The following contains excerpts from the resource, Presentation Effectiveness (Carnegie Training Institute).
At our music school in Odessa, Texas we believe that music is more than sound, it is, in fact, relationships. Learning to communicate effectively is of paramount importance, when dealing with the subject of relationships. Music and the arts are essentially mediums of communication and require knowledge and skills based upon the following information.
This book is subtitled, ‘Speak More Effectively’. It is meant to be a study guide to improving the art of communicating to others in public speaking.
The first area that is covered is to become excited about your subject. “Even people with only mediocre speaking ability may make superb talks if they will speak about something that has deeply stirred them.”
At our music school in Odessa, Texas we help the student emotionally connect with the materials they are presenting. Being passionate about presenting one’s art is the starting point to delivering it to others in a meaningful way.
The second point that was made was to look inside yourself for topics to talk about. “Beginners are more likely to look inside a magazine for topics…I would listen with respect and interest if you spoke about something you have experienced and know about, but neither I nor anyone else would be interested in a subject which you yourself are not interested in…instead of something you don’t know enough about to merit our attention or respect.”
Point three is to talk from your heart, not from a book. In this section, the author shared an experience of being one of three judges in an intercollegiate speaking contest over the NBC network. The judges never saw the speakers, but rather listened from a control room. “The first speaker spoke on ‘Democracy at the Crossroads.’ The next one spoke about ‘How to Prevent War.’ It was painfully evident that they were merely repeating carefully rehearsed and memorized words. But the speaker who got the first prize began, ‘I have just come from a hospital where a friend of mine is near death because of an automobile accident. Most automobile accidents are caused by the younger generation. I am a member of that generation and I want to speak to you about the causes of these accidents.’ Everyone in the studio was quiet as he spoke. He was talking about realities, not trying to make a speech. He was speaking about something that he had earned the right to talk about. He was talking form the inside out.”
A great violin instructor, Dorothy Delay was once asked by a student, “What is performing? She tipped her head back and looked at the ceiling for a moment, then said, “Performing is like telling the truth.” At our music school in Odessa, Texas we try to help students connect to their inner convictions as they present their art truthfully.
The fourth point is to have an eager desire to communicate. Merely earning the right to talk about a subject will not always produce a superb talk. Another element which must be added is having a deep and abiding desire to communicate our convictions and transfer our feelings to our listeners. History has repeatedly been changed by people who had the desire and the ability to transfer their convictions and emotions to their listeners. If John Wesley had not had that desire and ability, he could never have founded the Methodist church. If Hitler had not had the innate ability to transfer his hate and bitterness to his listeners, he could not have seized power in Germany and plunged the world into war.
Point five is to talk about your experiences. Right now you are prepared to make at least a dozen good talks which no one on earth could make except you, which are the subjects of your experiences. Your progress as a speaker will depend far more on your choosing the right topic to talk about than upon your native ability as a speaker. When you speak about something that has moved you deeply, some experience you have been thinking about for twenty years, you will be far more effective in your communication.
Point six is to talk about things you have studied. After you have learned to talk about your own experiences, and gained confidence by doing so, you will want to talk about other subjects. A great way to get started is to carry around a scribbling book. This is what Voltaire did, one of the most powerful writers of the eighteenth century. In this book, he jotted down his fleeting thoughts and ideas. If you are irritated by a discourteous clerk, for example, jot down the word ‘Discourtesy’ in your book, then try to remember two of three other striking incidents of discourtesy. Select the best one and tell us what we ought to do about it, and you instantly have a two-minute talk on the subject of Discourtesy. As soon as you start looking for topics for talks, you will find them everywhere: in the home, the office, the street.
The simple fact is, the more prepared you are, the easier it is to present what you have to share successfully. At our music school in Odessa, Texas, we help students prepare effectively, so that they are confident in what they communicate to their audiences.
Point seven is to ‘sing something simple.’ Don’t attempt to speak on some world-shaking
problem such as ‘The Atomic Bomb.’ The author recently had a student talk on ‘Back Doors’, which he loved because she was positively excited about her newly painted back door. Almost any subject will do if you have earned the right to talk about it through study or experience, and are excited about it and eager to tell someone about it.
Following is the back door speech:
“Four years ago, when I moved into my present apartment, the back door was pointed a drab shade of gray. It was terrible. Every time I opened the back door it gave me a depressed feeling. So I bought a can of beautiful blue paint and painted the outside of the back door, the jambs and the inside of the screen door. That paint was the most exquisite shade of blue that I had ever seen; and every time I opened the back door after that, it seemed as though I was looking upon a bit of heaven.
I was never more angry in my life than when I came home one evening not long ago and found that the house painter had pried open my screen door and painted my beautiful blue door a most hideous shade of putty gray. I could have cheerfully choked that painter.
You can tell a lot more about people from their back doors than you can from their front doors. Front doors are often prettied up just to impress you. But back doors tell tales. A slovenly back door tattles on t slovenly housekeeping. But a back door that is painted a cheerful color and has pots of blooming plants sitting around and garbage cans that are painted and orderly, that kind of back door tells you that there is an interesting person with a lively imagination living behind it. I have already bought a can of beautiful blue paint; and next Saturday, I am going to have a gorgeous time. I am again going to make my back door cheerful and inspiring.”
Eight principles that will help immensely in preparing for talks:
- Make brief notes of the interesting things you want to mention.
- Don’t write out your talks. If you do, you will use written language instead of easy, conversational language, and will probably find yourself trying to remember what you wrote.
- Never, never, never memorize a talk word-for-word. You are almost sure to forget it. In a longer talk, then you can make some brief notes to glace at occasionally.
- Fill your talk with illustrations and examples. This is the easiest way to keep things interesting. As an illustration, the author tells a story of a congressman years ago who made a stormy speech accusing the government of wasting our money by printing useless pamphlets. He illustrated what he meant by saying the government had printed a pamphlet on “The Love Life of the Bullfrog.” The author declares, “I may forget a million other facts as the decades pass, but I’ll never forget his example.” Not only does the example teach, but it is about the only thing that does teach.
- Know far more about your subject than you can use. Ida Tarbell, one of America’s most distinguished writers was once asked by S.S. McClure to write a two-page article on the Atlantic Cable. Miss Tarbell interviewed the London manager of the Atlantic Cable and got all the information necessary to write her five-hundred word article. But she didn’t stop there. She went to the British Museum library and read magazine articles and books about the Atlantic Cable, and the biography of Cyrus West Field, the man who laid the Atlantic Cable. She studied cross section of cables on display in the British Museum, and them visited a factory on the outskirts of London and saw cables being manufactured. “When I finally wrote those two typewritten pages on the Atlantic Cable, I had enough material to write a small book about it. But that vast amount of material which I had and did not use enabled me to write what I did with confidence and clarity. It gave me reserve power.” The same principle goes for speaking. Make yourself something of an authority on your subject. Develop that priceless asset known as reserve power.
One of the most important things we help students at our music school in Odessa, Texas understand is the value of over-preparing. Having deep preparation in core competencies and the most foundational skills gives a solid floor upon which to build any other project.
- Rehearse your talk by conversing with you friends. Will Rogers prepared his famous Sunday night radio talks by trying them out as conversation on the people he met during the week. He would discover which of his jokes went over, which remarks elicited people’s interest.
- Instead of worrying about your delivery, find ways of improving it. Much harmful, misleading nonsense has been written about delivery of a speech. The truth is that when you face an audience, you should forget all about voice, breathing, gestures, posture, emphasis. Forget everything except what you are saying. What listeners want, as Hamlet’s mother said, is “more matter, with less art.” Do what a cat does when trying to catch a mouse. It doesn’t look around and say, “I wonder how my tail looks, and I wonder if I am standing right, and how is my facial expression?” The cat just wants to catch its dinner! Don’t think that expressing your ideas and emotions before an audience is something that requires years of technical training. Just watch a group of children at play. What fine expression! Jesus said, “Except ye become as little children, ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” Yes, and unless you become as natural and spontaneous and free as little children at play, you cannot enter the realm of good expression.
Your problem isn’t to try to learn how to speak with emphasis, or how to gesture of how to stand. These are merely effects. Your problem is to deal with the cause that produces those effects. That cause is deep down inside you; it is your own mental and emotional attitude. If you get yourself in the right mental and emotional condition, you will speak superbly. You won’t have to make any effort to do it. You will do it as naturally as you breathe.
- Don’t imitate others; be yourself. The author admitted that he set about writing a book about public speaking by gathering the ideas of many people, compiling them into his own book. “This hodgepodge of other people’s ideas that I had written was so synthetic, so dull that no business people would ever stumble through it. So I tossed a year’s work into the wastebasket, and started all over again. This time I said to myself: ‘You’ve got to be Dale Carnegie, with all his faults and limitations. You can’t possibly be anybody else.’ So I quit trying to be a combination of other people, and rolled up my sleeves and did what I should have done in the first place: I wrote a textbook on public speaking out of my own experiences and observations and convictions.”
When Irving Berlin and George Gershwin first met, Berlin was famous- but Gershwin was a struggling young composer working for thirty-five dollars a week in Tin Pan Alley. Berlin, impressed by Gershwin’s ability, offered Gershwin a job as his musical secretary at almost three times the salary. “But don’t take the job,” Berlin advised. “If you do, you may develop into a second-rate Berlin. But if you insist on being yourself, someday you’ll become a first-rate Gershwin.” Gershwin heeded that warning and slowly transformed himself into one of the significant American composers of his generation.
At our music school in Odessa, Texas we try to help students see the unique gifting and potential inside themselves and to draw it out of them, develop it and watch it flourish to the benefit of others.
“Be yourself! Don’t imitate others!” That is sound advice in music, writing, and speaking. You are an original. Be glad of it. In the last analysis, all art is autobiographical. You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You can write only what you are. You can speak only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or worse, you must play your own instrument in life’s orchestra. As Emerson’s essay states:
“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that although the wide universe if full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil on the that plot of ground which is given him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”