How To Become A Successful Speaker & Presenter: Effective speaking - What works & what not before audience

By EDITORIAL BOARD

Have you ever thought of addressing an audience and making them all listen to your speech without batting their eyelids Do you want to create a trance on all the people who are listening to your speech?

How to be A Successful Speaker presents all the necessary techniques to motivate, captivate, and persuade the audience; conquer stage fright with the help of tips and anecdotes; customize different speech for different audiences by analyzing their needs, desires, and listening modes; make your presentation memorable by developing a theme, organizing your material succinctly, and keeping your message simple; project a professional image through personality, voice, and clothes; motivate audiences to change their actions and attitudes; involve listeners busing everything from humor to eye contact and from empathy to audience participation exercises; and deal smoothly with problems and difficulties.

The book is a must read for students, management and executive personnel, supervisors, salesmen, and others who wish to improve their speaking effectiveness in their work and social relations.
#v&spublishers

• Language: English
• Publisher: V&S Publishers
• Release date: Nov 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9789350572542

Book preview

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Preface

Ihave written this book keeping the Indian audience in mind. I want to assure you that you have the potential to achieve your goal, and at the same time, I would like to congratulate you for choosing this book because this is the one which will take you to your success. I am confident and can guarantee that you can become a great speaker if you adopt all the techniques described in this book. I assure you that you will enjoy your speech as much as you will enjoy reading this book.

Speakers are not born great; they undergo a lot of training to become good speakers. As it is rightly said: ‘Practice makes a man perfect’. They learn the techniques and work hard so that they are able to deliver a good and attractive speech. Working hard is the foremost and most commendable and authentic way to get success because hard work has no alternative.

In Western countries, people have compiled and composed a lot of literature on ‘how to become a good speaker’. However, these books do not suit the Indian audience. I have prepared this first of its kind book after a good deal of research and dedication. My family has sacrificed a lot for the book. In the process of creating this book, I often stayed away from them. You are reading the book today only because of their sacrifice and support.

I am very grateful to the girl because of whom I stepped into the world of writing. I am grateful to that girl, whom I treat as my sister. She has appreciated me at every point and helped me convert my thinking to literature. I would also like to thank those people also who criticised me as they inspired me to enhance my personality through their criticism.

I would be happy if this book helps you in anyway. If that happens, I would think I achieved my goal.

Surendra Dogra ‘Nirdosh’

It’s Easy to be a Good Speaker

Many people and leaders in the world became great, as they were good speakers besides being knowledgeable. Today, the speeches of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Winston Churchill and John Kennedy are equally remembered as are their achievements. An effective speaker not only presents and establishes himself but also inspires many others in their professional and personal life. I have committed many mistakes in my life and surmounted many problems to become successful. My aim of writing this book is that I do not want you to repeat those mistakes; in fact I don’t want anybody to do the same mistakes I did. I guess the techniques given in this book will save your time and lead you in the right way so that you can become a good speaker. However, before presenting to you the basic concepts of how to become a good speaker I would like to congratulate you for choosing the right book as you will be able to get the success of a particular thing when it comes to action with a good start. As it is rightly said, ‘ Well begun is half done ’, which implies – a good start means half of your work is done.

If you want to get maximum benefit out of this book, you should make yourself believe that I have written this book only for you. Forget that someone else or many more are also reading this book at the time when I say I write this book for ‘YOU’. When I use the word ‘YOU’, it points towards you, only you, that is, the one who is reading the book at that time. You must have seen some people talking very effectively and confidently, whether they are at a friend’s place or are travelling in a bus or a train. But let me tell you honestly that their (most of them) voice, legs and hands will start shivering if they will be asked to address a public gathering. While working with the Akashvani radio, I have seen women, who can talk endlessly, falling short of words when I tried to record their conversation or tried to put them in front of a microphone. Have you ever thought why people are not able to speak in front of a crowd? You might think of the following reasons:

One reason, you might think that you cannot speak well like a good speaker. Second, maybe, whether your voice will reach every person sitting in the room or not. Thirdly, you might think that your thoughts are inferior to the people sitting there and that they might laugh at your views.

To be confident, you need to believe that you can deliver a good, attractive and well-organised speech, but at the same time, you should keep in mind and honestly realise that there is still a lot to improve on your part. If you move forward keeping all these things in mind and adopting all the techniques mentioned in the book, I reassure that you will be a good speaker. That is, you will not be afraid of putting your views in front of people and deliver a well-organised speech. You might have a little fear but believe me, a little bit of fear is necessary to get the optimum success. However, you can get rid of it if you wish.

We develop our knowledge according to our experiences but we usually do not know or perhaps don’t even want to know the basic principles of many things. I have an example here to make you understand the statement better. One of my friends was an extremely good player of Skiing.

She participated in many national level games and in 1999 she went to Korea for participating in the Asiad representing India. I have never seen her practicing regularly and quite efficiently. But one interesting thing I notice is that she used to compete with the people who taught her the game and always beat them. When I asked her the reason behind playing with her teachers, she said that you should have the knowledge of the basic principles of the game; in that case, you will never play wrong even if you loose.

The same method is applicable in the process to become a good speaker. Once you start understanding and grasping the basic principles of delivering a speech, you will never deliver a bad speech or will never make a mistake during delivering a speech. But it does not mean that you assume it to be an easy task. This is a difficult but a possible thing to do. People have different opinions about being a good speaker. Every teacher wants his/her student to become a good speaker but not every speaker wants to be Abraham Lincoln or perhaps they don’t try to become Abraham Lincoln. But frankly speaking my friend, delivering a good speech is very important in the modern day competitive world. You feel the importance and usability of a well-designed speech in each and every step of your life. If you want to do something on your own, to develop your self-confidence, to attract people and to affect or to even make your presence in the world, you will definitely need the art of delivering a good speech and it will be more convenient and easier for you to enjoy a successful life if you adopt the techniques at the early stage of your life. So be prepare to face the life and get victory in the fight with life with the techniques you are going to grasp and practice while reading this book.

A new way

While writing this book I adopt a special style so that it does not make you bore at any point of your reading. You’ll realise that I have not filled the book with many anecdotes, humourous stories or speeches of great writers. However, it is a good and most effective way of filling pages, but my motive is not to just write a book, but to bring a change within you. My aim is to take out the flaws within you to make you a good speaker.

You might have come across some people saying that you will have to read autobiographies of some great people and will have to follow their footsteps to become successful. But I don’t agree to this at all. I think rather than imitating others, you should have the passion to do something in your unique way. There is a possibility that you might not be able to write or create ‘great’ phrases and poems as created by great people like Kalidas, Kabir