presentation slides. Naturally, they want to open PowerPoint first, and dive into showing me their slide deck. However, I’ll ask them: “Before we dive in, what’s your message?”

When they respond “What do you mean?” (and they often do), I know we’ve got a problem much larger than poorly designed slides.

Reviewing your slides without having clarity on your core message is like critiquing your bombing technique without knowing why you are at war.

And this problem — failure to have clarity on your core message — is not confined to those who speak with slides. It’s very common among all speakers. If you don’t have clarity on your message, your audience won’t either.

Problem #2: Lack of Passion

The opportunity to speak to an audience is a wonderful gift.  Sometimes getting one person to listen is challenging, so having a full room of listeners is a blessing. But this blessing is completely wasted if the speaker has no passion.

In The Secret of Choosing Successful Speech Topics, we learned that to be successful, you must love your topic, and be passionate about sharing your knowledge.

When you speak without passion, your delivery is guaranteed to be flat. Your energy level, your eyes, and your expressions will all show your own lack of interest. Conversely, possessing great passion for your topic can mask many delivery flaws.

Problem #3: Lack of Preparation

The third common problem with many speakers is a lack of preparation.

I once spoke with a new employee about to give his first corporate presentation: a 30-minute project summary to the department. I asked him how much preparation he had done, and he responded that he “had spent all evening on it.” I reminded him that 25 people were going to be there, all of whom have busy schedules (not to mention salaries higher than his), and they were expecting a useful presentation.

He bombed the presentation. Half the audience walked out half-way through. The others survived long enough to enjoy the cookies and cake being served.

When a speaker fails to prepare adequately:

• Audience analysis is done hastily, or (probably) not at all.
• Research is minimal, and the content is just whatever was easily obtainable.
• Slides, if any, will be thrown together sloppily, and will probably be all text bullets.
• Little editing is performed, meaning the structure is murky and vague.
• The presentation will not be rehearsed, usually leading to haphazard delivery and poor time management.

Ultimately, failing to prepare represents a huge missed opportunity. Not only will the audience not be persuaded by the presentation, but they’ll probably be insulted that their time has been wasted.

The 7 Deadly Sins of Public Speaking

For seven more tragic problems, check out the highly popular 7 Deadly Sins of Public Speaking article featured on Six Minutes a couple years ago.

Your Turn… What’s Your Opinion?

What are the most common problems afflicting public speakers in your opinion?

Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Similar Articles You May Like... How to Dress for Public Speaking Speechwriting Hocus Pocus: Summoning Your Magical Powers 5 Speaking Resolutions to Wow Your Audience in 2012 Bookending Your Speech: A Master Technique How to Ace the Short, Impromptu Speech Why You Must Relish Every Opportunity to Speak

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

But take heart! You’re in a very powerful position as a speechmaker, and that’s a good place to be. A well-written speech can drive sales, deepen commitment, motivate hearts and minds, and even change the world. It can be magic.

Now, you may not feel very powerful as a speechwriter, especially if you don’t do it often. But the truth is, you already have some magic speechwriting powers at your disposal, and you don’t need to spend seven years at Hogwarts to learn how to use them.

This isn’t a laundry list of the things you should put in a speech; rather, I hope it will serve as an encouragement of your overall abilities and a reminder of what can be the elegant simplicity of this crazy creative process we call speechwriting.

Your Magic Speechwriting Powers

In addition to the power of the pen (okay, that one was a gimme), you can summon these communication powers the next time you need to write a speech.

The Power of Planning

The best investment you can make in any speech is doing some preliminary research about your audience. Ask some basic questions like:

• Who will you (or your speaker) be addressing?
  Students, lawyers, a trade association, marketing managers, a sales conference?
• Why will that audience be there?
  Have they chosen to attend or is it a mandated event?
• What will they expect to hear?
  A pep rally, a pink slipping, a recap of the year’s accomplishments, a challenge to meet bold new goals?

These are objective questions that should be easy to answer. But it’s shocking how many writers and speakers don’t take the time to do this homework. Trust me. It will make your writing so much easier!

There’s one question every audience member asks at every speech in every venue: “What’s in it for me?” Build your speech around the answer to that question and you’ll be six steps ahead of many writers and speakers.

The Power of Passion

“They may not remember what you said, but they’ll remember how you made them feel”

That’s the golden rule of speechwriting. You may communicate plenty of data, words, and numbers to your audience, but is that the most effective way to connect with them?

Not according to business communication expert John Sturtevant:

“Most people despise data and crave context. Your job as a communicator is to show your [audience] why what you think is so vitally important, is so vitally important to them.”

David Murray, editor of Vital Speeches of the Day, agrees:

“[A great speech is] an authentic attempt by one person to make an audience understand something that’s important to all involved… whether that’s about healthcare, stained-glass, free trade, dog-fighting, or antique Cadillacs.”

Any subject worth getting up and talking about has some kind of passion behind it. Find it – and hang on to it – and you’ve taken the first step toward writing an effective and compelling speech.

The Power of Pretending

You can’t eat dinner before you cook it. You don’t review a book before you read it. Yet when it comes to writing, many of us tend to start editing before we even compose our first sentence.

This is not a healthy habit. Don’t cut your passion off at the pass!

When you start to write, pretend you can say whatever you want. Unleash your imagination in the beginning of the process, where anything goes. This is especially important if you work in a large organization where the legal eagles and compliance vultures will start to circle as soon as you submit your first draft.

I always start by writing down what I’m feeling, not just what I’m thinking – and the less articulate, politically correct, and grammatically pristine, the better. For example, if I’m writing a speech about education reform, the first few sentences I type might read like this:

“Our schools suck. WTF? Lot of great teachers but need to be able to ID them. Tons of research… Shouldn’t be this hard. Old-school thinking won’t create new schools. We HAVE to fix this!”

Of course I’m not going to submit that for anyone’s approval. But it keeps me honest about the passion that needs to drive the speech. I keep those words at the top of the draft until it has enough meat on its bones that I know the spine of the speech can support itself.

Throw down that wad of essence first, in its rawest form, with its bedhead and morning breath and all its burps and farts. Save the clean-up for later.

The Power of Plain

You don’t need $10 words to make a big impression. Clear language communicates best. That generally means short words and short sentences.  Flowery language might read nicely on paper, but it can get tangled up in people’s heads when they hear it out loud.

And while you’re at it, keep the speech short as well. Remember Mark Twain’s observation: “Few sinners are saved after the first 20 minutes of a sermon.”

The Power of Permission

Don’t be shy about asking for what you need, whether it’s research help, access to the person you may be writing for, or basic questions about the venue and logistics.

If you’re worried that you might appear ignorant or incompetent (you won’t, but you might feel that way), try couching your request in terms of its benefit to the other person: “I know you want this speech to be great. So do I. Here’s what I need to make it great.”

Perils Lurking Around Every Corner…

Of course, we must beware the perils that can lurk around every corner, such as:

The Peril of Presumption

In a rush, it’s often tempting to cut corners by making assumptions about what your audience knows or thinks. Don’t. Better to ask a question you think you know the answer to, than to act on an assumption that turns out to be faulty.

The Peril of Proliferation

A speech is not a book report, a grocery list, a thesis, or any kind of document whose purpose is to store and serve data. A speech is meant to inspire. To do that, keep your speech centered around one or two main ideas. Don’t let ancillary topics and tangents multiply like rabbits!

The Peril of Pride

Of course, we all want to be proud of our work. But don’t cloak yourself in so much pride that you can’t let some things go or change them in service of the overall speech. Read your speech out loud to a trusted colleague or friend and listen to their feedback. (The less they know about your topic, the better – that’s a good litmus test of the clarity of your idea.)

Super-Sized? No, Pocket-Sized!

An awful lot to remember? Okay, then for my last trick, I will magically transform all the suggestions above into a pocket-sized piece of advice: Plan, find your passion, think big, keep it clear, ask for what you need.

One last tip: If you are feeling overwhelmed and under-qualified, you are likely biting off too much with your speech. Remember to KISS – keep it simple, speechwriter! That’s the best way to make magic on the page as well as the stage.

Similar Articles You May Like... 3 Common Ways Speakers Sabotage Themselves 5 Speaking Resolutions to Wow Your Audience in 2012 How to Dress for Public Speaking The Secret of Choosing Successful Speech Topics Speaking is a Team Sport: 3 Ways to be Responsive to Your Audience 18 Paths to Pathos: How to Connect with Your Audience

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Allison Wood owns LetterPerfect, an executive communications consultancy in Chapel Hill, NC. Her writing has been published in Newsweek and Vital Speeches of the Day. Her blog and website can both be found at www.letterperfectspeeches.com.

The previous article of the Ethos, Pathos, and Logos series defined pathos and described why emotional connection is so important for your presentations.

In this article, we explore how to build strong pathos in your presentations through a variety of emotional pathways.

Pathos Superhighways: Your Primary Paths to Emotional Connection

All roads are not created equally. Freeways move lots of traffic fast; country lanes often guide just a single, meandering car.

Similarly, all pathways to emotional connection with your audience are not created equally. Some paths are more effective and more commonly used to connect emotionally. Let’s review these superhighways from which you can create the pathos of your presentation.

1. Themes and Points
2. Words
3. Analogies and Metaphors
4. Stories
5. Humor
6. Visuals
7. Delivery Techniques

#1: Select Emotional Themes and Points

You always have choices to make about which points to include in the time allotted. Be sure that some of them carry emotional power.

Example: Suppose you have identified fifteen reasons why your audience should consider public speaking training. Unfortunately, your short speech only allows you to discuss three or four of them. Which do you choose? “Conquer your public speaking fear” probably evokes stronger emotions than “Learn to speak with more precision.”

#2: Choose Words which Add Emotional Emphasis

Some words are emotionally neutral, while some are emotionally charged. Exercise judgment to select the words which fit the emotional tone that works to your advantage.

Example: Consider the difference in words used to label a suicide bomber on opposing sides of a political war. What emotion does the label “terrorist” evoke? What emotion does the label “martyr” evoke? Which one would best complement your speech?

#3: Use Rich Analogies and Metaphors

Analogies, metaphors, and other figures of speech not only make your speech more interesting, but often allow you to make an emotional connection by tapping into emotions already felt by your audience.

Example: If you speak about gang violence, you might plainly state that “We have a problem in our city…” On the other hand, you might say “We have a cancer in our city…” The latter analogy draws on your audience’s pre-existing feelings about cancer, and makes them want to eradicate the cause!

#4: Tell Stories

Stories are often the quickest path to the greatest emotional connection with your audience. Carefully crafted stories allow you to evoke any of a wide range of emotions. This may explain why stories are often the most memorable components of a speech.

#5: Use Humor

Humor is closely related to storytelling, because you usually arrive at humor through stories. Nonetheless, humor merits special mention. Humor in a presentation evokes emotions such as joy and surprise, and often triggers secondary emotions such as calmness and friendship. If your audience is laughing, they are having fun. If they are having fun, they are happy to be listening to you and they are attentive. As an added boost, humor makes your audience like you (at least for a moment), and that boosts your ethos too.

Nearly every presentation would benefit from more humor. How can you add humor to yours?

#6: Connect through Visuals

Maybe you have slides with photographs. Maybe you have a prop. Either way, a concrete visual element opens many more emotional pathways than abstract words alone.

Examples: Consider the following pairs, and ask yourself which creates the stronger emotional impact:

• Saying that “smoking damages lung tissue” versus Showing a slide with a photograph of tar-like lung tissue
• Claiming that cords from window blinds pose a risk to children versus Showing (with a prop) how the cords might strangle a baby doll.

#7: Model the Emotion with Your Delivery Techniques

The emotional effectiveness of stories, humor, visuals, and other “content” tools often depends greatly on your delivery. Great delivery magnifies emotions; poor delivery nullifies them.

Example: Words from your mouth or slides on a screen may induce sadness in your audience, but the effect is multiplied when combined with sadness on your face, in your posture, and in your voice.

Additional Paths to Develop Pathos in Your Speech

Now that you are familiar with the core pathos tools, we can sample some of the additional tools at the disposal of a skilled speaker. Many of these build on top of the core building blocks above.

#8: Analyze Your Audience

Without doing any audience analysis at all, you always know two things:

1. Everyone in your audience is human.
2. Most humans share many emotional triggers.

As a result, you can always achieve moderate success applying the first seven tools.

But to hit a pathos home run, you’ve got to analyze your audience. Are they old or young? Technical or non-technical? Male or female? Rich or poor? Liberal or conservative? These and many other factors will impact which emotional triggers will have the strongest impact. Do the analysis!

#9: Evoke Curiosity with Marketing Materials

When your audience feels an emotion, they are motivated to act. If the emotion is pity, they are motivated to address the situation (e.g. perhaps by donating money to your charity).

In a similar way, if you make your audience curious through your marketing materials, they are motivated to act. How does one act on curiosity?

• Show up to the presentation.
• Pay attention.
• Take notes.
• Engage with the speaker and follow along.

So, make your audience curious. Include a bold claim or a startling statistic. (Of course, you need to follow up in your presentation.) Focus on the benefits to be realized by your audience, and their curiosity will attract them to your speech.

#10: Evoke Surprise (in the Introduction and elsewhere)

A great way to connect immediately with your audience is to start with a surprise. I admit there’s no logical reason to suggest that a speaker who starts with a surprise will deliver a more valuable presentation. But, we’re not talking logic here (that’s the next article on logos). A surprise gets your audience excited. Getting them excited makes them listen.

Surprise can be effective elsewhere, particularly as the length of your speech grows. Like curiosity, your audience is motivated to act on the surprise. How? They try to resolve how this surprising element fits with the rest of the presentation. To do that, they have to listen.

Note that I’m not talking about deliberately confusing your audience. Surprise is planned, and is usually followed quickly by an explanation. Confusion, on the other hand, results from poor planning, and usually lasts beyond the end of your presentation, at least until the Q&A.

#11: Use Vivid, Sensory Words

Tool #2 above advised the use of emotional words. One way to do this is to concentrate on concrete, vivid, sensory words. When you use sensory words, your audience feels emotions they have associated with those words.

Example: When you mention “the touch of your father’s flannel shirt” or “the aroma of your grandmother’s kitchen”, you’ve done more than just mention fabric and smells. You have evoked emotions which, depending on your audience, probably include loving memories of childhood.

#12: Be Authentic

Remember that the goal of pathos is to connect with the audience and share emotions with them.

To share an emotion, you’ve got to feel it too.

Pathos is not about tugging emotional strings as if you were a puppeteer. You get zero marks for that. Actually, you get negative marks for that, because your ethos gets destroyed when the audience realizes you are toying with them.

Be honest. Share your presentation in a way that your audience will feel as passionately as you feel.

#13: Match Your Vocal Delivery to the Emotion

Vocal delivery is one clear clue to how you feel about what you are saying. Your tone, volume, pace, and other vocal qualities should mirror your emotions.

Examples:

• Anger might be accompanied by a loud, defiant voice.
• Sadness or despair might call for a softer voice.
• Optimism or excitement might be matched by a quickened pace.

#14: Match Your Gestures to the Emotion

Your body is another clue for the audience to gauge your emotions. If you are telling a story about love or joy, your body shouldn’t look like a mannequin. If you are revealing your own disappointment in a story, your shoulders should probably droop, and you shouldn’t be smiling.

Some speakers find it difficult to do this because they are speaking about past events where the emotions have dulled with the memories over time. The emotions were felt then, but aren’t as easy to summon now. You’ve got to show the audience how it felt in the moment. Remember that they are hearing this story for the first time.

#15: Connect with Your Eyes

Eye contact isn’t a scorecard. Your aim isn’t to collect check-marks from each person who you look at over the course of your presentation.

Meaningful eye contact is about connecting with one person at a time. Your eyes should express your frustration, your contempt, or your joy. In the ideal case, the person you’re looking at will mirror your emotion back to you. That’s connection!

#16: Eliminate Physical Barriers to Connect with Your Audience

In most speaking situations, your goal should be to reduce barriers between you and your audience. Get out from behind the lectern. Move closer to the audience. Ask them to sit in the seats near the front.

The closer you are to your audience, the more personal your presentation feels for them. The more personal it feels, the greater your chance for emotional connection. For much more on this topic, read Nick Morgan’s excellent article: How to Connect With Your Audience by Moving Closer.

#17: Eliminate Competing Emotions in the Environment

There usually are a myriad of competing elements in and around the room which are evoking emotions in your audience. For instance, a marching band practicing outside might be annoying your audience. If this annoyance is strong, it may prevent you from evoking competing emotions with your presentation.

The solution is to take charge and eliminate or minimize these causes whenever you can so that your audience can focus on you.

Examples:

• Hunger and biological needs create strong emotions. Take appropriate breaks if you deliver lengthy training.
• Excessive noise, temperature extremes (either too hot or too cold), or poor lighting make your audience uncomfortable and perhaps even angry at you or the organizer. Do whatever you can to optimize the conditions.
• Speaking over your allotted time may make your audience nervous or anxious if they’ve got to pick up their kids. Stick to your time bounds.
• Hecklers — and your response to them — can evoke many emotions. Learn how to handle them smoothly and professionally.

#18: Avoid Tripping Emotional Land Mines

Situations where you aren’t familiar with your audience are potentially dangerous. Perhaps you’ve been invited to speak at a company which has just experienced massive layoffs. Perhaps you’ve been invited to speak to an audience of a different culture. In either case, you’ve got to be careful not to say something (or gesture something) which accidentally triggers an emotion that you had not intended.

If you’re lucky, you’ll just say something that provokes unexpected laughter. If you’re not, you’ll say something that deeply offends your audience to the degree that they tune you out completely.

Your best defense against this is extensive audience analysis. Do your homework. Sometimes, it may still happen despite your best efforts. In this case, it’s important that you are actively reading your audience. If you have evoked an unintended emotion, you can usually tell. It’s wise to address it and, if necessary, apologize for the unintended offense.

What do you think?

The methods listed above are far from exhaustive. There are many other ways to connect emotionally with your audience as a speaker.

What other techniques do you use? Please share your ideas in the comments.

Next in This Series…

In the next article of this series, we focus on logos, your logical argument.

Similar Articles You May Like... What is Pathos and Why is it Critical for Speakers? Ethos, Pathos, Logos: 3 Pillars of Public Speaking 3 Common Ways Speakers Sabotage Themselves Presentation Power: Four Ways to Persuade Speechwriting Hocus Pocus: Summoning Your Magical Powers Book Review: Thank You For Arguing (Jay Heinrichs)

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

American psychologist William James wrote:

The emotions aren’t always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.

Emotions — whether fear or love, pity or anger — are powerful motivators for your audience. An audience emotionally stimulated in the right way is more likely to accept your claims and act on your requests. By learning how to make emotional appeals, you greatly improve your effectiveness as a speaker.

In this article of the Ethos, Pathos, and Logos series, we turn our attention to pathos, and the role of emotion in persuasive public speaking.

What is Pathos?

The word pathos is derived from the ancient Greek word for “suffering” or “experience”.

Think about other words from the same root:

• Pathogen and pathology describe the source of a patient’s disease or suffering.
• Empathy is the ability to share the emotions of another person.
• Sympathy describes a similar ability to share emotions, usually negative emotions such as pain or sadness.
• Antipathy equates with strong, negative emotions toward another.
• Something that is pathetic is likely to arouse either compassion or contempt.

All of these related words focus on the concept of shared experience or shared emotions.

As a speaker, your goal is to create a shared emotional experience with your audience. Pathos describes your ability to evoke audience emotions and strategically connect these emotions with elements of your speech.

Pathos: Evoking Emotions In Your Audience

This leads to the obvious question — what emotions can you evoke?

The simple answer is “all of them,” but that isn’t too helpful.

There are a numerous theories of emotion. Philosophers and psychologists have attempted to itemize and categorize emotions into convenient buckets for thousands of years.

According to translator George Kennedy, Aristotle provides “the earliest systematic discussion of human psychology” in On Rhetoric. Aristotle identified the following seven sets of emotions, with each pair representing opposites:

• Anger and Calmness
• Friendship and Enmity
• Fear and Confidence
• Shame and Shamelessness
• Kindness and Unkindness
• Pity and Indignation
• Envy and Emulation

By comparison, twentieth century psychologist Robert Plutchik proposed a set of eight basic emotions along with eight advanced emotions. He, too, arranges them in opposite pairs:

• Basic Emotions
  • Joy — Sadness
  • Trust — Disgust
  • Fear — Anger
  • Surprise — Anticipation
• Advanced Emotions
  • Optimism — Disappointment
  • Love — Remorse
  • Submission — Contempt
  • Awe — Aggressiveness

Many others have offered different categories of emotions.

It isn’t important to find the correct classification of emotions; indeed, there may not be a correct classification. Instead, the goals of a persuasive speaker are to:

1. be aware of the wide range of emotions,
2. decide which emotions to evoke, and
3. learn how these emotions can be evoked in your audience.

Pathos: Why Evoke Audience Emotions at All?

If evoking a particular emotion was the final result, it would quite a useless endeavor. Randomly making the audience feel anger or joy or fear or hope will not, in itself, get you anywhere. Emotions do not persuade in solitude.

Aristotle knew that the emotion must be linked with your speech arguments. For example, Aristotle defines anger and describes what causes someone to become angry. He then encourages speakers to associate that anger with one’s opponent:

[...] it is clear that it might be needful in a speech to put [the audience] into a state of mind of those who are inclined to anger and show one’s opponents as responsible for those things that are the causes of the anger and that they are the sort of people against whom anger is directed.

In other words, make your audience angry, and direct that anger at your opponent. If your audience is angry at your opponent, they will be more receptive to hear your ideas.

Just as having high ethos makes your audience more likely to be persuaded, pathos can also make your audience more susceptible to being persuaded. By making an emotional connection with your audience:

• Your audience will be more likely to understand your perspective (via the shared emotion or experience).
• Your audience will be more likely to accept your claims.
• Your audience will be more likely to act on your call-to-action.

Positive Emotions versus Negative Emotions

Are all emotions equal? In other words, will any emotion do? Will my audience adopt my views equally if I make them feel surprise as when I make them feel anger?

No. The evoked emotion must be appropriate to the context. In general, you want the audience to feel the same emotions that you feel about your arguments and the opposing arguments.

One convenient way to see this is by looking at the difference between evoking “positive” emotions versus “negative” emotions.

• Positive emotions (e.g. surprise, joy, awe) should be associated with your claims, or your “side” of the persuasive argument.
• Negative emotions (e.g. fear, contempt, disappointment) should be associated with your opponent’s claims.
  • Sometimes, you may have a human opponent (e.g. a political debate).
  • Other times, your opponent may be the status quo which you are seeking to change.

Why is Pathos Critical for Speakers?

In summary:

• If you utilize pathos well, your audience will feel the same emotions that you do. Your audience will feel the pain, the joy, the hope, and the fear of the characters in your stories. They will no longer be passive listeners. They will be motivated to act.
• If you do not utilize pathos well, your audience will not be motivated to disrupt the status quo. They will be more likely to find fault in your logical arguments (logos, the topic for a future article). They will not feel invested in your cause.

How do you Develop Pathos?

In this article we defined what pathos is and why it is important, but there are still several major questions:

• How do you develop it?
• Is it your speech content that creates pathos, or your delivery?
• What are the most effective strategies you can employ?

These questions are addressed in the next article of this series — 18 Paths to Pathos:
How to Connect with Your Audience.

Similar Articles You May Like... 18 Paths to Pathos: How to Connect with Your Audience Ethos, Pathos, Logos: 3 Pillars of Public Speaking 3 Common Ways Speakers Sabotage Themselves Presentation Power: Four Ways to Persuade Speechwriting Hocus Pocus: Summoning Your Magical Powers Book Review: Thank You For Arguing (Jay Heinrichs)

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

This article is the latest of a series of public speaking book reviews here on Six Minutes.

• What’s Inside?
• The Price
• What I Loved
• How could it be better?
• What Others Think
• Verdict

What’s Inside?

The core concept of Made to Stick is that your ideas are more likely to be memorable if you communicate them with six principles in mind:

1. Simple
2. Unexpected
3. Concrete
4. Credible
5. Emotional
6. Stories

The authors explore each of these principles in depth, both:

• Illuminating why it is important for memorable messages, and
• Demonstrating how to apply it through a stream of case studies taken from advertising, corporate strategies, movies, inspirational stories, and urban legends.

They also introduce the concept of “The Curse of Knowledge” — knowing something too well so that this knowledge inhibits our ability to communicate the essence of it to our audience. They portray this curse of knowledge as a villain, and address how to overcome this self-defeating phenomenon.

The Price

At the time of writing this review, you can get this hardcover book (291 pages) for only $13.88 from amazon.com. This is 47% off the list price.

Reviews are overwhelmingly positive:

4 Things I Love about Made to Stick

The four things I liked most about Made to Stick are:

1. 100% Relevant to Your Speeches and Presentations

It’s not marketed as a book for speakers, but everything here applies to every presentation you’ll do.

I’m already thinking about how I could have improved past presentations, and how I can make future presentations better.

However, the best part is that the book is also 100% relevant to all other communication that you do, whether it be reports, emails, conversations, meetings, etc.

2. Well-written and organized

The book has just 6 chapters (one per principle), plus a prologue and epilogue. The roadmap is clear and easily understood.

This is not a dense book with nothing but theories. Dozens of concrete examples (or hundreds?) bring emotional stories to life and show how to put the ideas into action. Further, there is wide-ranging variety in the types of anecdotes used, before-and-after studies, and other methods.

3. No Jargon

You don’t need a psychology degree or marketing background to understand any of the concepts. Everything is written clearly and in terms that anyone can understand. There’s really only one term used which may be new to some readers — schema — but it is essential to the book’s message, and they explain it well. (Or, perhaps since I already knew the term, I am suffering from the Curse of Knowledge?)

4. Extras

In addition to the voluminous citations and index, the appendix also includes a very handy 5-page “easy reference guide” which summarizes the entire book in the type of shorthand a speaker might use for cue cards when delivering a keynote. Just the essential details. This is a very useful reference that I’ll refer to often.

For example, consider the follow passage which summarizes part of chapter one. Each of the numbers (which I added) corresponds to a story or set of stories used to illustrate their ideas. As I type them in, I recall each story and its lesson.

1. Simple

Find the Core

[1] Commander’s Intent. [2] Determine the single most important thing: “THE low-fare airline.” [3] Inverted pyramid: Don’t bury the lead. [4] The pain of decision paralysis. [5] Beat decision paralysis through relentless prioritization: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Clinic: [6] Sun exposure. [7] Names, names, names.

How could it be better?

1. Ditch the SUCCESs Acronym

Mnemonics devices are powerful; I’ve used them myself often. However, I cringe when I see any process or framework which is framed as an acronym. In forcing the six principles into the S.U.C.C.E.S.s acronym, I think the authors left more accurate terms out. For example:

• Although emotion is a key ingredient of communication, chapter five is really more about relevance than emotion.
• Chapter two might have been better framed as surprising (or curious) instead of unexpected.
• The authors admit that core might have been a better term than simple for chapter one.
• Stories aren’t really on par with the other five concepts, but rather a way to deliver all five in a convenient package. (The authors point this out near the end of chapter six.) However, they are presented as a parallel concept to the other five.

2. More Before-and-After Examples

The book already has many before-and-after examples where the authors examine the before (non-sticky) message and compare it to the after (stickier) message.

But, I’m greedy. I’d like even more examples built around this template. I find it much easier to see how to get to the sticky message when we have the non-sticky message for context.

What Others Think

Barry Schwartz, Washington Post:

I find the Heaths’ analysis convincing and their recommendations quite helpful. I think I will be a better teacher if I keep SUCCES in mind when preparing materials for my classes.

Jessie Scanlon, BusinessWeek:

The clear writing and myriad examples make the book highly readable, and overall, it scores well on the SUCCESs checklist: It’s simple, includes unexpected ideas, offers concrete examples, draws on credible sources, covers a subject readers have an inherent interest in, and tells some good stories along the way.

Guy Kawasaki:

My prediction for Made to Stick is that it will join The Tipping Point and Built to Last as a must-read for business people. [...] A warning though: If you read this book, you’ll revamp a lot of your marketing material (as you probably should).

Brent Dykes, PowerPoint Ninja:

I strongly recommend this book as it will ensure the foundation of your PowerPoint presentations — your central message or idea — is solid. Not even PowerPoint ninjutsu can save a weak idea or message.

Verdict

I finished reading this book only two days ago, and I’ve already encouraged several people I know to read it. Now I’m encouraging you.

Your ability to communicate your message in a clear, impactful, and memorable way determines your success as a speaker. Made to Stick is the best book I have read which focuses on this key skill.

Highly recommended for every speaker.

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Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

2300 years ago, Aristotle wrote down the secret to being a persuasive speaker, the secret which forms the basis for nearly every public speaking book written since then.

Do you know the secret?

If you don’t, you might be wondering what a 2300-year-old theory has to do with public speaking in the year 2010.

In a word — everything!

In this article, you’ll learn what ethos, pathos, and logos are (the secret!), and what every speaker needs to understand about these three pillars of public speaking.

What are 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.

Origins of Ethos, Pathos, Logos — On Rhetoric by Aristotle

Written in the 4th century B.C.E., the Greek philosopher Aristotle compiled his thoughts on the art of rhetoric into On Rhetoric, including his theory on the three persuasive appeals.

Many teachers of communication, speech, and rhetoric consider Aristotle’s On Rhetoric to be a seminal work in the field. Indeed, the editors of The Rhetoric of Western Thought: From the Mediterranean World to the Global Setting call it “the most important single work on persuasion ever written.” It is hard to argue this claim; most advice from modern books can be traced back to Aristotle’s foundations.

In The Classic Review, Sally van Noorden points to George Kennedy’s modern translation as the standard reference text for studying On Rhetoric. Kennedy’s translation is the source that I use. (At the time of this writing, it is available from amazon.com for $24.56, 18% off the list price.)

Ethos

Before you can convince an audience to accept anything you say, they have to accept you as credible.

There are many aspects to building your credibility:

• Does the audience respect you?
• Does the audience believe you are of good character?
• Does the audience believe you are generally trustworthy?
• Does the audience believe you are an authority on this speech topic?

Keep in mind that it isn’t enough for you to know that you are a credible source. (This isn’t about your confidence, experience, or expertise.) Your audience must know this. Ethos is your level of credibility as perceived by your audience.

We will define ethos in greater detail, and we will study examples of how to establish and build ethos.

Pathos

Pathos is the quality of a persuasive presentation which appeals to the emotions of the audience.

• Do your words evoke feelings of … love? … sympathy? … fear?
• Do your visuals evoke feelings of compassion? … envy?
• Does your characterization of the competition evoke feelings of hate? contempt?

Emotional connection can be created in many ways by a speaker, perhaps most notably by stories. The goal of a story, anecdote, analogy, simile, and metaphor is often to link an aspect of our primary message with a triggered emotional response from the audience.

We will study pathos in greater detail, and look at how to build pathos by tapping into different audience emotions.

Logos

Logos is synonymous with a logical argument.

• Does your message make sense?
• Is your message based on facts, statistics, and evidence?
• Will your call-to-action lead to the desired outcome that you promise?

We will see why logos is critical to your success, and examine ways to construct a logical, reasoned argument.

Which is most important? Ethos? Pathos? or Logos?

Suppose two speakers give speeches about a new corporate restructuring strategy.

• The first speaker — a grade nine student — gives a flawless speech pitching strategy A which is both logically sound and stirs emotions.
• The second speaker — a Fortune 500 CEO — gives a boring speech pitching strategy B.

Which speech is more persuasive? Is the CEO’s speech more persuasive, simply because she has much more credibility (ethos)?

Some suggest that pathos is the most critical of the three. In You’ve Got to Be Believed to Be Heard, Bert Decker says that people buy on emotion (pathos) and justify with fact (logos). True? You decide.

Aristotle believed that logos should be the most important of the three persuasive appeals. As a philosopher and a master of logical reasoning, he believed that logos should be the only required persuasive appeal. That is, if you demonstrated logos, you should not need either ethos or pathos.

However, Aristotle stated that logos alone is not sufficient. Not only is it not sufficient on its own, but it is no more important than either of the two other pillars. He argued that all three persuasive appeals are necessary.

Is he right? What do you think?

Next in this Series…

In the next article of this series, we examine ethos in greater detail.

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Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

And as you get more advanced in your speaking, and comfortable with the stage, how should you move in relation to the audience?

Is it a good idea to move deep into the audience or not? What about those situations where it seems awkward to get to the audience at all, either because of the logistics of the room or the positioning of your listeners?

Human Interaction Zones

In establishing a few rules for the effective choreography of a speech, several key insights from research on non-verbal communications will help. The first comes from Edward T. Hall and his classic work The Silent Language. He described 4 zones of space between people:

1. Twelve feet or more is public space.
2. Twelve feet to 4 feet is social space.
3. Four feet to a foot and a half is personal space.
4. And a foot and a half to zero is intimate space.

The exact dimensions of these zones vary a little from one culture to another, but all cultures have them.

Audience Personal Space is the Key To Connecting

Sharing public space is quite low-key for us – we’re not very interested in people in that space simply because they’re too far away to be important. Social space is a little warmer, but it’s not until someone moves into our personal space that we really begin to pay attention. And of course, when someone is in our intimate space he or she has all our focus.

The bottom line is that nothing significant happens between people except in personal and intimate space. Since public speakers can’t get into intimate space — it violates something quite profound — that leaves personal space.

Here’s the way to think about it: you can’t make a real impact on people unless you can get into their personal space.

By now, you’re thinking that this zone research creates a real problem for public speakers. You obviously can’t get into the personal space of everyone in the audience; you’d be running around like a mad person. Won’t the majority of the audience feel left out?

Your Audience Shares Emotions

I’ll get to the logistics in a minute, but first there’s a nice bit of recent brain research that sheds more light on the subject. An Italian group of brain researchers have studied mirror neurons (See: Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions, Emotions, and Experience). It turns out that when someone near us experiences an emotion, a special kind of neuron – a mirror neuron – fires in our head giving us the same emotion. It’s how we’re able to be empathetic as a species, how we can feel other people’s pain and joy, how we can care for others, and so on.

In this case, it means that if a speaker focuses his or her attention on an audience member, all the people sitting near that lucky individual will experience the same thrill of attention. The effect diminishes over space, but it’s quite powerful and it means that to give attention to a great majority of the audience, you don’t have to run around the room.

Trust (and Connection) Increases as Distance Decreases

We can then add to these research insights with a third phenomenon: our trust of people increases when they move closer to us, and decreases as they move away from us.

By now a picture should be emerging of why it’s so important to move into an audience to connect with them – and why you shouldn’t believe that old misconception that other audience members will feel left out if you focus on several people in the room. Moving into the audience, and getting into the personal space of selected audience members, is the only effective way to move beyond bland and make a world-changing impression on people. And the only reason to give a speech is to change the world, right?

Okay, But How Do You Move Closer to the Audience?

Okay, you say, but we’re still left with the logistics.

• What if I’m speaking in a ballroom with all those round tables and people facing every which way – how do I negotiate that space?
• What if I’m up on a stage and jumping down is hazardous to my health?
• What about those times I’m on a camera for the people in the back – the AV people tell me not to go off the stage because they can’t follow me. What do I do then?

In over 20 years of work as a speaker and as a coach of speakers, I have seen virtually every imaginable room configuration. Many of them make it extremely difficult for speakers to move successfully into the audience. In those cases, you just have to do the best you can. And the best may only be moving to the edge of the stage. But even that will increase the audience’s trust in you, and their sense of connection, because humans are very quick to notice when someone is moving toward or away from them, even in small amounts.

Understanding how mirror neurons work lets you know why working the audience is effective even if you only get close to a few people. Nonetheless, you don’t want to spend a lot of time deep in an audience so that your back is turned away from a significant percentage of your listeners. Turning your back on people sends out a powerful message of lack of interest or disengagement.

This is especially true in a room filled with those round tables, where it seems like you’re always turning away from someone. With that kind of configuration, your should spend most of your time at the front of the room, approaching the tables you can easily get to. Try to get to each side of the room. The audience will appreciate both that you’ve attempted to reach them and that you haven’t spent a lot of time lost deep in the thicket of tables.

You also don’t want to spend too much time on one particular audience member. The exact timing depends on the nature of your speech, and the kinds of interactions you have, but as a rule of thumb, think in terms of 30 seconds to a minute, not much more. Audience members will feel left out if you allow one person to monopolize your attention for too long.

It’s a matter of (1) tact and (2) quick thinking on your feet. You need to size up the room, figure out how you’re going to move in it, and plan how much you can work the audience.

The goal should always be to move toward your audience, even if it’s only a few feet, on points in your talk that you want to emphasize, or when you want to interact with audience members. Moving toward the audience – closing the distance – says, “this is important.” Moving away says the opposite. So use your body like a punctuation mark to add clarity and impact to your speaking. The choreography should be in service to the message. Always.

What Do You Think?

As a speaker, has moving toward the audience been a rewarding or frustrating experience?

As an audience member, what do you like or dislike when the speaker steps into the audience?

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Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Nick Morgan is President of Public Words Inc and author of Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma, and Give Your Speech, Change the World. He has coached professional speakers, executives, educators, and politicians in effective public speaking for more than 20 years.

When you mask your emotions, you sever all connection with the audience. They might as well be reading your speech from a boring magazine.

Conversely, your connection to the audience is strongest when you effectively transfer your emotion to them.

Are you sharing your emotions? Or are you speaking as if a paper bag hung between you and your audience?

If You Are Feeling It, Then Show It

It’s really a very simple concept — if you are feeling it, then show it.

• If you are passionate about your topic, show your passion.
• If you are mourning, show your sorrow.
• If you are excited, show the audience your excitement.
• If you are confident, show your confidence.
• If you are feeling ___, show ___.

Too often, speakers attempt to be “proper” or “dignified” when the occasion does not call for it. By masking their true emotions, they sacrifice authenticity and lose the audience.

Believability = Showing Appropriate Emotion

In the simple relationship shown below, Jessica Hagy reminds us that our believability is determined by the appropriateness of the emotion we are demonstrating.

The sincerity of a eulogy becomes believable when the speaker exhibits signs of sorrow such as an unsteady voice, a tearful eye, or a body full of grief.

Likewise, a politician’s credibility hinges on whether she is able to convey her conviction, confidence, and resolve to the audience through her speaking. If the words say “I believe in this budget“, but the emotion says “I’m bored standing up here“, which do you think the audience believes? Emotion trumps words. If the emotions displayed do not match the message, the audience will not trust the message.

Use Nervous Energy to Fuel Emotions

Professional speech writer Pete Ryckman recently encouraged us not to suppress our nervous energy. Instead, channel it into your emotions when speaking:

Successful speakers communicate profound belief in their own messages. They do it with emotion. Don’t pull back from your emotions. Move toward them. Use performance energy to win over your audiences.

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Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

Suppose you were delivering a speech to raise awareness in your community about school security. How would you open your speech?

• “I’m going to talk to you today about security in our schools…“
• “School security is an important issue that we must deal with…“

Both openings are direct, to-the-point, and boring! What if there was a better way?

A Better Speech Opening

Great speakers know how to open a speech in a way that hooks the audience into the presentation immediately. (Opening strong is one of the 25 essential skills for public speakers.) There are many ways to do this, including the use of drama and misdirection.

Imagine opening your speech with the following lines:

Tobacco. [long pause]
Alcohol. [long pause]
Guns. [long pause]
Criminal items seized in a search [slight pause] of a 6th grade locker in a bad school district.

Why does this speech opening work?

Beginning the speech in this way generates interest for several reasons:

• Employs a classical technique: the Rule of Three.
• “Seized in a search of a sixth…” uses alliteration.
• Pauses after the three opening words add drama.
• Drama also created because the danger increases with each item (i.e. guns are more dangerous than alcohol and tobacco)
• Mid-sentence pause after “search” signals an important statement coming up.
• Audience thinks these items were seized from some criminal hideout, and then surprised to learn they were found in a school locker.
• All this in just 19 words.

If these items really were seized from a nearby school district, then you’ve got a “ripped from the headlines” opening. Otherwise, you might transition into the rest of your speech with “We must act decisively to prevent this from becoming reality in our schools.”

Try adding drama and surprise to grab the audience early in your next speech! Begin strong and keep going…

This article is inspired by index card wisdom from Jessica Hagy.

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Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.