Public Speaking Course

Public Speaking

Course Objectives

* Dealing with delegate's own feelings
* What already works about you as a speaker?
* How face to face communication works
* Why we get public speaking anxiety?
* How to overcome fear of public speaking?
* Instant hints and tips for public speaking
* What happens in front of an audience
* To Practise a whole range of techniques
* How to cope with hecklers and awkward questions.

Course Preparation

1) Prepare a brief description of your thoughts and personal experiences of speaking in public, placing particular emphasis on what you feel you do well.

2) Bring along any specific situations (and related material) in which you find public speaking particularly challenging.

Public Speaking Course Programme : Delegate input Delegates will give a brief summary of their public speaking experience.

Dealing with the Fear

We open the day by exploring what happens when you have to speak in public?

Your hands may sweat and your mouth goes dry. Your knees may shake and a quaver affects your voice. Your heart may race and those well known butterflies invade your stomach.

When all that happens most people don't think of getting their message across in a compelling and interesting way; they just think of getting off the 'stage' as quickly as possible! The good news is that it's normal to be nervous and have a lot of anxiety when speaking in public. In a way, it's less normal not to have nerves or anxiety; in fact, to feel you have a phobia about public speaking.

Public Speaking Stretching Exercises A series of short exercises designed to stretch people's awareness and capacity:

Presence An exercise in audience contact that helps with managing the Fight or flight response

Everyday objects An exercise in overlaying an ordinary text with an extra-ordinary message

Passion An exercise in the use of passion to communicate

Talking up and talking down Exercises to raise awareness of how attitude, body language and mood can affect the way people feel about your message.

Turning points This is an exercise in using personal material to produce empathy and strong feeling in an audience.

Public Speaking Dynamics - how it works This is an introduction to the dynamics of face-to-face communication - looking at what affects the participants and how they might take more charge of situations.

It gives an overview of how communication works at its best and identifying where it can go wrong. We 'unpick' all the elements that go into effective communication and explain to people how they can be more in charge of the communication dynamic.

The IMPACT model of public speaking: Using the mnemonic IMPACT as an easy to remember tool on the main points of public speaking we will take a look at the dynamic in which it takes place and a look at the fundamentals of public speaking:

The use of the Individual's best skills to convey a clear Message, well Prepared, with good Audience interaction, presented with Conviction and supported by the right Technical backup

Location Location Location! A brief discussion on the various arenas in which participants speak. This is to get a picture of some of the challenges that arise in certain settings.

Preparation Tools Here we have a number of different processes that emphasise the value of preparation and rehearsing different approaches to any speech.

Use of media and structure An exercise that looks at the various media available during a speech

A look at the uses of modular vs linear structure

Speaking to Different Levels of Understanding This exercise looks at assessing the levels of understanding within the audience, and delivering information with varied emphasis, without appearing to patronise.

30 Second Presentation Each delegate will work with a model that allows people to put across a powerful 'presentation in 30 seconds.

This is a terrific tool for strongly influencing people when under pressure.

How to build confidence by defusing your assumptions Your audience can be your friend. Unless you know you're absolutely facing a hostile group of people, human nature is such that your audience wants you succeed. They're on your side! Therefore, rather than assuming they don't like you; give them the benefit of the doubt that they do. We look at how mind reading assumptions is a confidence killer.

Keep them awake The one thing you don't want is for them to fall asleep! But make no mistake public speaking arenas are designed to do just that: dim lights, cushy chairs, not having to open their mouths - a perfect invitation to catch up on those zzzzs.

Ways to keep them awake Here we explore some sure fire techniques to keep your audience engaged including working with story, metaphor, humour (where and when appropriate) the five key questions, body language and eye contact.

Prepared Speeches The second part of the day is work on prepared speeches.

This is not intended to rehearse the actual speech but rather to use it to incorporate the principles worked on earlier in the day. As always the session is modified according to the level of the attendees.

Before and After the Speech Techniques for interacting with your audience before and after the talk.

How to make yourself available to as many people as you are comfortable with, and to join and leave groups with ease.

Staying relaxed and dealing with last minute anxiety.

Confidence by Numbers These two exercises look at the power of instantly changing your confidence and sense of importance when relating to others.

Handling Difficult Questions Techniques to:

Help stay on the front foot
Remain confident and professional when you don't know the answer
Practise saying you don't know
Refer people to others
Be able to say what you do know
Treat each question as an opportunity, rather than a missile

Deliberate Misunderstanding To demonstrate how effective analogies can be, we have a light-hearted exercise where people have to deal with being wrong-footed by the rest of the delegates who deliberately misinterpret what they are trying to talk about.

Public Speaking Summing up and Personal Take Out We will spend a short time reviewing the course work.

Each person to identify and talk briefly about:

What they know they will take from the day that they know they will use

What support or development they need over the coming months

What they need to do to ensure they practise.

We would highly recommend that people do some kind of presentation or public speaking event as soon as possible to reinforce the work of the programme.