success stories about you, in any chosen activity or behaviour. Your belief system will file these imagined success stories as if they were real.
Remember, the subconscious mind does not know the difference between real and imagined.
Thus the feedback to your conscious mind, when you think about an activity, will become positive rather than negative. Your previously stored negative information is overpowered by positive thoughts.
Your belief system is changing from negative to positive and, therefore, your attitude towards any chosen new behaviour or activity, such as public speaking, will become positive rather than negative.
It will take some time, (21 days at least) to re-program your subconscious mind. Psychologist generally agree that a particular behaviour will likely become a habit if performed for a minimum of 21 consecutive days. It takes at least 21 days to get used to a new home, so give your mind some time to get used to a new way of thinking. During this time don’t allow your negative imagination, your false self to take over. Don’t allow your mind to get into the “what if” mode. You will see positive results if you persist in the reprogramming techniques.
The ideas shared in this chapter are not new, but they are summarized here, so that you can take advantage of them in your pursuit of becoming a more confident public speaker.
YOU, TOO, CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
It is fortunate that the philosophy of learning has changed for the better. Teachers who ridicule students in front of their peers are no longer tolerated. Teachers still make students get up in front of the class to give individual presentations or to participate in group presentations, but today they encourage students rather than ridicule them. Only in this way will the learning process of speaking in front of a group of people become a positive rather than a negative experience.
I sincerely hope that “Powerful Presentations” will help many students to enjoy the process of learning how to make effective presentations and that teachers will continue the new trend of providing positive feedback and encouragement to their students. The result will be that those students, once they become adults, will have positive attitudes towards standing up and speaking in front of an audience. This will certainly change our society, as the silent majority becomes smaller. The fate of the nation will no longer be decided by a small vocal minority. People all over will speak up and help decide our future!
You, too, can make a difference, but no one knows yet! You are still part of the silent majority! Decide today to follow through with your idea of making this one presentation.
Start with a short 3 minute speech at an informal gathering or make a short business presentation. (See EXERCISES in the APPENDIX)
Then, do another one, and then another! Pretty soon you will have overcome your fear of public speaking and instead, you and your audience will both participate in ‘the joy of public speaking’.
You now have the mental and emotional knowledge to overcome your fears...you know that you can do it...start applying that knowledge today! In the chapters that follow, you will learn the physical skills of communication.
CHAPTER ONE
COMMUNICATION
The sender
Listening and understanding
Listener induced roadblocks
Speaker induced roadblocks
The five great rules of selling
Audiences
Speech venue and audience analysis
COMMUNICATION
Peter Drucker, management consultant wrote: “As soon as you move one step up from the bottom, your effectiveness depends on your ability to reach others through the spoken or written word.” He also wrote: “This ability to express oneself is perhaps the most important of all the skills a man can possess.” This book, “Powerful Presentations” is written for all people, both men and women, who want to learn how to write and deliver a speech.
Before we write our first speech, let us briefly explore the various elements of communication that are involved when we present a speech. For the purpose of this book I would like do define successful communication as the skill of sending a message which is clearly understood by the receiver and acted upon in the way the sender intended. Three essential components are involved: the sender, the message, and the receiver. The key element in communication is understanding.
The Sender
The sender is you, the message is your speech, the receiver is your audience and the understanding is realized by your presentation skills. Professor Herbert Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase: “the medium is the message.” This is true when we consider that the media influences our daily lives in just about everything we do and think.
However, when you are delivering a speech and we accept that “the medium is the message”, consider that you are the medium! Therefore “you are the message!”
It is not only the content of your speech, which creates the desired message. It is, in a very large part, the image you project through the application of appropriate presentation skills! You can read the best speech in the world, but without some basic presentation skills, the audience will tune out and politely smile at you during the length of your presentation, while in fact, they are miles away in their own dream world. Similarly, Richard Burton or Robin Williams could hold an audience spellbound by reading the Yellow Pages.
If you want to hold an audience spellbound, pay particular attention to the material covered in Chapter Four of this book “How to project the right personal image”. It will help you understand that you, your speech, and your presentation skills together, present the complete picture. They fuse to become one, because... “You are the message!”
Listening and Understanding
We think about four times faster than we can listen to the spoken word. In other words, during a presentation, the audience has spare time. As a speaker we have to try to eliminate this spare time by capturing the attention of the audience and keeping their interest throughout the speech.
We would like our audience to practice active listening, so that their thoughts concentrate on:
- Thinking about our concepts and main ideas
- Generating conclusions
- Anticipating and weighing evidence
- Interpreting
- Summarizing what we say
Only when our audiences listen intently, will they be able to understand our message
