How many stages of speaker development are there?

On February 5th Olivia Mitchell blogged about the first five stages of speaker development. She described them as being:

1. It’s all about the words.

2. I can talk.

3. Hello audience.

4. It’s all about the audience.

5. Storytelling mastery.

She suggested there might really be eight stages, but that she’d let us know when she got there. I was pleasantly surprised that she told a story about her personal progress.

Typically people just drag out a 2 x 2 matrix and enumerate all four possibilities shown above, as I previously did in a post about knowledge and consciousness (and curses). The only real insight here is that there actually is a Stage Zero of unconscious incompetence (being both ignorant and unaware of it), which is what Donald Rumsfeld also has redundantly termed Unknown Unknowns.

Even worse are the communications professors who can glibly dredge up Aristotle’s three-way classification of ethos, pathos, and logos as being the pillars of speaking and enumerate the eight stages shown above. They deserve to hear the following brief comic dialogue:

Professor: "Today we’re going to talk about Ethos, Pathos, and Logos!"

Student: "Great! I just love the Three Musketeers, or was that the Three Stooges?"

Olivia's graphic of a person first stuck inside a box (rather than standing on one) reminded me of the stunning video for the Tori Amos song Silent All These Years.

Mistake-proofing your presentation outfit

If you do a lot of traveling to give presentations, then you might consider setting up a “go bag” to visually organize what you take along. In my February 1st post I discussed the use of checklists. They are one aspect of a more general topic in quality called mistake-proofing, which is the use of process or design features to prevent errors. 

A couple decades ago I set up a very complete 35-mm camera outfit in a big Pelican case similar to the camera case shown above. The precut “pick and pluck” foam had places for all my usual equipment and consumables. Before I headed out the door all I had to do was to lift the lid and look inside to confirm that I had: both my camera bodies, all three lenses, both flashes, and both four rolls of color film and eight AA spare batteries for my flashes. Any empty cavity in the foam reminded me that something important was missing.

The clear package for these four dry-erase markers reminds me to check that I have all of them, both before and after a presentation. A case with foam inserts and plastic bags, boxes, and other packages can be used to organize equipment like a laptop computer, projector, and all their accessories.

When choosing a case you need to consider its appearance to others. A person I knew put his camera system in a very ostentatious Zero Halliburton aluminum case. After only one plane trip he realized that to strangers (and thieves) in the airport it had screamed that “I’m expensive, please steal me!” He reluctantly changed to a more humble black plastic pistol case.

Long ago I read a magazine article in Shutterbug describing the different types of travel containers photographers preferred. One liked Igloo picnic coolers with wheels, another used a diaper bag, and a third used a beat-up old suitcase from a thrift store. I’m going to put my digital camera system into a black plastic, vintage attache case.

John Grout wrote a very detailed 166-page free ebook on Mistake-Proofing the Design of Health Care Processes.

The camera case image is from Skymast.

Fears of superiors and public speaking in Hong Kong

In 2009 there was an interesting paper by S. Lee, K. L. Ng, P. S. Kwok, and A. Tsang titled “Prevalence and correlates of social fears in Hong Kong” published in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders (on pages 327 to 332). They did a phone survey in March 2003. People were asked whether they had experienced any of fourteen types of social fears in the past twelve months. There were 3006 respondents whose ages ranged from 15 to 45. Their results are shown in the top bar chart.(Click on the image to enlarge the chart).

The second bar chart shows the top five fears found by Ruscio et al. in the NCS-
R survey of United States residents (who were asked about lifetime fears). That US survey found public/speaking/performance to be the number one fear. Speaking up in a meeting or class was second, meeting new people was third, and talking to people in authority was fourth. An important exams/interview was fifth.

Lee et al. found that for Hong Kong talking to people in authority (talking to a super-ordinate or a person of higher status) was the number one fear (17.8%). Public performance (which would include speaking) was second (16.2%), and talking in a meeting or class was third (15.1%).

For social fears there are some distinct cultural differences between the US and Hong Kong. Most people would say boss instead of super-ordinate to describe a superior or a person in authority. But superordinate is a logical term for the opposite of a subordinate, and it does appear in the Oxford English Dictionary (without the hyphen).

Do Toastmasters sound alike?

On January 21st Nancy Daniels posted an article at SelfGrowth.com and elsewhere titled The Pros and Cons of Toastmasters. It should have been titled Toastmasters: Pros and a Con because she was mostly positive, but eventually did some by damning with faint praise. She said that:

“....There is one thing you should take into consideration, however, if you choose to go this route. Often, those who have been in Toastmasters begin to sound alike. What I mean by this is that individuality often suffers at the hands of those who judge.

As one who has taught public speaking at the college and graduate school levels and works with corporations and group workshops as well, I can spot a Toastmaster every time they present. I call it the Toastmaster sound.

What I find lacking with Toastmasters is the marvelous individuality that one should always keep in public speaking. Too often its members, in striving to deliver a better speech or presentation, imitate the style of its other members. What makes for great public speaking are those who treat their audience as if in conversation and are, first and foremost, themselves.”

That is offensive stereotyping. I believe it’s about 90% bogus. You wouldn’t say that all Blacks or Orientals sound (or look) alike, would you? So, why pick on Toastmasters? They certainly are not some sort of a collective mind like the Borg, those creepy Star Trek villains boxed into cubical spaceships whose favorite catch phrases are:

“You will be assimilated” and “Resistance is futile.”

There is nothing like that in the Toastmasters Promise. In the April 2008 issue of Toastmaster magazine there even was an article discussing how you should Dare to Be Different.

Toastmasters in my club (and district) certainly don’t sound alike. They have distinctly different styles which reflect their backgrounds. Mike Thornton sounds more like he’s selling than Bill Kearley, who sounds like a veterinarian teaching. Lindsay Woolman is understated, while Ruth Romero is very animated.

I suspect that Nancy Daniels may have gotten her largely mistaken impression from watching motivational speakers who cribbed their style from International Contest speeches. Last May Russ Howser commented that:

“....it occurred to me, while watching the other speakers, that a Toastmasters Speech has its own unique style. It is part performance art, part motivational appeal and part moralistic sermon. There’s no rule saying it has to be that way, but winning speeches generally contain a moral lesson or message of some sort and tend to be physically demonstrative and emotional in tone.”

Recently Rich Hopkins also has discussed why International Contest speeches tend to only have inspirational topics.

Other types of contest speeches like Humorous or Tall Tales are much more individual. There are many hilarious examples on YouTube. Watch Alex Wu discuss Flushing to Enlightenment, John Zimmer implore us to Pay Attention, and Darren LaCroix describe Toastmasters Anonymous.

Pearls Before Swine cartoon about a nervous speaker

I think Pig should have taken a break after snapping the second microphone stand. Click on the image to see the third frame of today's cartoon. In a previous post I gave some Advice on Overcoming Anxiety. If the embed doesn’t show on your browser, you also can find the cartoon here.

How to Speak: a great video with Patrick Henry Winston

Recently on Research Explainer I found a link to a wonderful 46-minute talk by Patrick Henry Winston on How to Speak. He’s been a professor at MIT for over forty years, and his subject is academic lecturing. However, much of what he relates applies to all public speaking. The talk is on YouTube, and it is arranged in 13 manageable segments that you can view either in sequence or individually.

Their titles are:

1. Prelude

2. Introduction

3. How to Start

4. The Big 4: heuristics

5. Time and Place

6. The Blackboard

7. Overheads

8. Props

9. Style

10. How to Stop

11. Questions: part 1

12. Questions: part 2

13. Postlude


He discusses overhead projectors by hilariously showing what not to do (and why not). Then he discusses props using the example of Ibsen’s play, Hedda Gabbler.

I also enjoyed his discussion of style. He tells an anecdote about Ingemar Stenmark, the famous Swedish skier. When Stenmark was asked if he had an idol who he copied, he said no. Instead he looked at everybody who was excellent, and then adapted what he could to create his own unique style. 

Is your speech ready for takeoff? Are you sure?

Lack of attention to details can cause a speech to crash. Checklists are one good way to avoid catastrophes, like forgetting to bring or do something critical beforehand. Checklists are broader than packing lists that only describe what to bring.

Long ago I was a student glider pilot, so I knew that pilots routinely go through a preflight checklist before takeoff. Until I began reading Atul Gawande’s recent book, The Checklist Manifesto, I didn’t know when or how preflight lists began to be used.

Back in 1935 a very experienced Army Air Corps pilot evaluating a Boeing prototype that became the B-17 Flying Fortress bomber stalled and crashed it just after takeoff. The plane burned, and he died. What went wrong?

Investigation revealed he had forgotten a crucial detail - removing the gust lock that prevented the control surfaces from moving while the plane was parked. You can read reviews of Gawande’s book here and here. He learned about checklists from Boeing.

The solution for flying the B-17 was having a written checklist covering what needed to be done before takeoff. Otherwise the pilot might get so wrapped up in getting four engines running smoothly that he skipped another crucial detail.

Many speakers have discussed the use of checklists. Scott Berkun just blogged about one. Last year Fred E. Miller had one, and John Zimmer had one with an addendum.  In 2009 Nick Morgan and Denise Graveline posted theirs. Even earlier Tom Antion and Dave Paradi published theirs. There is a Checklist for Checklists that can be used to develop one of your own.

Consumables like batteries for a presentation remote and a laser pointer are important items to check before you head out. Those items and their batteries live in the plastic file box that holds my projector. So does the VGA cable for connecting the laptop, and an extension cord with a three-plug adapter for the projector and laptop. There also is a small piece of 2x4” lumber for tilting the projector upwards. (You can’t depend on finding a handy ashtray anymore!) If I had a Mac laptop rather than a PC, then I also would carry an adapter cable for VGA. Similarly, if I was headed for a historical building (like an old church) I would be sure to carry a 2-prong adapter so I could plug my extension cord into a vintage electrical outlet.