Should you become a performer to enhance your speeches?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe not. On page 11 in the February 2025 issue of Toastmaster magazine there is a brief article by Bill Brown titled Become a Performer to Enhance Your Speeches. His advice contradicts that from Joel Schwartzberg in a second article on page 26 in the November 2022 issue of Toastmaster magazine titled Are You Presenting or Performing? and subtitled Tips to focus on your point, not your persona. But Mr. Brown’s article does not reference Mr. Schwartzberg’s. Which advice should we follow?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And back in the May 1988 issue of Toastmaster magazine there is a third article on pages 24 to 26 and 29 by Michael T. Motley titled Taking the terror out of talk. It is subtitled Thinking in terms of communication rather than performance helps us calm our greatest fear. Back on August 10, 2011 I blogged about how you could Reframe your way around fear of public speaking. More recently fear is discussed by Theo Tsaousides at Psychology Today on November 27, 2017 in a fourth article titled Why Are We Scared of Public Speaking? which explains:

 

“Some theories make the distinction between a performance orientation and a communication orientation. Performance orientation means you view public speaking as something that requires special skills, and you see the role of the audience as judges who are evaluating how good of a presenter you are. In contrast, communication orientation means that the main focus is on expressing your ideas, presenting information, or telling your story. For people with this orientation, the objective is to get through to their audience the same way they get through to people during everyday conversations.”

 

Michael T. Motley and Jennifer L. Molloy published a fifth article in the 1994 Journal of Applied Communication Research titled An efficacy test of a new therapy (“Communication-orientation motivation”) for public speaking anxiety. This therapy is discussed by Graham D. Bodie in a sixth lengthy review article in Communication Education magazine (January 2010, Volume 59, pages 70 to 105) titled A Racing Heart, Rattling Knees, and Ruminative Thoughts: Defining, Explaining, and Treating Public Speaking Anxiety. On page 88 Dr. Bodie says:

 

“COM therapy.

Motley’s (1997) communication-orientation modification therapy (COM therapy) posits that PSA [Public Speaking Anxiety] is caused by an individual’s orientation toward public speaking. Individuals who hold a performance-oriented view of public speaking see it as a performance necessitating special skills whereby the audience acts primarily to evaluate. In contrast, communication-oriented speakers see public speaking as more similar to ‘everyday conversation’ (Motley, 1997, p. 380). Communication-orientation modification therapy ‘concentrates on persuading high PSA individuals to abandon their performance orientation in favor of a communication orientation’ (Motley, 1997, p. 380). Although anecdotal evidence (Motley, 1990) and empirical support (Ayres, Hopf & Peterson, 2000; Motley & Molloy, 1994) have been offered to show COM therapy reduces PSA, Booth-Butterfield and Booth-Butterfield (1993) report nonsignificant correlations between self-reported performance orientation and trait CA drawing into question a main contention of COM therapy that performance orientation mediates the relationship between physiological arousal and state anxiety responses. Other research suggests COM therapy may not be effective in all cultures (Ayres, Hopf, & Nagami, 1999).”     

 

The jack in the box image was modified from one at Openclipart.