Tip 632: Do Your Public Speaking Homework, Part Two

From the Public Speaking Workshops: Do Your Homework, Part Two

Last week, we began a series on public speaking. 

Last week, we focused on identifying—and tailoring our presentation to—our audience. 

This week, we’ll focus on the topic—the subject, the content, the focus—of our presentation. 

An absolute, bedrock, critical, principle in our public-speaking workshops is that every presentation you’ll ever give—and every presentation that’s ever been given, from Cicero to Winston Churchill to Joe Biden—will fall into one of two-and-a-half categories.

“Two-and-a-half categories”? Yup. Two-and-a-half categories:

1.    The Action Presentation. This is the presentation that moves people to do something. You want your listeners to approve a budget, to get vaccinated, to build a children’s park (or to not build a children’s park over the Hazmat site). Key question: “What do you want your audience to do?”        

2.    The Information Presentation. This is the presentation that keeps people informed. Reports. Updates. “This is what’s happened this week (and no action is necessary).” Key question: “What do you want your audience to know?”        

2.5 The Entertainment Presentation. We labeled this “2.5” because it’s a very small part of business speaking. An after-dinner speech. A humorous recap of the year. Probably the most difficult of the categories because being funny ain’t easy. Key question: “How do you want your audience to feel?”         

Your presentation must clearly fit in one of these categories. If your audience doesn’t recognize that, your presentation has failed. 

Next week, we’ll ask ourselves questions about the circumstances of our presentation.

We love this stuff. This is fun.