94 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION, VOL. PC-24, NO. 2, JUNE 1981

OTHER APPLICATIONS

In this discussion control skills and personal qualities have been related largely to presentation of your viewpoint before a formal audience, but they have much wider application. You'll find all this equally useful in presenting your personal

Abstract—Ten common errors cause most public speaking failures. A positive approach in three stages can increase your chance for success. Preparation: 1. Plan to have an effect; don't just be speech-giving-oriented. 2. Determine the audience's interests, motives, knowledge, attitudes, and values. 3. Be aware of your credibility with the audience. 4. Capture attention with a confident, motivating introduction. 5. Organize your information for understanding. 6. Plan the conclusion to again place your objective before the audience. Presentation: 7. Control stage fright and channel the energy into dynamic speaking. 8. Be physically active and purposeful with gestures; vary speech characteristics; be natural and direct. 9. Sense audience feedback and adjust to it. Preservation: 10. Prepare for questions from the audience.

OF THE many types of communication prevalent in business and industry, none is more important than

public speaking. Through presentations made to large and small groups, speakers attempt to persuade people, inform them, impress them, and entertain them. Unfortunately, public speaking is also the most frequently mishandled form of communication. Because of inadequate speaker performance, attempts to influence misfire, misunderstandings occur, images suffer, and ceremonies collapse.

While such public speaking failures occur in a variety of settings and produce an array of catastrophes, my experience with speakers in both industrial and college settings suggests that the causes underlying these failures are relatively few in number: ten, to be exact. Moreover, if speakers are aware of these causes, they can usually avoid them and thereby greatly increase their chance for success.

Public speaking involves a sequence of three stages: prepara­tion, presentation, and preservation. The preparation stage includes setting objectives, analyzing your listeners, planning strategies, and gathering and organizing information. Presentation consists of the verbal and visual delivery of the message and your adaptation to audience responses. Preservation, finally, comprises your ability to handle audience questions in a manner which preserves the positive impact of the speech. Because specific causes of communication failure occur during each stage, we consider them separately.

Reprinted with permission from Personnel Journal, vol. 59, no. 3, p. 206, March 1980; copyright 1980 by A. C. Croft, Inc.

The author is a consultant with Modern Management Methods, Inc., 2275 Halfway Rd., Bannockburn, IL 60015, (312) 945-7400.

viewpoint in committee hearings, seminars, and one-to-one conversations.

You can even use these skills before a television camera. However, appearing on television is different from standing before a roomful of people, and there are some extra things to know about TV. These appear in the box.

STAGE I: PREPARATION Most speaking failures occur before a word is even uttered. In

fact, committing any of the six preparatory mistakes will virtually doom you to failure.

1. Procedure Rather Than Product Orientation Too often I have found that people view speaking as an end,

rather than as a means. When I ask them, "What are you trying to accomplish?" they reply, "I want to give a good speech," or "I want to avoid making a fool of myself." While those may be legitimate concerns, they are not acceptable objectives for speech-making. You shouldn't deliver a speech simply to prove your artistry in speech-making, and you certainly shouldn't view speaking solely as an opportunity to avoid looking foolish. Rather, speeches should be designed to have some impact on audiences—to give then new information, to change their attitudes, to secure their commitment, or, at the very least, to keep them entertained. Communication is a tool for achieving results, not an art to be admired for its own sake.

The problem with a "procedures" orientation is that it distracts you, the speaker, causing you to become concerned with matters that are really of secondary importance. For example, people have often told me, "My main goal is to give this speech without the audience's knowing how scared I am." Their over-concern with stage fright only frightens them further. Eventually this vicious circle reduces them to virtual incoherence. But perhaps more important, their concern for self rather than audience causes them to lose sight of the real objective of public speaking: to have an impact on their listeners. Similarly, speakers who are determined to enunciate clearly while speaking, to use the most colorful visual aids ever seen in the Western Hemisphere, or simply to "get it over with" are preoccupied by the procedures of public speaking, not the product. Rarely do such speakers deliver successful speeches.

To train college students and professionals in public speak­ing skills, I have developed an approach called "communication by objectives" in which speakers begin their preparation by phrasing a single declarative statement:

/ want (who) to (what) (where, when, how) because (why).

This statement, after the blanks have been filled, becomes the central concern of the speaker, and all of his or her preparation

How to Overcome Errors in Public Speaking JOHN E. BAIRD, JR.

BAIRD: OVERCOME ERRORS IN PUBLIC SPEAKING

is directed toward its achievement. Through this technique, then, the speaker is forced to focus on the desired results, rather than on secondary considerations. Communication by objec­tives thus helps to ensure a product, rather than a procedure, orientation.

2. Inadequate Audience Analysis Speeches are given for audiences. Again, their sole reason for

existence is, or should be, to have some impact on the audience members—to produce some change in their beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors. As in any analysis of a situation involving change, you should ask three questions: "Where are we now?" "Where do we want to go?" and "How do we get from here to there?" Establishing speaking objectives answers only the second question, but from it, speakers often proceed directly to the third, never bothering to answer the "Where are we now" query. Clearly, this is a serious oversight. You cannot effectively plan change without knowing what is to be changed. But all too frequently, the sort of audience analysis needed to answer that first question is neglected by prospective speakers.

Although a variety of audience characteristics are relevant to the concerns of public speakers, five are of particular impor­tance: interests, motives, knowlege, attitudes, and values. In preparing your speech, try to answer five analytic questions:

• What things relevant to my topic is the audience probably interested in?

• What things that the audience wants or needs can my speech provide?

• What things relevant to my topic does the audience probably know about?

• How does the audience probably feel about me and my topic?

• What values probably underlie this audience's attitudes?

Certainly, the accuracy with which you can answer these questions is determined by the acquaintance you have with the audience. Nevertheless, my experience suggests that most speakers know enough about their audiences to answer these questions with a reasonable degree of accuracy.

Many sources of failure in public speaking aie eliminated by this sort of systematic audience analysis. By assessing audience characteristics, you are far less likely to present uninteresting or irrelevant information, to give information that the audience simply cannot understand, to misjudge their attitudes toward the topic and you, or to offend their value systems. In addition, audience analysis allows you to establish the subgoals that must be accomplished if the objective of the speech is to be met. You can then determine whether it is necessary to interest the audience in the topic, to relate the topic to their needs, to establish more credibility, to provide them with specific information, to change their attitudes, or to deal with their value systems in order to achieve desired changes. By analyzing the audience in this fashion, you can then develop strategies that directly relate to the listeners' characteristics.

3. Underdeveloped Credibility Despite its name,"source credibility" or "speaker credibility"

is not a characteristic of speakers at all. Rather it is the amount

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of believability which the audience attributes to the speaker. "Believability" is obviously crucial to a speaker's success. If an audience is inclined to believe the speaker, he or she will have a good chance of convincing them to accept the information and arguments presented in the speech. If the audience is inclined to disbelieve the speaker, however, then nothing he or she says is likely to have any effect. Yet few speakers bother to assess their own credibility with a particular audience, to develop it, or to use it to best advantage, and often they fail as a consequence.

Research suggests that credibility consists of five dimensions, or five specific judgments which an audience makes about a speaker. Briefly, these include

• Competence The expertise of the speaker with the speech topic

• Character The speaker's honesty and sincerity • Intent The purposes of the speaker: whether he or she has

the audience's best interests at heart • Dynamism The general level of forcefulness, energy, ag­

gressiveness, or boldness with which the speaker presents the message

• Personality The speaker's general likability. Overall, audiences believe sources whom they believe to be

competent, trustworthy, well-meaning, dynamic, and likable; and they distrust speakers they believe to be incompetent, dishonest, self-oriented, timid, or obnoxious. But credibility also is of two types: initial and elicited. Initial credibility refers to your image before the speech and is determined by the audience's previous experiences with you, by your reputation, by your status or rank in the organization, and by the similarity of your and the audience's attitudes and values. Elicited credibility springs from the speech itself. Generally, credibility is enhanced if you show an understanding of audience needs, appear well-informed and fair-minded, express yourself dynam­ically, and appear to like the audience. Thus, credibility which initially is rather low can be improved as the speech progresses.

4. Ineffective Introduction Perhaps the most important part of a speech is the

introduction—the first few words the audience hears. If the introduction is well done, the audience will be inclined to listen to the information and arguments which follow. If the introduc­tion is poorly done, however, the audience will simply stop listening, and the remainder of the speech will be wasted. But despite the obvious importance of the introduction, some speakers fail to give it adquate attention during their prepa­ration. They carefully gather and arrange their information, but they prepare little or nothing with which to introduce it. Perhaps they expect some sort of inspiration to strike just as they begin to speak. Usually, it does not. All too often, such speakers begin by saying, "Uh, this evening, uh, I'm gonna talk about, urn, a couple of things." And just as often, the audience thinks "So what?" and mentally exits.

An introduction must be carefully designed to do two things. First, it must get the attention of the audience. Several devices have proved to be useful attention-getters. A series of rhetorical questions causes the audience to become mentally involved in the speech; a brief narrative arouses their curiosity; a familiar quotation appeals to their past experience; a humorous

96 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION, VOL. PC-24, NO. 2, JUNE 1981

ZlGGY drawn by Tom Wilson. Copyright 1978 by Universal Press Syndicate, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

anecdote (one that is truly funny) entertains them; a reference to the occasion establishes speaker-audience commonality, which involves them; a reference to the speaker's own experience interests them. None of these is sure-fire, but each of them, when presented reasonably well, seems to gain an audience's attention.

Second, the introduction must motivate the audience to listen. Audiences are essentially selfìsh-they will devote their atten­tion to the speaker only if they perceive some benefit in doing so. Thus, the introduction must relate the topic directly to the audience, answering the question, "What will this information do for me?" Perhaps it will help them achieve something they desire; perhaps it will allow them to improve their situation; perhaps it will assist them in avoiding undesirable future consequences. In any case, it falls to you, the speaker, to analyze audience motives and then state specifically in the introduction how the topic relates to them. By so doing, you can virtually be assured of an attentive audience-at least for the next few minutes.

5. Unclear Organization Of the ten faults considered here, this may be the most

common. On too many occasions I have watched highly credible speakers talk to attentive listeners and fail miserably— fail because their information was a garbled, incomprehensible mess. If information is to have impact, the audience must be able to understand it, and if the audience is to understand the information, it must be clearly organized. Far too many speakers overlook this fact. They worry about having enough information, but they neglect to organize the materials they have collected.

A variety of organization patterns may be used:

• Chronological Organizing according to time of occur­rence: "First, Hitler invaded Poland. A few weeks later, he invaded...."

9 Spatial Organizing according to physical arrangement: "You walk through the door and turn left. Then you come to a hallway and turn right."

• Sequential Organizing according to a series of steps: "First, you address the ball with the club. Second, you begin the backswing."

• Hierarchical Organizing according to a series of subdivi­sions: "At the top is the president. Below her are two vice-presidents. Reporting to each of them...."

• Classificational Organizing according to category: "There are two types of golf clubs: woods and irons. We will consider each type in turn."

6. Weak Conclusion When preparing a speech, it is all too easy to overlook yet

another important element of success: the ending. Usually, speakers plan their introductions and presentations with some care, but they neglect to plan the conclusion, apparently assuming that the momentum of the speech will serve to carry them off the platform and on to glory. It does not often happen that way. Instead, the speaker comes to the end of the speech and discovers that he or she still is standing in front of the audience with nothing left to say or do but blush, mumble "thank you," and slink from the platform, perhaps destroying the speech's previous impact.

A strong conclusion does two things. First, it summarizes the speech, touching on the important points covered in the introduction and main body. Second, and more important, it incites. It challenges the audience to take action, and then it tells them specifically what to do and when, where, and how to do it. In effect, the conclusion places your objective before the audience and virtually demands that they carry it out. Preparation of such a conclusion, then, is vital to your talk's achieving its objectives.

STAGE II: PRESENTATION The six errors just described are committed prior to the

delivery of the speech; the next three occur during the presentation. Like the preparatory faults, these inadequacies of presentation also can be fatal, turning even the best prepared address into a monumental disaster. 7. Uncontrolled Stage Fright

Stage fright plagues literally everyone to some degree. Fear of failure produces an all too familiar array of symptoms: loss of memory while speaking, trembling voice, shaking hands, quaking knees, and an almost uncontrollable urge to exit stage left and never speak again. But surprisingly, stage fright can produce another very different set of symptoms: clear thinking, physical energy, and an emotional "high" that makes speaking a truly enjoyable experience. The factor that seems to determine which set of symptoms a speaker will experience is control: unsuccessful speakers allow fear to preoccupy and control them, whereas successful speakers control their fear and use it to their advantage. The key issue with stage fright is not how can it be eliminated, for elimination is impossible. Instead, you must decide how it can be controlled to channel the energy fear produces into more effective speaking.

Several methods for controlling stage fright have, in my experience, proved useful:

BAIRD: OVERCOME ERRORS IN PUBLIC SPEAKING

• Try Physical Exercise By expending energy before speak­ing, you can release some tension and keep your energy at a manageable level. (Indeed, the stage-fright symptoms of quavering voices, shaking hands, and quaking knees are nothing more than signs of uncontrollable energy.) Thus, if you walk up a flight of stairs on the way to a meeting, or walk a long distance to the room, or use unobtrusive isometric exercises while waiting to speak, you will be better able to control the physical symptoms associated with stage fright and to channel the remaining energy into delivering the speech.

• "Objectify" the Situation Think calmly and rationally about the audience, setting, and speech, and realistically assess the latter's potential consequences. I have found that public speaking is most frightening when it is dealt with in abstract terms, and that when speakers begin to rationally analyze the situation, their fears diminish.

• Establish Realistic Goals for Yourself Fear of failure decreases as the chances for success grow, and establishing realistic goals ("I am going to deliver this information in a coherent manner"), rather than unreachable ones ("I am going to deliver the greatest speech in the history of the Western world"), does much to bolster your confidence and reduce your apprehension.

• Distract Yourself If you focus on the speech, repeatedly rehearsing it mentally, rather than on the situation, your fear will probably be greatly reduced.

• Get Help Therapies (such as systematic desensitization), which are too complex to describe here, are available through professional trainers to speakers who still are unable to cope with their fears. Usually, however, using one or more of the first four techniques reduces fear to manageable levels and greatly enhances your odds for success.

8. Ineffective Delivery Although 1 firmly believe that content is more important

than delivery, the fact remains that many speeches are de­stroyed by speaking techniques that are boring, offensive, inappropriate, or distracting. The list of delivery faults is endless, but among the more common are overly tense or overly relaxed posture, lack of physical movement or aimless wander­ing, absence of gestures or meaningless flailing, lack of eye contact with the audience, monotonous voice, too fast or too slow rate of speech, nonfluent speech (that is, speech containing a high proportion of "urns," "uhs," "you knows," and the like), and too loud or too soft vocal volume. Each of these faults hampers the effectiveness of the speech's message and increases the likelihood of failure.

The following guidelines will do much to promote effective delivery:

• Be Active Successful speakers make a conscious effort to move as they talk, using gestures and general bodily positions to add meaning to their words.

• Be Purposeful While successful speakers are active, they are not uncontrolled. Their gestures, posture, and so on all

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have a purpose and are added to the presentation to produce a specific effect.

• Be Varied Repeating the same behavior time after time becomes distracting. Effective speakers vary their physical and vocal behavior to maintain audience interest. Of particular importance is vocal variety (changes in pitch, volume, and rate), which makes listening to the speech much easier and more pleasant for the audience.

• Be Natural Effective delivery springs from a curious mix of planning and spontaneity. Good speakers plan to use gestures, vocal inflections, and so on actively, purposefully, and with variety. They do not, however, plan specific behavior for particular places in the speech. Rather, they do what feels natural, so that their observable behavior springs from the meaning of their words. Thus, good delivery involves a conscious decision to be active during the speech, coupled with a natural flow of behavior as the speech progresses.

•Be Direct Effective speakers talk to their audiences; ineffective speakers merely talk in front of them. Particularly important here is eye contact: To talk to an audience, one must look at them. Speakers who simply read their speeches or who study their notes rather than the audience might as well be all alone—and if they perform in that fashion long enough, they will be. Maintaining direct eye contact with the audience is crucial to good delivery.

9. Insensitivity to the Audience Even when speakers look at their audiences, they may not

"see" them. A good speaker adjusts to the audience in both preparing and presenting the message. He or she tries to judge them ahead of time and construct the speech accordingly, but the speaker must also try to "read" the audience feedback and adjust to it while talking. Unfortunately, many speakers are insensitive to or unconcerned with their listeners; they say whatever they want whenever they want, regardless of the audience's nature and responses. On one occasion, I attended a convention at which the after-dinner speaker began his presen­tation with a joke so off-color that it would empty most locker rooms. The audience gasped, the speaker was embarassed, and the remainder of the speech was a catastrophe. The speaker should have known better. With just a little forethought, he would have realized that the audience was mixed, sophisticated, and conservative, and that this sort of humor would be highly inappropriate. At still another conference, I watched an after-dinner speaker talk for an hour and a half when he had been scheduled to speak for 15 minutes. After 30 minutes, people began to fidget; after 45 they began checking their watches; after 60 they began shaking their watches in full view; after 75, they began talking to each other audibly, passing notes to the speaker telling him to quit, and leaving. Finally, after 90 minutes and with half the audience gone, the master of ceremonies interrupted the speaker and ended the ordeal. Clearly, this speaker was insensitive to his audience, and a lot of embarrassment and hard feelings resulted.

We have already looked at preparatory audience analysis, so I simply repeat this principle: Carefuly judge audience interests, motives, knowledge, attitudes, and values, and then select materials appropriate to those characteristics. But remember,

98 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION, VOL. PC-24, NO. 2, JUNE 1981

too, that audience analysis does not cease when preparation has been completed—you must analyze and adapt to audience feedback while you are actually speaking.

Feedback from an audience is primarily nonverbal, as the listeners express their reactions through a variety of behavior. Four cues are particularly revealing: audience eye contact, facial expressions, head movement, and posture. Audiences tend to look at you if they are interested in your message, if they understand the message, and if they agree with it; they tend to look away if they are bored, confused, or in disagreement. Facial frowns appear when the audience is confused or disagrees; pleasant expressions usually indicate agreement. Head nods demonstrate interest (except when a listener is nodding off to sleep), understanding, and agreement, while head shakes usually indicate confusion, disagreement, or even disgust. Finally, an upright, erect posture is usually indicative of interest, while a slouched position suggests boredom. By "reading" all these cues, you can gain insight into how your speech is being received.

The next issue, then, is how to adapt to feedback. If the audience agrees, move on to the next point. There is no sense in continuing to fight a battle already won. If they disagree, explain the point carefully, offer new evidence and arguments to support the point and refer back to things with which they previously agreed-matters from which the present issue logi­cally follows. If they seem to understand, proceed ahead. However, if they seem confused, repeat the point (they simply may not have heard it), and if confusion still reigns, clarify it with an explanation, details, analogies, examples, or definitions. Finally, if they are interested, everything is fine. But if they seem bored, try to enliven the presentation with a story, a joke, increased activity in delivery, rhetorical questions, or some other interest-gaining device. If no device works, get the speech over with as quickly as possible, and begin thinking about how to do better next time.

STAGE III: PRESERVATION

10. Mishandling Questions Even when a speech has been carefully prepared and

beautifully delivered, the battle may not yet be won. Many situations allow time for the audience to question the speaker, and if the question-and-answer session goes badly, the positive impact of the speech is lost. I have seen this very thing occur many times: A speaker becomes flustered, angry, confused, or upset while trying to handle audience questions and ruins the impression made by the speech. Thus, to preserve the effect of the message, you must prepare as carefully for audience questions as for the speech itself.

Two steps are involved in preparing for the questioning period:

• Know the Subject and Audience Thoroughly If a speaker's knowledge is limited to only the content of the speech, audience questions will quickly reveal his or her vast regions of ignorance.

• Try to Predict Question Areas What aspects of the speech is the audience likely to find particularly intriguing? What subject areas are covered only briefly? What additional facts is the audience likely to want for their own use?

Dealing with audience questions also requires the careful application of several techniques. Generally you should react to all questions, even if the reaction is simply to postpone consideration of the question until a later time. You should consider the entire audience, not allowing any one person to dominate the interaction. If necessary, admit ignorance, rather than trying to "fake it" on questions to which you have no real answer. Finally, avoid confrontations with hostile questioners and respond to questions in a friendly, encouraging manner so that other people with inquiries will feel more inclined to participate. In actually handling questions, you should repeat the question to be sure that everyone has heard it, rephrase the question if it is unclear (being careful to preserve the original meaning), postpone it if it is potentially troublesome (perhaps by offering to speak with the questioner after the meeting), and analyze it for the audience if it is a "loaded" question asked to trap or trick. By preparing for and handling questions in this manner, you will be able to preserve the positive effects your speech has produced.

DRAMATIC RESULTS In my contacts with college students and business people, I

have witnessed an enormous number of public speaking disasters. Virtually all of these calamities were attributable to one or more of the errors in this "ten least wanted" list. Happily, I also have witnessed an enormous number of improvements among speakers trained to apply the principles explained here. By establishing objectives, analyzing the audience, developing an effective introduction, enhancing credibility, organizing the information, strengthening the conclusion, controlling stage fright, improving delivery, adapting to the audience, and managing audience questions, you can virtually guarantee yourself a successful speech. None of these principles is easy to apply, and all of them demand time, thought, and effort, but the results they produce are dramatic.