Basic Public Speaking, 2nd Edition- The Roadmap to Confident Communications
Douglas Parker, M.Ed.
The Listeners’ Role
So, is Public Speaking just
about talking? Not really. People also need to hear the
speech. You as an individual can do a great deal to make sure that your
group "hears," because a group is really only a collection of individuals. Each member in the group will grow
through the group's help, and as such, the group itself will mature. The formal task of the group is to offer
appropriate feedback to each speaker through formal and informal critiques. You need to know really only three
formal rules for offering feedback to a speaker:
-Describe the speaker's
mistakes – do not get personal.
-Offer specific
comments.
-Only comment on things that
the speaker has control over, such as tone, content or speed.
The group has two basic
roles while a member is speaking, one as a listener and one as an
evaluator. Their responsibilities
are outlined below:
-Do not judge the person by
his or her speech. Be genuine and
sincere.
-Do not practice or think
about your comments while the person is speaking.
-While the person is
speaking, have a positive regard for the speaker.
-Try to understand the
speaker from his or her point of view.
-Share feelings and thoughts
with the speaker.
-Make "I" statements (e.g.,
"I think your speech was…" or "I
feel you need to…")
-Be specific.
-Be constructive, not
destructive.
-Remember that each speaker
is unique.
-Comment only on the speech
- not on the speaker.
-Do not project your own
biases onto the speech.
The
group is a collection of individuals, each with his own or her own thoughts,
likes, dislikes, prejudices and preconceptions. Sometimes communication becomes
difficult in such a group, so it is important to realize from the start that it
is okay to disagree with someone in the group. To disagree does not mean to become
disagreeable. Rather, the even flow
and exchange of ideas are most beneficial and can only be hampered by a
disagreeable person.
Experiential Learning and Processing
Recent brain-based research
has indicated that learning by experience alone is only a small part of the
total learning process. While the
experience is valuable, you need to take the time to review and process what
just happened with your group.
Coaches have always known to break down each game for the players on
videotape or the chalkboard to evaluate what happened and how to improve for the
next time out. For you to develop
as a speaker, you too will need to do some work after each speaking event with
your group. After each speech your
group should assess your efforts so that you can take an honest look at your
presentation, help you decide what you did well and what you need to improve,
and guide your plans for your next trip to the back of the podium. While speaking experiences will help you
to become accustomed to public speaking, processing your efforts with your peers
will help you to develop the confidence to communicate!
A good deal more goes into human communications beyond the words themselves. There are issues that affect the sender and the receivers: is someone tired today, did someone have a fight with somebody else the night before, or did someone discover the wrong side of the bed while waking up today? What is even more troubling is that in general people do not always listen closely enough to the words of a speech so that only approximately 10% - 15% of what you know and you learn comes from what you hear.
The Group's Goals
The
group has three basic goals to attempt to achieve while a speaker is
speaking. All three are important
elements of the speaker's development:
-To assess the speech and
the speaker by first creating standards for evaluation.
-To lower the speaker's
anxiety by focusing and not providing distractions.
-To prescribe the steps to
take for the speaker to improve confidence.
The
group must be careful to avoid hidden agendas in its critiques. A hidden agenda is a message or a
purpose beneath the message being communicated to the speaker. An obtuse example of this might be if
someone in the group is madly in love with the speaker, his or her critique
might be overly kind, even if a more terse critique was due.
Five Absolute, Guaranteed
Ways to Discourage a Speaker during a Critique
To help you get a better
feel for some of the behaviors that really damage a speaker's pride and eventual
development, these five simple actions can delay a person's growth. When you are speaking you tend to be
very aware of how people are sitting and what kinds of facial expressions they
are wearing. It is important to
realize that even when a group seems to be paying attention, if their reflective
comments are not honest it is potentially damaging. To avoid these problems, whatever you do
as a member of a group when offering a critique do not:
-Offer clichés as real
advice.
-Drift off during the speech
and then pretend to have all of the right comments.
-Try to show-off by listing
trivial concerns or to nit-pick.
-Make comments directed at
speaker's personality.
-Moreover, maybe the worst
of all - let someone "get away" with a flawed speech. This proves that you do not care about
the speaker's growth enough to take the personal risk of being honest. It is very difficult to develop trust
within a group if everyone sweet-talks to one another instead of employing
genuine communications.