The Great Eight: Skills You Need to Excel at Public Speaking

By Tim Kurth

The Great Eight captures the wisdom and experience of a professional presenter who began competitive public speaking at the age of 12. Distilling more than forty years of speaking to groups from eight people to a thousand and eight people, Tim Kurth provides insightful coaching to even the most seasoned veteran on the speaking circuit.

From how to make eye contact with an audience of any size to moving purposefully on stage, The Great Eight is concise and easy to understand. Each chapter concludes with questions that prompt the reader to go deeper and practice each skill.

Tim Kurth is a national best selling author of short drama sketches. He has presented to groups of all sizes on four continents. He has coached professional presenters and written material that has been presented in front of tens of thousands of people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tim Kurth
• Release date: Mar 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301055166

Tim Kurth

Tim Kurth is a national best selling author in the niche of short drama sketches for worship. He has presented to audiences on four continents. Tim loves to travel and take teams on mission trips around the U.S. and overseas. He recently founded The Shepherd Fund, a non-profit partnering with Carlile College in Nairobi, Kenya to help provide student scholarships. Tim is a husband, father and grandfather. He lives with his wife Elizabeth in the Chicago area.

Book preview

Preface

In 1970 my seventh grade teacher, Denny Vierk, suggested to my mother that she enter me in the local speech competition hosted by the Optimist International Club in our small Wisconsin town. My guess is he was looking for a more productive outlet for my verbosity than driving my classmates crazy! Whatever the reason, Mr. Vierk’s suggestion put me in front of my first audience as a competitive public speaker. I won a third place trophy that year at age 12 and went on over the next several years to win local and regional contests in the category of ‘Original Oratory’.

In high school the Forensics Team was my outlet and there I expanded my experiences into competition in the extemporaneous and impromptu categories. By the time I went away to college my love affair with speaking in public was in full bloom. Now, more than forty years later, it is still exciting to step in front of an audience with the anticipation of sharing something meaningful. Along the way I’ve honed my skills in several forms of public speaking from small group facilitation to classroom teaching, preaching, emceeing, interactive workshops, stage acting, voice over work, and even on air radio announcing.

I’ve developed a very critical eye when watching others present and have had the privilege of coaching some very good presenters to make them even better. Through it all there has been one driving motivation: To winsomely engage the audience so that they might receive the full impact of what is being shared. There is no greater waste, in my estimation, than to squander the attention of an audience with a poor presentation. Audience attention is to be treated like pure gold. It is rare, valuable and paid with the greatest expectation of return on investment. When a group of people pay you their attention it’s your responsibility to give them full value.

Public speaking is said to be one of the greatest human fears. Having a natural affinity for speaking, it’s a fear I don’t really understand. I appreciate that you, dear reader, may find public speaking a challenge. And, like it or not, you must do it. So it is my distinct honor to offer you The Great Eight. The speaking skills described in this book are what I consider the most important skills one should master to fully engage an audience so as to give full value for the attention they pay.

Capturing forty years of speaking experience and distilling it down to eight skills you can practice was no easy task. However, it is well worth it if it helps you. My hope is that in reading this book and practicing these skills you will not only become an excellent public speaker, but that you will find greater joy and excitement every time you have the opportunity to step out in front of a crowd.

Getting the Most Out of The Great Eight

This book can be a quick read or it can be a useful tool but it can’t be both! Determining which it will be is completely up to you. Each chapter goes into some detail on a skill that I consider