Public Speaking: Presentation Skills for Leaders

CLASS DETAIL

Overview:  Rationale

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CORE11-101, Public Speaking: Presentation Skills for Leaders, offers students sound training in communication through supportive Lecture and workshop settings in which theory and practice mingle to produce confident communicators.  Students deliver and observe a large number of speeches over the semester – and receive evaluations from the audience.  They study the theory and practice of presentations.  By applying this knowledge to themselves, students gain valuable insights and learn professional communication skills of value at all levels: social, academic, business, government.  As Aristotle said in The Rhetoric: “The use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.”

CORE 11-101 is a full Core Course in Communications with an emphasis on Public Speaking – both visual presentation and also the underlying writing skills of grammar, spelling, punctuation and construction.  This course explores many aspects of oral communication, supported by sound theoretical principles and standard effective practices in presentation, from preparation to delivery.

Students are taught data-gathering research and analytical skills to help them construct a logical and meaningful presentation, as related to the type of presentation.  The aim may be to persuade, inform or entertain – to make an academic or business presentation, to present or accept an award, to introduce or thank a guest of honour, to deliver a eulogy. 

Students learn skills of interpersonal communication applicable to an audience of one or one thousand.  These skills include assessing and relating to the audience’s characteristics (including mental/emotional state), using an appropriate (formal or informal) delivery style, and preparing and using the most effective speech techniques and devices like the “kinaesthetic connection” (described by Nick Morgan in the Harvard Business Review), Power of Three, audience involvement,  connectives and transitions, summaries, conflict, humour, contrast, metaphor and so on.

The course encourages students both to build on their strengths and also to explore new avenues in the preparation and delivery of speeches.  They become involved in a variety of innovative exercises.  Individual attention is given to the students’ needs in this area – in particular, their concerns about reducing levels of anxiety, apprehension and avoidance.  These levels are measured at the start and the end of the course.  The results show fear levels drop by as much as 50 per cent.

Objectives:

To enable students to prepare effective presentations by structuring their speeches/presentations beforehand, understanding the data-gathering and integrating procedures needed, understanding the nature of the audience and the speech type (persuasion, acceptance, eulogy, etc.) and applying their understanding to a chosen speech context.

To enable students to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of their own and other presentations and to advise on where effort beforehand contributed to the strengths and where additional time would have produced a better presentation.

To enable students to understand the factors underlying confidence in presentations, and steps that can be taken to build confidence where anxieties tend to be highest (including formal note guides, computer cues, structuring, refocussing, visualisation, use of relaxation and special breathing techniques, and so on – plus a variety of comfort-zone-expanding exercises).

To build students’ confidence in their ability to identify with and learn from presentations from various world leaders and special speakers.