Most students I coach start with a fundamental misunderstanding of public speaking’s purpose. If you ask ten novice speakers what public speaking is, at its core, you’ll probably get ten different answers. People respond with notions like information exchange, persuasion, conversation on a larger scale, performance, inspiring action or change, and more. While all of those are true, they are facets of public speaking – not the whole.
Fundamentally, a speech is a relationship. The dictionary definition of relationship is “the way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected,” and this perfectly describes public speaking. As a speaker, you are constantly trying to connect concepts, objects, or people using visual and audio media. When you get in front of an audience, you are making a promise that your are saying something worthwhile, that it is profitable for you to say and the audience to hear. Think about spending time with a friend. With some friends, just being together is enough. With others, there must be activity, purpose, or a destination. Some like discussing people, others like talking about ideas, and some prefer very little talking at all. Public speaking is no different. There are some audiences that are content to listen regardless of message length while others want quick, succinct, and to the point. Learning to navigate what an audience wants and how to craft your message is as much about knowing people as it is learning outlines, topics, theses, and research.
Why People Matter
It is tempting, when first starting a speech or presentation, to focus solely on the information or facts. After all, many speakers reason, if I just leave the right information on the right way, people will be persuaded to my way of thinking. I would counter with the adage that “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” Think of the last argument you had with your significant other. Did they retain an encyclopedic, eidetic recollection of the entire conversation, or did they remember mostly high points through an emotional lens – and inaccurately at that? Audiences are the same way, even for the most pedestrian of presentations. They key in on high points and novelty – not to be confused with novel information. There is a leadership saying that says. “What gets measured gets managed.” The public speaking corollary world be “What gets noticed gets noted.” What this means for speakers is that you must make your message stand out. Be your audience’s best friend.
This also creates a concerning conundrum. On the one hand, we want to be dispassionate, informative, and objective. The data should speak for itself, the takeaways obvious and inescapable from the facts. On the other hand, sensation sells, and punching up the positions or negatives based on the situation can land a deal far more effectively than a dry list of facts. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Consider the last movie your saw. Would you rather read the screenplay or watch the film? If everything the audience needs was in the script, they would never go to the theater. Likewise, if everything the listener need is in the slides, the speaker becomes unnecessary. Where, then, does public speaking come in, and wherein lies the balance between information and inspiration?
The answer lies in the nature of any relationship. There is edification, criticism, compromise, commiseration, encouragement, accountability, ultimatum, and all manner of other relational elements that apply equally to public speaking as they do to relationships. What is a call to action but a request of your friend? What is informative speaking but telling your friend that you did at work today? What is persuasion but convincing your friend to go mini golfing instead of bowling? Many of the same strategies directly apply, and all of the relational dynamics. Approaching a speaking engagement is really no different from approaching a conversation with your partner. Is she mad? Is she happy? Is this good news, bad news, or indifferent? Without a speaker, and audience is still an audience; without an audience, a speaker is an echo chamber.
Building the Relationship
As I train students in public speaking, there is often disagreement over the order and progression of the elements of a speech. Some sub-elements are matters of preference, but the main parts are arranged specifically because they have proved to be the most effective means by which to construct a presentation.
Consider the hook. When introducing yourself to someone, you don’t start off by listing your professional qualifications, your favorite foods, or how well you slept the night before. You start with your name, possibly your profession, or a specific piece of background information – something that, you hope, will make the other person interested in knowing you further.
Then there’s the overview. Just as effective speakers preview their points or give an indication of what they’ll be talking about to their audience, very often the next part of the conversation with a new acquaintance is the explicit purpose of that conversation. Consider what comes after the introduction. You might say, “My friend tells me that you’re in real estate. I was hoping to get your advice on a property I’m looking at.”
After that, the body of the conversation might go on for a few minutes. You discuss the nature of the property you’re looking at, the purpose behind the purchase, how you hope to use the property, your concerns with it, and anything else that comes to mind.
Finally, there is the conclusion and the call to action. Maybe you recap the meandering conversation that you had with your new acquaintance because you bounced from topic to topic and aspect to aspect of the property. So you summarize, saying something like, “So that’s why I’m looking at that old farmhouse, maybe turning it into a barndominium for a wedding venue. Can you give me your card? I’d love to discuss this further and possibly have you represent me.”
As I wrote in the previous post, this is largely the reason for the anxiety that accompanies public speaking. Just as uncertainty surrounds relationships both old and new, so does that same ambiguity permeate the public speaking space. Developing and practicing public speaking skills is the best way to overcome that anxiety, to face that fear head on. Now, I am not arguing that dealing with anxiety in general is as easy as facing it. There are many people who have to go through extensive therapy in order to even identify why they’re anxious in the first place. But for public speaking specifically, I find that the same factors influencing anxiety and relationships closely mirror the facets the fear of public speaking.
To describe public speaking as a relationship might come as a revelation to some – a lens through which you had not previously considered looking. To others, unfortunately, this might only enhance the fear with which you faced this difficult skill. If you fall in the latter category, check out this post on fear of public speaking. Hopefully it is of some help to you.