Art of public speaking

“The mind is a wonderful thing. It starts working the minute you are born and never stops until you get up to speak in public.” – Roscoe Drummond

5th April 1999, I vividly remember that particularly long day till date. I was sitting one among the unsuspecting audience in a function in my small town. A man came up to dais for the welcome speech. He opened his talk addressing the crowd as Ladies, Gentlemen and the Chief guest…Suddenly, the chief guest was caught curling up with embarrassment punctuated by uncontrollable laughter from the crowd. The speaker went on to apologize explicitly saying that he didn’t mean that chief guest is neither, and in a haste and badly wanting to soothe him, committed another blunder by saying that the chief guest is in fact just the opposite prompting someone naughty from the audience to ask him did he mean that he is both? generating more laughter and whistles from a section of the audience! Chief guest was staring at the speaker now and the speaker continued saying that my duty today is that I need to introduce chief guest to you all and it’s not just a duty, but a foremost one, and not just that, but also a big responsibility to welcome him for our function and reveal his interesting past to you all and made an unintentional pause, where sarcasm was palpable and once more audience were in splits. He continued saying that before I introduce chief guest, I must tell you why this function is important, not just important but very important, not just for me, but for all of you here, not just that, but even for our chief guest today. We have been doing this function annually, I don’t have to say why or how and for what purpose we do it, because you already know it. There started hullabaloo in the audience. Appealing to the audience to maintain peace, he said I’ve come here to say just two words about our chief guest today because I know that your time is important! Without wasting much of your time, I must tell you that the more I tell about him is only less. He said, as you all know he is a famous lawyer, chief guest was seen almost jumping out of his seat, and someone ran up to the speaker and whispered something in his ears. He cleared his throat and told us that unlike he said earlier, chief guest is not a famous lawyer but a famous politician. He added that today’s function is happening only because of the chief guest as none were willing to sponsor the function and this man came up to us voluntarily after getting the slightest hint that we were planning to do this function in return for the speech that he gets to deliver before you!! Let’s welcome…nobody heard his further words as it got drowned in the thunderous applause and roaring laughter from the crowd.

Friends, have you embarrassed yourself or others when you were asked to deliver a speech going out of your mind, did you freeze on the stage with fear and acted as if you were instructed ‘statue’ from a little boy in the audience, have you repeated same sentences again and again while not coming even remotely close to the point until the audience bled in their ears? If yes, please spare your audience any speech in future or much better, learn the art of public speaking!

Public speaking framework broadly has 3 sections viz., how to open the talk, how to handle your content and how to close the talk. You need to approach them creatively to become an attractive public speaker. So, let’s approach them creatively starting with coining them with something catchy say, Take off, Cruise and Land.

1.Take off

Methods and /or memory tips :

C(uriosity)hinese H(umour)ats S(tory)eldom I(llustration)mpress E(xhibit)uropean Q(uestioning)ueens

Choose one of the above methods to begin your talk.

Example topic : chess

My unique implementation :

I’m combining Curiosity, Exhibit and Humour, this combination is equivalent to Decoy tactic in chess, in the sense, making a piece curious to go to a certain square of our choice by luring it with a sacrifice and suddenly unleashing a checkmate which is both humorous and ostentatious simultaneously!

Begin your talk in an unorthodox fashion [while toying with the Queen (real chess piece) in your hand for Exhibit purpose] by saying

In the month of December, year 1999 (whether it really happened or not is unimportant, what is important is to arouse curiosity in audience – people start wondering what happened in Dec 1999), there was a world wide survey done to find out who among us love the game of chess more?, men or women?, and the result was an eye opener – women! Reason: Queen has got all the powers and can roam around easily while King is mostly stationary and powerless!

If you take off in the above fashion, audience will appreciate the humour, laugh with you and will be with you for the rest of your talk!

Take away message:

Open your talk in an unorthodox fashion to exert a certain draw on your audience!

2.Cruise

Methods and /or memory tips :

Just rehearse your content umpteen times so that your confidence level during the talk will be good. Use your creativity and form a mental story of your content.

Example topic : chess

Very early in my life, Chess cast on me a spell, in the loveliest sense of the word, and I’m glad that I’m the prisoner of this lifelong spell.

God knows whether this game of games was invented by Indians to excel in war strategy and to sharpen one’s wits as historians claim or brought down to the planet by extra terrestrials to kill our monotony as in the latter case, it appears that superior species knew very well that chess is the tool to improve one’s imagination, aesthetic judgement, IQ, memory, calculation power, confidence, logic, strategic thinking, long range planning, tactics, problem solving ability, eye-brain coordination, reading skills, visual spatial intelligence, complex thinking skills, research skills, self esteem and sportsmanship!

Attention teenagers! Playing chess gets you engrossed in the beauty of the game which improves your concentration level and patience, in turn resulting in easy and stress free focus towards studies. In my opinion, chess offers your mind a welcome occupation which helps you to effectively combat hormonal rush that’s currently charging you which is the root cause of all teenage related distractions viz., frequent moodiness, anger, shouting etc.

Don’t go by my words, instead involve in the game and experience the umpteen benefits for yourself!

Chess isn’t just a game, but a conversation between two artists. It’s brilliant fireworks minus smoke and noise. It’s a painting done without brushes, in the sense, apart from matching in aesthetic matters, just like in painting, in chess too, your mind needs to race ahead of strokes I mean moves that you’re eventually going to make! It has got the melody of music and if you learn to play smartly, your opponent will have to hear the music often, if you know what I mean. It has an old man’s long life experience, invented in 6th century A.D, and yet has youthful exuberance, fresh with new and beautiful ideas.

Take away message:

Know what you’re saying and be sincere with your content.

3. Land

Methods and /or memory tips :

Summarize/Float a great quotation/Appeal for action/Compliment the audience sincerely/Humour/Powerful and relevant short poem/Climax ending.

Close your talk with one of the above methods.

Example topic : chess

My unique implementation :

I’m combining humour and appealing for action.

In our country, royal attention is on cricket from the general public, sponsors, organisers and politicians while the royal game chess is being meted out with step mother treatment. Iff this game interests you, consider to play and watch it more often (appealing for action).

If there is cricket being played in the heaven, let there be rain as well! (humour)

Take away message:

Going on and on covering the same ground, blabbering and repeating yourself like a buffalo in the wild grazing round and round will bore your audience until death! Know how, where and when to stop.

-- Aruna

   05-03-2020