Being a tour guide can make you a better speaker

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In her The Master Communicator Blog on July 15, 2024 Rosemary Ravinal has a post titled How tour guiding can make you a better speaker. She says to do a half-dozen things:

 

Tell unforgettable stories

Delight diverse audiences

Build confidence

Improve non-verbal communication

Find your unique style

Handle questions with grace

 

An article by Karen Friedman on January 3, 2024 titled What business communicators can learn from tour guides discussed the topics of having a connection, being memorable, being engaging, using differentiation and creating trust.

 

There also is another article about tour guides by Barnaby Davies on pages 22 to 24 in the December 2018 issue of Toastmaster magazine titled Entertaining Travelers Around the World.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do these three items have in common? They all ignore the broader jargon for describing a tour guide. Back on December 19, 2010 I blogged about Heritage interpretation and public speaking. Interpreters are people who explain natural or cultural resources to visitors at places like parks, nature centers, museums, zoos, botanical gardens, aquariums, and tour companies. As shown above via a Venn diagram, a tour guide is at the intersection of public speaking and heritage interpretation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you search under heritage interpretation, you will find there are organizations with much useful information. In the U.S. there is the National Association for Interpretation (NAI), which publishes two magazines, Legacy and the Journal of Interpretation Research. Most articles and issues are at their web site and for members only. There is a long article by Marc J. Stern and Robert B. Powell in the Journal of Interpretation Research for 2013 (Volume 18, number 2 pages 9 to 44) titled What leads to better visitor outcomes in live interpretation? For it they surveyed 3,603 visitors from 312 live interpretive programs at U. S. National Parks. As shown above, Figure 1 describes fifteen best practices.

 

Interpretation Canada (IC) has an eighty-page 2015 book titled The Interpreter’s Big Book of Disasters. Their IC blog has a post by Munju Ravindra on June 12, 2019 titled IC Blog: Lessons from the Interpreter’s Book of Disasters: Intertidal Stranding. On July 3, 2024 I blogged about how A public speaker can tell us a story about being in a seemingly dangerous place. But a heritage interpreter can actually take us there.

 

Interpret Europe has a forty-page ebook by Thorsten Ludwig titled The Interpretive Guide – Sharing Heritage with People (2nd edition, 2015).

 

An image showing a tour guide and wall painting came from 3DeyeNET at Wikimedia Commons.