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Transcript of Something You Should Know, April 4-5, 2007
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Getting Over The Fear Of Public Speaking There's No Such Thing as Public Speaking |
Mike Carruthers:
When you speak in front of a group, how you begin your talk can determine how well the whole thing goes. So, what's the best way to begin?
Jeanette Henderson:
Probably the most useful is the historical approach. It's the four score and seven years ago approach. It's put everybody at a point in history where we're all on the same page.
Mike Carruthers: Jeanette Henderson, author of the book There's no Such Thing as Public Speaking …
Jeanette Henderson:You're talking about, say a business, you talk about the corporate beginnings - the beginnings of whatever project you're working on. You see it's a perfect lead-in to here's where we were, here's where we are, here's where we need to go - which is a very inspirational way of doing it. Starting a talk with a quote is another good way to begin. Because it gets everybody on the same page, because they have to agree so and so said such and such and so that's a yes. The point of every opening statement is that it has to be an irrefutable statement where everyone can agree.
Mike Carruthers: Jeanette says professional speakers almost never use index cards.
Jeanette Henderson:
It looks very amateur, very unprofessional. What we always recommend is that you have a binder, like a one inch three-ring binder. And you put your either scripts or notes in there, so that when you walk up to that lectern, even if you never look at it, you gave the impression that you were a leader. That you came in prepared, that what you are saying is important enough for you to want to make sure that you get it right.
Mike Carruthers:
Just about everybody hates public speaking; one reason is it feels awkward. Like who are you supposed to look at?
Jeanette Henderson:
We feel if we look at one person, we're ignoring everybody else. So we tend to just talk to the room instead of talking to individuals.
What you do is you select a number of people in the room. Usually we say three, one directly in front of you, one off to your right, one off to your left. And then you just concentrate on looking at those three people. And the key is you stick with a person for a complete thought, not just half a sentence here and half a sentence to somebody else. You want to leave one complete thought bite.
Mike Carruthers: And doing that has a very interesting effect on the rest of the audience.
Jeanette Henderson:
Because we are so inclined from our own ego, if we're in the audience and we're anywhere near that person that you're actually looking at, we're inclined to believe, "Oh, they're looking at me."
Mike Carruthers: If you have to read some or all of your speech, you can end up sounding amazingly dull.
Jeanette Henderson:
Like for example when they're reading, they fall into that reading cadence we all learn when we're six years old: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America." Or when you're doing the Lord's Prayer or whatever, it's always the same reading cadence and that destroys any image of naturalness. But it's very easy to overcome that, once you're aware of it.
At somethingyoushouldknow.net I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.
