TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE SPEAKING
Oregon Speak Out Project
Portland, Oregon
This article includes tips on becoming a more effective speaker, particularly
on gay and lesbian issues.
Know Your Audience. Whether you will be speaking to a small, informal audience (e.g., the grocery checker, your Mom, the neighbors, the bus driver who overhears your "chatter"), or to a more formal, larger audience, perhaps as an invited speaker (e.g. a debate, a talk to high schools students, a speech to the Rotary Club), your effectiveness will depend on how well you "connect" with your audience. And that connection will be much more effective if you know your audience in advance.
1. If your audience is an individual or small, informal group, conjure up the best image you can of who you will be addressing. Find out who they are, what their lives are like, what their main concerns are about your issue, what their best characteristics are, what gets in the way of their believing as you do. Create a threedimensional picture of the people you'll be speaking to. See them as goodhearted, wellmeaning people with some gaps in information and experience. Gaps you have developed a realistic picture of. Gaps which you, after acknowledging their good character, will try to fill.
2. If your audience is a group that you are a part of as a member of the public (a City Council taking testimony, a school board debating curriculum), or a group you have been invited to address (school students, the Rotary Club, a debate or panel), your effectiveness will be proportionately enhanced by how well you actually know the group and its context. Contact someone who might know, or the person who arranged for you to speak, and discuss, in as much detail as possible, the following:
- Who is the group?
- What does it do? What causes or activity does it embrace?
- How many members does it have? Who are they?
- Does the group have a position on this issue? What is it?
- What are the group's main concerns about this issue?
- What questions might the members ask, or want answered?
- What is the most negative response that could be expected?
- What is the format of the meeting? How many people will attend?
If you have more time to devote to this, do the following:
3. Contact a member of the group who is opposed to your views (get the name from your contact person or someone else who might know). "I am ________," you will say, "and I will be speaking to your group on ___________. I got your name from ___________ and wonder if you would be willing to help me in my preparation. I am interested in what you, as a member, would want to get out of attending my speech. What questions would you like answered if you were to come hear me speak?
This is an excellent way to learn "from the horse's mouth" what the hard questions will be. But the surprising benefit of this approach can be that the opposition member takes some ownership in your speech, is curious about the advice will be used, and encourages friends to attend.
Prepare. The best preparation is experience. The next best is hours and hours of nostress time in which to work. The reality is that you often have little (or no!) time, and must get ready under pressure. My strong advice is that you should say "no" to the invitation if you can't do at least the following:
1. Gather information and evidence to use to substantiate the things you will claim in your presentation. You can do this by requesting material from all available local, state, and national sources. READ the material. Put it in an accessible format, such as a loose-leaf binder or index cards. MEMORIZE the most salient information. The ability to quote authority and give citations to promote your position or debunk your opponents' is a critical tool in effective, persuasive speaking.
2. Write out a draft of your speech (or the answers to the questions you'll be asked). Do not plan to read it. You'll use it as a model to work with. If you are uncomfortable with writing as the vehicle for preparation, tape yourself. As you gather and read your substantive material, write it (or tape it) into your existing model. Revise, enhance, subtract. Your model will continue to be organic. You may think you haven't time for this, but the truth is you'll be doing it anyway in an unproductive way by worrying about it. That time could be spent rolling around the speech, the answers, plugging in new things you've learned, testing it out on your tongue or your computer.
Practice. This sounds so simple, but feels so strange. Yet it is the most critical part of public speaking for the beginning or intermediate public speaker. Fumbling, stumbling, and feeling defeated or foolish is truly one of the worst things that can happen to us as public speakers, and it can always be avoided by practice, practice, practice! You owe it to yourself, your audience, and your cause, to do the following:
1. Say the speech out loud over and over again. Give the answers to questions out loud over and over again. In the shower, in the car, to your companion, with your family listening, at the mirror, into a tape recorder, mumbling in your sleep. Do it in whole, or in part. Work on the one question that trips you up, or on the opening or closing of the speech.
Once you have the substance down, practice delivery techniques over and over and over. Try doing it angry, sad, reasonable, yelling. Try a variety. Do it without pausing, pause after every main point. Do it very fast, then very slow, then vary it. Vary the pitch of your voice high, then low, then mixed. Wave your arms in front of a mirror, then stand stock still where did it seem that the waving worked? Practice expressions smiling, being earnest, jeering. Emphasize every work in one sentence. Make yourself pause for four seconds after you've made a startling statement.
Now try making it sound like it's totally spontaneous never been practiced. I will venture to guarantee that the success of the speech will increase dramatically based on the number of times you have practiced it.
2. Have your speech and delivery critiqued by someone whose opinion you trust and who you are certain will give you honest feedback. How do I look? How do I sound? Does my argument persuade you? Am I being nice to you if you disagree with me, but firm in my opinion? Where can I improve?
3. Finally, use your critiquer to help you practice other skills of public speaking:
- Bringing the subject back to your issue
- Calming the hostile participant
- Saying "I don't know," or "See me later about that"
- Buying time ("Let me think" or "Let me see if I heard what you said")
- Diversion("That's an interesting question. But the real issues is...")
- Personalizing ("You know, when I...")
Deliver. Much of the skills of delivery will be honed during practice. Other ways to improve delivery:
1. Tape your presentation. Listen/view it later and critique it.
2. If appropriate, ask that participants fill out evaluation forms and give you suggestions for improvement.
3. Have the group, on the spot, engage in an evaluation of the presentation.
4. Bring friends to the presentation with the task of watching and critiquing you.
Responding to Questions. One of the most difficult piece of any presentation or conversation is answering people's questions. Some are asked to intimidate, others to learn, still others to provoke. Regardless, you can control the terms of the debate and avoid using misleading terms that are created by misinformation campaigns. The following four steps can help avoid confrontation and educate listeners.
1. Listen. What is the question about? What do they really want to know? Is it intentionally inflammatory? Does it express a real conviction and concern? If you believe that they don't really want to know anything, but are just attacking you or showing you up, consider what part of their questions might be considered reasonable by others in the audience.
2. Affirm. Sometimes it may be extremely hard, but find the kernel of truth in the question and affirm it. This moves the situation into a dialogue. You demonstrate that you have really listened, and care about this question. In turn, the questioner will really listen to your response.
3. Respond. Offer the affirmation they are seeking in a short concise way. If you use statistics, be prepared to cite your source.
4. Add information. It is very easy to respond to questions. Memorize the facts, and what could go wrong? Actually, a lot. If all we do is respond to questions and never take the opportunity to talk about what we want to talk about, the issues are controlled by others. To maintain control and educate effectively, use this last part to move away from the direct question and offer new information that can educate and enlighten.
Example: Q: All these homosexuals just want to have sex with our children and abuse them. This is pedophilia. That is disgusting and wrong. Shouldn't we have laws to prohibit this unnatural behavior?
Listen: (I hear concerns about children and a misunderstanding that sexual orientation is a behavior. The real question I believe is the concern about children.) Affirm: "I understand your concerns about protecting our children. Reasonable people are concerned about the safety of our youth. We all are concerned about the safety of our children and protecting them from sexual abuse." Respond: "Many people are unaware that most sexual abuse is committed by straight men against children in their families. In one study, more than 98% of sexual crimes against children were done by straight men, many of them members of the same families." Add information: "Child sexual abuse needs to become a top priority of all people . Laws already exist that protect children. These need to be enforced. No single community can do this alone and rather than fighting one another, we need to combine resources to adequately address this issue."
Additional Tips.
To create a sense of safety, establish similarities between yourself and the audience: be aware of your appearance and dress, be personal, be positive and assertive, but also open and willing to be vulnerable.
Assume that the audience shares your basic values, at least to the extent that everybody want to be a good person and "do right". Assume they are motivated by love and basic respect for democratic principles.
Share the pain you've experienced around the issues; own your own difficulties in coming to understanding -- people tend to sympathize if they can see the pain their actions cause.
Try to stay calm and softspoken, make eye-contact and smile.
Don't be angry at people --direct your anger at the system of homophobia, or at the pain your loved ones have suffered, not at the people you are talking to.
Don't make fun of anyone -- use humor only if you think the audience (and those opposing you) will join in, and then do so very gently and with kindness.
Don't guilt-trip -- help people understand that they can take responsibility to end injustice without being "guilty" of wrong-doing or "sinning."
Points of Concern for Both Sides of A Debate. Attention is on the extremists on each side; both sides feel the other is engaged in distortion and exaggeration.
Most people on both sides acknowledge that the real difference of opinion is over homosexuality; most people recognize that all reasonable people, heterosexual or homosexual, condemn childhood sexual abuse by anyone.
Many people realize that they personally know friends, neighbors, colleagues or family members who are lesbian or gay, and they are concerned about how the outcome of political decisions will affect that person.
As parents, we want assurance that our children have the opportunity to learn our values and are not unduly biased by school- and/or state-imposed values.
Both sides are (or should be) concerned about how the community will reconcile after the debated referendum is put to a vote.