 Lecture 43 As-Salamu Alaikum. Welcome to the virtual university's course on business and technical communication. In lecture 43 and lecture 44, we will talk about giving speeches and oral presentations. In these two lectures, we will learn to categorize speeches and presentations according to their purpose, analyze the audience for speeches and presentations, and we will discuss the steps required in planning a speech or presentation. We will also learn how to develop an introduction, a body, and a close for a long formal presentation and select design and use visual aids that are appropriate for various types of speeches and presentations. Finally, we will talk about delivering your speech or presentation and how to handle audience questions effectively. Let's start with the key thing that you need to do, the main thing that anybody needs to do when they are starting out any form of communication within business. Let's have a look at an example. We are going to look at a communication dilemma at a company called the Keys Group. Brad Keys, who is the main person in the company, the owner of the company, believes that acceptance in the community is their key and his company is called Keys Group and the company operates 11 KFC fast food restaurants in Georgia, USA. Now, when Brad Keys started out in the restaurant business nearly 30 years ago, he realized that good food was only half the battle of being successful in the restaurant industry. He realized that if he wanted to succeed in business, he'd have to gain people's respect. He'd have to persuade bankers to loan him money and he'd have to persuade big companies to do business with him. He'd have to convince employees to work hard and convince customers to trust him. But how would he do all this? How would he do all this convincing? Now, if you were Keys, whether you were addressing a large crowd or an audience of one, what would you need to know about preparing, developing and delivering speeches? If you are a business owner and you want to interact with all these people, with bankers, with customers, with employees, then what would you have to do? Your speeches, your interactions, your communication with all these people will prepare, develop and deliver. Let's see what you would need. You would need to define your purpose, analyze your audience and develop a plan for presenting your points. Let's talk first about defining your purpose. Speeches and presentations can be categorized according to their purpose, much as interviews and meetings. The purpose helps you determine a content and style. It also affects the amount of audience participation that occurs. When you're trying to motivate or entertain your audience, you generally do most of the talking. During your speech, the audience then plays an essentially passive role. They listen to your remarks, but they provide very little input in the form of comments or questions. So therefore, then you control the content of the message. On the other hand, when your purpose is to provide information or analyze a situation, you and the audience generally interact somewhat. The degree will vary, but there will be some interaction. Basically, a group of people then meet to hear the oral equivalent of a written report. Then the audience members offer comments or ask questions. The most interaction occurs when your purpose is to persuade people to take particular action or collaborate with them in solving a problem or reaching a solution. Now, based on this purpose, you generally begin by providing facts and figures that will increase your audience's understanding of the subjects. You might also offer arguments in defense of certain conclusions or recommendations. In addition, you invite the audience members to participate by expressing their needs, suggesting solutions and formulating recommendations and conclusions. Because persuasive and collaborative presentations involve so much audience interaction, you can have relatively little control of them. And because you need to be flexible enough to adjust to new input and unexpected reactions, you cannot stick to a pre-written script. Now, a speech or presentation can often accomplish several of these purposes simultaneously. It is not necessary that a speech or presentation accomplishes only one purpose. It happens many times that a speech or presentation accomplishes only one purpose. Once you have defined your purpose, you will be analyzing your audience, which is another basic element of your speech or presentation. Now, this analysis of the audience is particularly important because you will be gearing the style and content of your speech. Two, your audience's needs and interests. First, you will consider the size and composition of the audience. You can easily involve audience members in your presentation when you speak to a relatively small group. With more than 12 people, it gets difficult to manage that involvement and it gets difficult to manage the give and take that is essential in building a consensus. So, then your approach may be more towards telling than asking because obviously, if it is a large group of people, then you cannot listen to everybody and give them information simultaneously. So, then it will be more one way. A homogenous group, a group that is very similar in their knowledge will benefit from a focused speech or presentation. A diverse group on their other hand requires a more generalized approach because their interests will be diverse, their knowledge level, knowledge basis will be diverse. Therefore, you will have to take a more general approach to the information that you give out. And then you will use less technical jargon and present a broader picture. Obviously, if there is a group in which everyone has the same level and their knowledge is the same, technical knowledge is the same, then the presentation will be more focused. But if there are people in your group whose knowledge is very different from each other, then your presentation may be less technical and more general. Another important factor is your audience's likely reaction to your speech or presentation. So, where you have to see how many people are in your audience, their knowledge base, you also have to consider what their reaction will be with your material. You need to decide whether your audience will be hostile, receptive or indifferent to your point of view. Try to learn as much as possible about their level of understanding. How much do they already know about your subject? Depending on that, you will be able to determine what you need to include in your presentation. Take a cold hard look at their relationship with you. Think, do they already know you? Do they respect your judgment? The answers to these questions will help you decide on the best way to go about planning your speech. If your listeners know you and respect your judgment, then your presentation will have a different style. For example, your listeners do not know you, they do not respect your judgment. They may be skeptical towards you. They may wonder who you are and why you are qualified. Then your content and style will be different. Then you come to planning your speech or presentation. Planning an oral message is similar to writing a written message. The planning phases are similar. You will develop the main idea like you do when you are planning a written message. You will construct an outline. You will estimate the appropriate length and decide on the most effective style. Now when you are establishing the main idea in your planning phase, you will start by focusing on the big picture. What is the main idea or theme that you want to convey to the audience? What is the general idea or theme that you are trying to convey to your listeners? Look for a one-sentence generalization that links your subject and the purpose to the audience's frame of reference. Much as an advertising slogan would point out to an audience how a product is useful for them. We are going to have a look at some examples of these generalized statements. If you say demand for your low-calorie, high-quality frozen foods will increase because of basic social and economic trends. A statement like this will alert your colleagues or the people you are presenting to to the fact that it will be useful for them to listen to your presentation because the company is going to face some profit. There will be a higher demand for the product that they are producing. Similarly, if you say reorganizing our data processing department will lead to better service at a lower cost. By giving a positive statement like this, it is a generalized statement. We are telling the people who are listening to your presentation of the benefit that they and the company will have. Similarly, we should build a new plant in Texas to reduce our operating costs and to capitalize on growing demand in the Southwest. Now, each of these statements puts a particular slant on the subject, one that is positive and directly related to the audience's interest. After this, we come to organizing the outline with a well-crafted main idea to guide you. You can begin to outline the speech or presentation. You will gear the structure. You will think about the subject, the purpose, the audience and the time allotted for your speech or presentation. If, for example, you have 10 minutes or less to deliver your message, you will organize your thoughts as you would in a brief memo or letter. You will use a direct approach if the subject involves routine information or good news and use an indirect approach if it involves bad news or persuasion. Longer speeches, however, are organized like reports. Like we said, short speeches or short presentations that are less than 10 minutes will be organized like a letter or a brief memo and will be used as a direct or indirect approach. If there is a long speech, the organization will be like a report organization. If the purpose is to entertain, motivate or inform, then you will use a direct order which is imposed naturally on the subject. If the purpose is to analyze, persuade or collaborate, then you will organize your material around conclusions and recommendations or around a logical argument. You will use direct order if the audience is receptive and you will use an indirect order if you feel that the audience will not be receptive to what you are saying if you are expecting some resistance to your ideas. A carefully prepared outline may be more than just the starting point for composing a speech or presentation. If you plan to deliver your presentation from notes rather than from a written text, your outline will also be your final script. Your outline is not just a starting point. If you want some notes in your speech to remind you of what you want to say, then your outline can also be a note. It can be used as a final script. And for this reason, the headings on your outlines should be complete sentences or lengthy phrases rather than one or two word topic headings. If you only write one or two words in your topic headings, you cannot do that as a script function. That is why it is better to write full sentences or long phrases for each point of your outline. Many speakers also include notes that indicate where visual aids will be useful. If you use visual aids, you can also write where and where which visual aid will be included. You will also remember where you have to include visual aids. You might also want to write out the transitional sentences that will connect the main points. Experienced speakers often use a two column format that separates the stage directions from the content. Stage directions, which we just talked about, if you want to add visual aids, you have to give yourself a prompt that there will be visual aids. If you want to write transitional sentences that will also be your stage direction. Just like in a theater, there are directions for the stage or if you are in a drama, there are also directions. Similarly, you have written directions for yourself that you have to write in one column. And the main content, headings, are written in one column. So that you do not make a mistake and say directions. You may have to adjust your organization in response to input from your audience. Especially if your purpose is to collaborate. You might want to think of several organizational possibilities based on what if assumptions from the audience. For example, if you want to collaborate and your audience will be very involved in your presentation. There will be two way exchange of ideas. Then you will have to have some flexibility in your outline. You will have to think of different possibilities as well. Now estimating the length how much time will you need for a presentation in order to make sure that it is effective. Time for speeches and presentations is often strictly regulated. So you need to tailor your material to the available time. Generally, it is told to you that you have enough time to give this speech and this presentation. So you need to fit that material in that time. And you can use an outline to estimate how long your speech or presentation will take. I am going to give you a few tips that will help you in estimating the length of your presentation to fit into a given time. The average speaker can deliver about 125 to 150 words a minute which corresponds to 20 to 25 double-spaced typed pages of text. So if you have 20 or 25 double-spaced pages of information typed, then you can deliver that information at the speed of 120 to 150 words a minute. The average paragraph is about 125 to 150 words in length so that most of us can speak a bit of about one paragraph in one minute. Suppose you want to make three basic points in your presentation. In a 10 minute speech, you could take about two minutes to explain each of these points using roughly two paragraphs for each point. If you have only 10 minutes and you want to explain 3 points then you can explain every two minutes in two minutes. After that you can introduce each of these points in 8 minutes and then you would have two minutes left to interact with the audience. So this way you can split your 10 minutes. Similarly, if you have an hour, you can introduce your presentation in the first 5 minutes. You can build a wrap-up and give an overview of your topic. Then in the next 30 to 50 minutes you could explain each of the 3 points. You could spend about 10 to 15 minutes or 10 to 13 minutes per point. This would be the equivalent of 5 or 6 type written pages for each point. And then your conclusions might take another 3 to 5 minutes. This will leave you about 10 to 20 minutes for responding to questions and interacting with the audience. Now, this is an idea that you have as much time as the material is, you split it. But you also have to think that if you are not given time you have to estimate how long a presentation should be. So how do you have to make an idea of a short presentation or a long presentation. What is better? The 10 minutes speech or a short presentation. Now, this answer will depend upon your subject, your audience's attitude and knowledge and the relationship that you have with the audience. You can decide how long your presentation will be. For a simple easily accepted message 10 minutes may be enough. On the other hand, if your subject is complex skeptical, you will probably need more time. Make sure that you do not squeeze a complex presentation into a period that is too brief or draw out a simple talk any longer than necessary. Because if you try to give a complex information, complex presentation in a short time span then people will get confused. And if you try to explain a very basic point in a long time then people will get confused. So, you have to make sure that the time that you allocate is appropriate to the subject and the content that you are going to fit into that time slot. Another important element in your planning is the style that is most suitable on the occasion. You have to decide is this a formal speech or presentation in an impressive setting with professionally devoted visual aids or is it a casual role of your sleeves working session? Is this a very formal presentation? You have to prepare from the beginning or is it a casual session where people are sitting in the office talking casually and you have to present your ideas. The size of the audience the subject, your purpose your budget and the time available for preparation all determine the style. In general, if you are speaking to a relatively small group you can use a casual approach and that will encourage audience participation as well. A small conference room with the audience seated around a table may be appropriate. You will then use simple visual aids and you can also invite the audience to interject comments. Sahira, if there is a casual presentation with a small group sitting around a table talking casually you can also ask the audience to give your comments in between. Your tone can be conversational you can also use notes if you forget something then you can remind yourself. On the other hand, if you are addressing a large audience and the event is an important one then you will want to establish hold the presentation in an auditorium or convention hall and the audience will be seated in rows. You will show slides on films to dramatize your message. It will be better if you show a film you show slides, you use PowerPoint also then you will ask people to hold off their questions until you have completed your presentation because Sahira, there will be more people involved if everyone stops you if you start asking you will lose your presentation so you will ask people to ask after the presentation and you will use detailed notes or a complete script to guide your delivery but that does not mean that you will read from your notes, you will just use them to guide you Now with this we come to how to develop a formal speech or presentation till now we have talked about planning and planning developing a major speech or presentation is much like writing a formal report with one important difference however you need to adjust your technique to an oral communication channel whereas in written report your technique will be written when you are doing a presentation then you have to adjust it according to the oral communication Now this is both an opportunity and a challenge an opportunity lies in the interaction that you can have with your audience it is a very good opportunity that you cannot interact in written reports so this is very beneficial for you that you can interact there are many things that you can judge from audience reactions whether they are responding favorably or not whether they are bored and you can pace it when you speak before a group you are actually receiving information as transmitting it and therefore you can adjust both the content and delivery of your message as you go along you can edit your speech or presentation to make it clearer and more compelling instead of simply expressing your ideas you can draw out the audience's ideas and use them to reach a mutually acceptable conclusion you can also capitalize on non-verbal signals and convey information to and from your audience Now the challenge lies in maintaining control and accommodating your audience's limitations to get the benefit of oral communication you need to be flexible and this is also a little difficult when in written communication you can write easily you can plan from before in oral communication you need special flexibility at that time you might have to change the more you plan to interact with your audience the less control you will have if your audience has more interactions then you need more flexibility because your control will be reduced half way through the presentation you could hear an unexpected comment from the audience or an unexpected question from the audience and then that could force you to shift to a new line of thought in the middle of the presentation and this requires great skill at the same time you need to accommodate the limitations of listeners to prevent your audience from losing interest or from getting lost you need to use special techniques when developing the various elements of the presentation obviously it is a long presentation there is a lot of chance that the listeners will wonder about their interest so you need to use some techniques so that the audience's interest stays in your presentation you need to use all the elements of the presentation by keeping them in mind the techniques the various elements are the introduction the body, the clothes the question answer session and visual aids now the introduction how do we make the introduction better and the introduction is that our audience has their interest develop you have to accomplish a lot during the first few minutes of your speech or presentation you have to arouse your audience's interest in the topic you have to establish your credibility and you have to prepare your audience for what will follow now because all these three things are very important that is why developing your introduction takes a lot of time in fact it might take a disproportionate amount of time your introduction may be that long but it will take a lot of time to develop the length of the introduction when you have to arouse the interest of your audience you have to keep in mind that some subjects are naturally more interesting than others if you happen to be discussing a matter of profound significance that will personally affect the members of your audience chances are that they will listen to you regardless of how you begin your audience will be interested in your topic whatever you are saying about which presentation is their benefit they want to listen to it then you will listen to it all you really have to do is announce your topic for example you just need to say today I would like to announce the reorganization of the company obviously everyone will be interested in the company's reorganization to dealing with an uninterested audience is to appeal to human nature if the audience is not interested in your topic then you appeal to their human nature encourage them to personally take that subject find an element because of which the audience will be interested show the audience how they will be affected as individuals you are addressing clerical employees about a pension program you might want to start off like this it is in introduction you are saying if somebody offered to give you 200,000 dollars in exchange for 5 dollars per week would you be interested that is the amount you can expect to collect during your retirement years if you choose to contribute to the voluntary pension plan during the first two weeks you will have to decide whether you want to participate if you retirement is many years away this is an important financial decision during the next 20 minutes I hope to give you the information you need to make that decision intelligently now in this because the presenter thinks that the audience is not so interested in this pension plan that is why he has told it as a breakdown as money how much money you can get you will contribute so much and the audience is interested in that so that they can listen to the presentation make sure when you are trying to arouse the interest of your audience make sure that your introduction matches the tone of your speech or presentation if the occasion is supposed to be fun you might want to begin with something light but if you will be talking to a group of executives then don't waste time with trying to have a cute opening because business executives don't need your cuteness or light fun openings they want a business like opening also avoid jokes and personal anecdotes when you are planning to discuss a serious problem if you are developing a routine oral report don't be overly dramatic if you have a routine weekly report or you have to do a presentation about your work then you don't need a dramatic opening most of all try to make your introduction natural whatever purpose of your introduction should look natural not that you are trying to make that introduction interesting nothing turns off the average audience faster than a staged beginning after this we come to building which is another function of the introduction one of the chief drawbacks of overblown openings is that they damage the speakers credibility if you overblown or overblown or overblown and they try to do the opening and they fall flat or they flop then your credibility gets ruined the audience will have no difference and this the damage of your credibility is even worse than it's even more important that your credibility is established then arousing the audience's interest because if you have credibility the audience's interest will automatically be in your work speaker with high credibility is more persuasive than a speaker with low credibility when developing a speech it's important to establish your credentials quickly people will immediately know who you are when you are starting your speech people will then decide in a few minutes whether you are worth listening to or not when they will know about you they will realize if you want to hear or not of course if your credentials are impressive they will want to hear you and if they think you don't have the authority to talk to them then they won't be so interested in listening to you now establishing credibility is relatively easy if you are speaking to a familiar open-minded audience obviously if your audience knows you then they will also know your strengths and you can talk to them more openly about your achievements the real difficulty comes when you must earn the confidence of strangers people who don't know you especially of your credentials if you feel that the audience doesn't know you and maybe you are a little skeptical in their mind ask them who they are why they are giving us a presentation what qualifications do they have so it is important to establish credibility there and there is more difficulty one way to handle this problem is to let someone else introduce you it is very effective if someone else introduces you that means you don't have to praise yourself you don't have to speak about yourself because it still feels that you are showing off someone else will tell you what your achievements are but also keep in mind don't praise yourself don't put butter on the stage but tell your actual achievements if however you plan to introduce yourself if someone else doesn't introduce you then keep your comments simple but at the same time don't be afraid to mention your accomplishments obviously what you have accomplished your qualifications whatever it is that makes you qualified to give that presentation mention that but don't brag first of all take care that your listeners they will be curious about your qualifications so tell them briefly who you are and why you are there generally speaking one or two aspects of your background are all that you need to mention you can mention your position in an organization your profession and these things should be the key things that your audience is looking for something like this I am Karen Whitney a market research analyst with information resources cooperation for the past 5 years I have specialized in studying high technology markets your director of engineering John Labar has asked me to brief you on recent trends in computer-aided designs so that you will have a better idea of how to direct your research and development efforts as you can see in this introduction they gave their introduction what they are doing in which company what they have been doing for the past 5 years and why they are here because your company's director has called them to talk about a particular topic now this speaker establishes credibility by tying in her credentials with to the purpose of her presentation obviously she is saying this is what I am, this is what I have been doing and that ties in very well with what the presentation is by mentioning her company's name her position and the name of the audience's boss she lets her listeners know immediately that she is qualified to tell them something that they need to know especially when they have taken the name of the audience's boss they also get to know that your boss trusts me your boss thinks I am so qualified and by doing all this she is also connecting her background to the concerns of the audience she gave her own background she gave her own qualification and she made a connection with the concerns of the audience who are listening to the audience now after you have introduced yourself after you have established your credibility then you will need to preview the presentation you will give the audience a preview of what the presentation will be about you will first tell the audience what is coming in your presentation this preview adds to your authority and more importantly it helps people understand your message when you tell them that you will talk about this then your authority is established and the listeners it becomes much easier to understand your message in an oral presentation you will provide the framework your introduction will summarize the main idea it will identify the supporting points and it will indicate the order in which you will develop those points when you have established your framework then you can move on to developing the body of your presentation you will be confident then that your audience will understand how the individual facts and figures relate to the main idea because once you have given the entire framework to the audience now in this presentation we will talk about this then when you will start talking about the main body and start developing the main body you will also know that your audience will know what is the connection and how all the facts will be developed the audience has an expectation and you know that you are now living up to those expectations in this lecture we have learnt how to categorize speeches and presentations according to their purpose we have talked of the different purposes of presentations we talked about if the presentation is small or the presentation is less then how we will format it depending on the purpose if the purpose is to give good news or to give information then you will use the direct organization if the purpose is to give bad news or to persuade the audience then you will use the indirect organization similar to the kind of patterns the way you would determine patterns for writing and memos in written communication this way we have talked about the long presentations what will be their organization what will be the format when will be the direct plan and when will be the recommendations and conclusions will be centered depending on the purpose of the presentation if it is to analyze, to persuade to collaborate, to inform etc we also talked about analyzing the audience for speeches and presentations we talked about why is the audience important to analyze the audience for speeches and presentations what kind of audience will be depending on the length of the presentation depending on the purpose of the presentation if the purpose of your presentation is that it is informal whatever you want to tell you just want to tell in your company the audience is small and if you have less audience then the style of the presentation can be casual you don't need to prepare you can just look at the notes for this if your presentation is a large audience there are many people and the presentation is long some slides some video clips video film, powerpoint to keep the audience interested and your interaction will be less with the audience in a small group your interaction can be more in a large group you will have to tell them that there will be a question-answer session and that they should save their questions for the question-answer session if you have a normal presentation then you will not be able to complete your points in time we talked of the different steps that will be involved in developing your presentation we talked about the different elements of the presentation and how they were important we did an introduction to keep an eye on the main things that you need to keep in mind when planning your introduction or credibility and you prepare the audience for what will follow we also talked about the fact that when you are previewing the presentation that is when you are actually preparing the audience for what will follow first we talked about the introduction and credibility and then in the end we talked about this preview in which you will give an outline of your presentation we will look at how to develop a body and a close for long formal presentations we will finish the introduction and in the next session we will talk about the main body and the close we will also learn how to select design and use visual aids that are appropriate for various types of speeches and presentations and finally we will learn how to deliver your speech or presentation and handle audience questions effectively in the next session we will also talk about how to deliver the speech or presentation and how to handle the audience if you have any questions please feel free to email us the address is englishatvu.edu.pk until next time Allah Hafiz