Effective Presentation Speaking

So how do you go about deciding what to say to your audience, and how to say it? To be an effective speaker, you need to make strategic decisions before and while you speak, considering the occasion for your presentation, your relationship to the audience, and your particular purpose.

More than two thousand years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote Rhetoric, a public speaking handbook that describes the strategies and devices successful speakers use to express their views clearly and persuasively. Today we think of rhetoric as the art and craft of influencing how an audience thinks, feels, and behaves while and after we speak. Aristotle’s insights still inform many of the speaking strategies we use in presentations today.

Why refer to presentations over public speaking? A presentation occurs any time a speaker creates meaning with verbal and nonverbal messages and establishes relationships with audience members. Presentations occur in many contexts. They can be used to teach classes, brief colleagues, summarize sales strategies, and coach middle-school soccer teams. Public speaking is a specific kind of presentation that occurs when a speaker addresses a public audience, like in community, government, or organizational settings. Public speeches are often used to campaign for votes, give sermons, dedicate monuments, and deliver public lectures.

You will likely make more presentations than public speeches over the course of your life. When employers are asked about the skills they seek in new employees, the ability to present ideas and information to colleagues and clients is near the top of the list. What they’re looking for are good presenters, not necessarily dazzling public orators. Of course, if you decide to run for public office or become active in community issues, or if you become famous—as either an expert or a celebrity—you will give many public speeches. Rest assured, the principles and skills described in this book will be useful to you if such a future awaits. But most of us, most of the time, will make presentations in smaller, less public settings.

Throughout this book, we still use the phrase public speaking and the word speech when the situation warrants those terms. No matter the term or phrase, when you are speaking to an audience, you will need to make many critical decisions to ensure that you achieve your speaking goal.