Element Descriptor
Being able to give short/long accounts of what you are doing, how and why, is crucial. Failure to do good public speaking costs you credibility, potential support, momentum.
Level descriptors
| Novice | Practitioner | Expert | Ninja |
|---|---|---|---|
| Able to give a short speech to a small/”sympathetic” audience on a topic that you are very knowledgeable about/confident on, with lots of notice and practice and moral support. Loud voice Eye contact Keeping to the point… Breathing. That’ll do… | Able, with limited preparation time, to give a speech (of varied length) to a largely sympathetic audience with low expectations, on a narrow range of topics, with extensive use of notes. | Able to give a long/short speech almost off-the-cuff in a variety of settings on contentious and uncomfortable topics (epater the bourgeoisie!), dealing with hecklers (if not Heckler and Koch) and poor acoustics etc. Able to get grudging respect for your position from people who still don’t agree with you. | They use you to sell ice to the Inuit. On virtually zero notice you can produce and deliver an appropriate length talk on a wide variety of subjects that strikes the right balance of appealing to emotions and intellect of your audience. You are usually swamped by people begging to volunteer their time and energy, when they’d originally come to throw rotten fruit at you. Obama sulks at the mention of your name. |
Element Overview Essay
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The main cause of people being bad at public speaking is they’re so nervous about it. It’s many people’s nightmare to stand on the stage with everyone looking at them. feelings, they’re going to be judged.
The consequences – Either the people who’ve been most supportive and encouraged in their earlier life to think that they are all that, who stick their hands up when volunteers are required. So you end up inevitably with a lot of white, middle aged men, who, by some mysterious process all seem to have come from elite schools. This is changing, thank goodness. But if you’re serious about diversifying the number of voices who speak out or for a movement, then you’re going to need to do informal and formal public speaking, training. And of course, there are no end of pages on the internet and books that offer advice, on how to do this in various settings,
The basic overview advice would be obviously be prepared. be succinct, keep it simple. Have a strong vivid start opening line.
Say what you’re going to say but don’t say it more times than you need to.
And get off the stage with the audience wanting a bit more.
You will get better at this over time.
Especially if you get someone to audio record you or video record you ideally video and then they can go through how you did and help you tackle any tics. habits that you have put on great.
There was also fantastic spoof TED talk about how TED talks are done.
I do not recommend of course that you do it in that style, but the spoof is hilarious
Development Resources
Assessment Resources
