FOR HENRY: Read attachments. Write 200 words reflection
novakingwai
oral_communication_competencies1.pptxOral Communication “Having a conversation”
Writing that Works (2010). Oliu, Brusaw, & Alred
Chapter 14 – Giving Presentations
This presentation series is on oral communication, more specifically, public speaking in presentation formats. The purpose is to build your comfort and your skills in speaking in front of others by learning to create a logical, organize, clear and succinct messages.
Oral communication is everywhere everyday, and it’s not just about what you say, it’s about HOW you say it too. The skills discussed in the chapter and from additional resources can apply as much to a 60 seconds to a 50 minute presentation.
In business, there are multiple opportunities for speaking up in public – meetings – both formal and informal, training events, sales presentations, company presentations, marketing or education videos, and more. These communications can be scripted (as done in these PowerPoints, can also be in videos), they can be memorized, extemporaneous (which means planned and no notes) and impromptu (in the moment speaking).
So, let’s get started.
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“ It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech”
~Mark Twain
Every business expects its employees to be well versed of what they are good at and who they are as individuals representing their business. Self-awareness is key and foundational to presenting ourselves and what/who we represent well.
Mark Twain makes a valid point that presentations require preparation. Writing and presentations do have a lot in common. In both cases (assuming that we have read a little bit more from last week on writing) content must be logically organized, clear, and succinct. More so because we will always be judged on how well we present ourselves.
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Nervous about presentations?
Prepare and deliver presentations
- Identify steps in the process of speech planning
- Review Listening (pg. 516)
This chapter emphasizes the need for identifying and learning the components of oral communication as applicable to a business environment. It is also important to understand that the techniques we use to organize our presentations can also be applied to presentations of any duration.
Preparation and organization are two main areas that, when well developed prior to an oral presentation, can significantly contribute to reducing levels of speaking anxiety and boost confidence in our organizational abilities.
Effective listening is central to success of both writing and speaking. Let’s spend some time developing skills to help us prepare clear and concise presentations.
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Obstacles to Success!
FEAR & Not Prepared
Successes
FEAR
Not Prepared
Breathe and relax.
Prepare more material than you need.
Believe in your success.
Calm your fight-or-flight base, located in the emotional center of the brain.
Be comfortable in your shoes.
Rehearse & rehearse again!
(DG)
The two top public speaking obstacles - fear and unpreparedness.
Fear is most prevalent. Fear in the brain causes fear in the body. And fear in the body causes and mind to prepare for action instead of a focus on thinking. You’ve all heard of adrenaline – it’s the body fuel for immediate power – the fuel that puts energy in your arms and legs. It’s power of fight or flight. So, now you know that a little about our biological fear system. The question is now how do you manage this nature?
Listed on the slide are strategies that help you.
As simple as it is, breathe. Slower deep breathes connect you to you.
Prepare more than you need.
In the moment you feel ‘freaked out,’ say to yourself STOP.
Believe in yourself. Careful with that negative self-talk, it’s a killer. Tell yourself good encouraging affirmations instead of ‘I can’t do this. ‘ Remember you believe you more than anyone else – be very careful how you talk to yourself.
Be comfortable in your clothes.
Practice. Practice lessens the fear of the unknown as after practice it is known.
Second is not being prepared. We don’t want to be publicly embarrassed. We dislike feeling vulnerable. That’s why sometimes, we can to depend on note cards and the like – to create more safety. As you can guess, the answer to this problem, is to prepare your talk and practice it. What you want is to feel more in control.
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What you Say – Verbal
Obstacles
Successes
“Why we are talking about this?”
“Is there a point? Where are we going?”
Lacking stories
Wrong balance of self-disclosure
Believing Powerpoint is the talk instead of you
Audience-centered language
Strong clear engaging introduction
Body points with interesting evidence/support/stories
I have a dream. I have a dream. I have a dream.
A positive wrap up
(DG)
“Why are we talking about this?” Ever had that question in your mind during a talk. That means the speaker did not give a good introduction – since your don’t understand purpose.
“Is there a point? Where are we going?” Same thing – an introduction needs to be clear on what will be covered.
Good speeches include stories that illustrate the point. Tell stories.
Remember the speech is you, PowerPoints are the visual AID.
In public speaking, it’s good to replicate as people’s attention waxes and wanes. Help them ‘get’ the information by repetition.
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Transitions are speaking like punctuation is to writing.
| To show comparisons | To illustrate cause & effect | To contrast ideas | To summarize | To illustrate sequence |
| Similarly | as a result | on the other hand | in conclusion | first, second, third |
| in the same way | therefore | and yet | In summary | following this |
| likewise | hence | at the same time | finally | later |
| in comparison | because | in sprite of | let me conclude by saying | earlier |
| just as | thus | however | altogether | at present |
| consequently | as we have seen | in the past | ||
| until now |
Success in a message is flow, and the key to flow is order and transitioning. Identifiers to move from topic is critical in delivering an effective message. You need to help the audience follow you like punctuation on the page. One way to think of transitions is ‘stating the obvious.’ You need to tell the audience what you often think does not need to be said. Some examples are
“Now that we’ve …let’s…”
“I will focus on three…”v
“Not only was…”it was also…”
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How you say it (body)
Obstacles
Successes
Poor posture
Fidgeting
Standing in one place or pacing
Talking to the floor or the ceiling (wrong eye contact)
Wrong clothes for the event & audience
Not smiling
Incongruence facial movements to content
Back to audience
Negative energy
Regulate your energy.
Dress appropriately.
Smile
Move, be comfortable
(DG)
Poor body control gets in the way of a good speech and excellence in body control boosts your performance. Watch TV professionals and notice how smart they with their body movements. Most movements are slow and deliberate.
Be careful of your posture. You are telling the audience your confidence level.
Be careful of moving your fidgeting with your fingers or hands or feet or legs, etc.
Make decisions about where you stand and when and how you move. For me, I find that moving is more comfortable than standing in one place, but remember, when you move, you need to stop and stay there to let your audience catch up to you. Too much moving and you’ll annoy them. Importantly, when you start a talk, be sure to command the room by standing in the center (with confident posture.)
Smile. The audience likes a friendly face. However, be sure your facial expressions fit your content.
As a rule, don’t turn you back to the audience. If you must, re-engage by walking to the center of the room standing as close to them as possible.
Check your mood at the door. What I mean by this is, maybe you just got some bad news, right before your talk and you are feeling extra stressed. Don’t take this in the event. It’s not fair to your audience and will interfere with your performance. Leave it outside of the experience. You can, I promise, control your energy to that degree. Just give it a try.
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How you say it (voice)
Obstacles
Successes
Poor articulation
Too fast, too slow
Too soft, too loud
Too high, too low
Raising your voice at the end of a sentence.
Disfluences
Causing attention on your mistakes
Good rate, volume, pitch, depth
Enthusiasm
The sound quality of your voice is also impactful to an event. Here are some tips.
Practice your speech to hear yourself say the words. And, importantly, you can hear what words you don’t say well. Practice them till you do say them well or drop them from the talk.
Also, talk slower upfront. People talk faster when they are nervous as they are working to complete the experience as fast as possible. Slow down. Your audience needs more time to process the information – there is more physical space between you.
Talk loud enough for your audience to hear you but not too loud or they will feel like you are shouting at them. Balance the sound with passion and enthusiasm.
Careful of your disfluences. Work to eliminate them, but don’t stress about them – that adds to them. Disfluences are saying um, etc. You do think when you are buying time in choosing your words.
If you make a mistake, don’t bring attention to it in your mind or for the audience. If you speak it your just caused the audience to look directly at it. If you can, depending on the infraction, simply don’t mention it, just keep going.
And, finally, ladies, Don’t raise you voice at the end of your sentences, like ‘valley girls.’ That voice behavior does not buy you respect in business.
Next slide.
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Pay Attention to your audience.
Obstacle
Success
Ignoring the audience, and just delivering your message.
Feel the energy back.
Notice the individuals.
Notice the collective energy.
In your talk, you need to pay attention to your audience, so you can modify the moment. If the majority are not paying attention, then it’s time to add a story. If they are talking, maybe you need to use your body or perhaps silence to quiet them down.
Notice the energy they are giving you. Remember, this talking experience is simply a conversation. The audience is talking to you – verally and nonverbally.
Notice, too the individual energy, you may need to take action to control the room.
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Strategies for successful presentation!
Prepare => practice => present
The next set of slides is to review the decisions that you need to make to create an effective public speaking event.
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Success of a presentation!
Determine our purpose
Analyze our audience
Gather supporting information to strengthen our claims, proposal, point of view, etc.
Logically organize our message (flow of information)
Important to have a clear understanding of your purpose – the steps we take to develop a speech parallels with the steps we follow to write a document!
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Determine purpose!
“If you do not know where you are going, you are likely to wind up somewhere else”
To inform?
To persuade?
To entertain?
To demonstrate?
Ceremonial speech?
Your purpose many times may include more than one category – must get a better understanding of your assignment or project or proposal.
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purpose
What is your purpose or goal?
What is the result you want?
Have a goal.
One sentence – what do I exactly want to do?
What do I want my audience to know? Do?
Context and culture affect our purpose and how our react to it.
Why are you doing what you are doing? To help us focus, research, organize, prepare, and deliver!
Have a goal! A clear goal makes it easier to develop an effective speech.
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Patti Wood, an international speaker, author, and trainer based in Atlanta, is known for her expertise in body language and presentation skills. She makes over 100 presentations each year.
In the article on Presentation Pitfall by Tonya Layman (June 2011), Patti states, “you have to have a clear purpose that outlines what the audience is going to take away from your presentation. When you start you want to say, ‘Today I am going to talk about’ and then explain what the subject matter will be so that audience can expect to learn something. Then they will say to themselves ‘I am going to have to be active to receive this information.’ Use the word “you” often. Get rid of “I” and “me.” Use phrases like ‘Here is something else for you.”
Patti believes “connecting with your audience” is key to an excellent presentation. “That is what distinguishes an OK presentation from a phenomenal one. Afterward, people will talk about it as an experience rather than as a speech.”
Source: Presntation Pitfall by Tonya Layman (June 3, 2011)
Retrieved from: http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/print-edition/2011/06/03/presentation-pitfall.html?page=all
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/print-edition/2011/06/03/presentation-pitfall.html?page=all – Presentation Pitfall (Click on the link above in Slide View mode)
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Analyze your Audience to tailor Content!
Who are the key members? Employers? Management?
Knowledge? Beliefs? Attitudes?
What are their personal preferences?
Which demographic characteristics are significant?
Age, sexual breakdown, occupations, racial and ethnic groups?
What is the size of the group?
Knowledge base of your topic?
What questions might you be asked?
*Remember – keeping your message audience – centered?
Be audience-centered. By now, you are familiar with this concept. Take time to learn to apply the communication principle.
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Consider the Environment / context
Location & room layout (lectern)
How will your voice carry in the room?
Technology & visuals aids & lighting
Time limits
Notes
(DG
The physical environment impacts the speaking event. The size of the room, the available technology, lighting, etc. Do your best to have advance knowledge of the event in order to create a positive easy experience.
One particular example comes to my mind. I once had to do a presentation for an undergraduate class. I had planned for some in class activities which required students to move around and take some notes from a PowerPoint work. However, when we showed up to class, the aircon was not working, the room was warm, and the projector was not working. I decided to take the class outside and do an alternative in class activity outside in the lawn, that took the same amount of time had I had the activity in class.
You cannot control everything the way you want but you can learn to manage your environment the best you can. You can improvise your ability to present your content and message with practice.
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Gather / determine supporting materials
Narrow your topic – form your key (3-5 main ideas)
Decide on the supporting materials
Then Gather them
books, magazines, quotations, analogies (direct and implied comparisons), stories / illustrations, explanations, expert opinions, comparisons to show similarities or differences between two items.
(DG
Narrowing your topic is very important to focus your writing and speaking.
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Give a structure to your speech
Construct an INTRODUCTION
Organize your BODY – key ideas with transitions
Offer CONCLUSION
Stephen Covey once said, “Begin with the end in mind.”
Review your three/five main ideas, and offer final summary/remarks.
(DG
Introduction – tell them what to expect (hook)
10-15% of the total speaking time
A personal experience or a Story
Humor (Be careful!)
Question
Sample (Be careful!)
Startling statistic (cite your source)
Quote
Refer to audience : “We’re here today to…”
Refer to the occasion: “I know your all worried about the rumors of cutbacks in staff. I called this meeting to…”
A Rhetorical question
(DG
The introduction is the most important. You loose them up front – they are lost the entire talk. I spend about 45% of my practice on an introduction.
Use Speech Planning Document to help construct your speech. It’s a template where you can fill in the blank. It’s helps you with organization and transitioning.
Your opening is to get their attention. You task is to choose a introduction that brings them present – brings them to the moment.
You can use a story, a question, a statistic, and quote perhaps. It doesn’t need to be dramatic, it just is to bring the audience to you.
Be careful if you choose humor, as not everyone thinks the same thing is funny, and be careful with sample as the audience’s attention will be drawn to the sample and away from you – the speaker.
Above all, be relevant. Make sure your opening is 100% to your point. Off point is confusing to the audience.
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Body – tell them what you planned to say – “Content”
Relate to audience needs
Tell a story
Anticipate their questions
Use clear, vivid language
Ask questions/ Ask for opinions
Ask for opinions
Pause – use silence
Give them something to do
No more than 5 points.
Each point is one idea.
Stay on topic – each to support the thesis.
(DG
You are used to in your academic career focusing on content, but guess what, it’s the least remembered. Work to make your topics interesting. Add stories. Give them something to do, if you can. Be sure to limit the number of main points – the recommended number is up to 5 points. And, remember to transition between points. Transitioning is speaking is like punctuation in writing.
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Conclusion – Be memorable
5-10% of the speaking time
Restate your main points
Describe the next steps
Ending on a strong and positive note
Connect back to your introduction
End with a challenge, end with a quote, question, startling statement, refer of audience, refer to occasion, or humor.
End with a ‘call to action’
The conclusion is to be short – maybe a recap or a call to action, etc. Leave the audience remembering you on a positive note.
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Visuals? How to Boost the Message.
Use multiple mediums:
Charts, pictures, tables, Powerpoint, handouts, etc.
Powerpoint(s)
BBB – Big, Bold, Brief (unlike most academic deliveries)
Pay attention to your color choices
Thirty percent of our brain is dedicated to vision. Use this information on our biology to impact how you deliver information. Use lots of visual strategies. Use charts, graphs, demonstrations, etc. Liven up your talk. Make it real.
Powerpoints are still a popular avenue of visual aids to a presentation. Be sure to take a look at the master of powerpoints and presenting, Steve Jobs. Notice how simple and visual his works are. (The powerpoints in academic convey considerably more content.) business powerpoints have more persuasion than academic powerpoints.
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Benefits of visual aids
Improves listener memory
Speeds comprehension
Adds to speaker credibility
Copyright Cengage © 2011
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Percentage of
Audience Recall
The old saying “A picture is worth a thousand words” is often true.
A single graphic visual could sometime help an audience understand complex, technical information more quickly than either a long verbal explanation or a table loaded with statistics and numbers.
A study conducted by the University of Minnesota and the 3M Corporation also found that an “average” presenter who uses visuals can be as effective as an “expert” presenter who uses no visuals. Use of visual aids can help a low-credibility speaker overcome an audience’s initial doubts about them and elicit same level of audience retention as high-credibility speakers (Seiler, 1971) [Seiler, W.J. (1971, Winter). The conjunctive influence of source credibility and the use of visual materials on communication effectiveness. Southern Speech Communication Journal, 37, 174-185.
A right-brain/left-brain theory indicates why visuals speed listener comprehension. While left hemisphere seems to specialize in step-by-step, analytic processing of information, and pays close attention to details, the right hemisphere seems to specialize in simultaneous processing of information as a whole and pays little attention to details [Bryden, M.P., & Ley, R.G. (1983). Right hemisphere involvement in imagery and affect. In E.Perecman (Ed.,), Cognitive processing in the right hemisphere (pp.116-117). New York: Academic Press.
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Videos
Be careful of the background
Be careful of your eye location
Make it brief and simple and short
Be careful of your personal brand
Relax and enjoy it.
Prepare notes but don’t simply read them
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219524
Video are everywhere now. It’s time to get good at using this medium. This course itself is an example of how our deliver educational materials through video.
Here are a few tips.
Control the background. Make sure it fits your content and is not distracting
Script your message in order to make it brief and on point.
Relax.
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Handouts? Have a Chaos Plan
Too early and attention goes to the document and not you.
In the middle creates distraction and chaos.
Too late and the point is missed.
Handout cause chaos. Create a strategy for handling the chaos. In the beginning, they read it instead of listening to you. In the middle of your talk, the distraction destroys attention on the content and can cause people to miss information. Handouts handed out after the talk is over are discounted – as they information has already been conveyed.
So, make your handout decision and make your chaos strategy to control the experience.
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How do I handle questions?
Use body language to show you’re listening.
Repeat the question for all to hear.
Keep answers short and to the point.
State ground rules to maintain control.
Respond unemotionally.
Clarify any confusion.
Handling questions is impactful as well. State the ground rules like ‘we have time for 3 questions.’ This helps you control the room. Use your body to show your listening. Lean forward when someone is talking and walk towards them, if you can.
Repeat the question for all to hear.
Be shorter rather than longer in your responses, as people are tired and most often ready to leave.
And, if you get publicly challenged, you’ll need to maintain control of the room and control of your emotions. If you choose, you can say to that person that you’ll be happy to have a longer conversation with them after the close of the talk. Then ask for another question.
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How much do I Practice?
Rehearse 3 to 6 times
On your feet (maybe in front of friends)
Expect your talk to run longer/shorter
Spend extra time on the introduction. Your anxiety is highest at the start.
In the real setting
Practice in small bits, then put the whole speech together.
Pay the most attention to the introduction & conclusion
Start as a natural with less reference to notes!
Business Communication texts tell you to practice 3 to 6 times. I say, practice, till you are comfortable – how ever many times it takes. We don’t get good at a task by reading about it, we get good at a task by doing it.
If you can practice in the setting so you can hear your voice in the room. It also helps you feel comfortable as now you have experienced it – the experience is not new. That eases your nerves.
So…practice lots.
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Chart1
| Verbal and Visual | Verbal and Visual |
| Visual | Visual |
| Verbal Only | Verbal Only |
Sheet1
| After 3 Hours | After 3 Days | |
| Verbal and Visual | 65% | 85% |
| Visual | 72% | 20% |
| Verbal Only | 70% | 10% |
