COURSE AREAS
Public Speaking Skills

I. COURSE OVERVIEW

The ability to speak confidently and deliver a persuasive message is an essential skill for today's business professionals. Good presenters and public speakers are respected as leaders in business and in life.  Speakers with great verbal skills who can educate and entertain an audience, but at the same time truly make an emotional connection with people can take their businesses to new heights.  This course provides the opportunity to significantly improve your public speaking skill by practicing and delivering speeches and presentations to ensure that your next speech will captivate your audience. 

II. BENEFITS FOR ATTENDEES

At the conclusion of the course, each student will be able to:

  • Speak publicly in a convincing, confident, and concise style
  • Sharpen your public speaking skills by preparing, rehearsing, and integrating personalized feedback
  • Identify and apply key skills of effective public speaking
  • Keep the audience focused on you and your message
  • Design interactive questions to engage your audience

III. WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Anyone who would like to improve their confidence and ability to stand up, make yourself heard, and make your presence felt in front of a demanding audience.

IV. COURSE CONTENT

A. WARM UP

1/ Define what you expect from the course

  • What would you specifically like to gain from the program
  • What will be your individual focus for the day

2/ Recall your own resolution experience

B. MAIN CONTENT

1/ Build the Framework for Effective Public Speaking

  • Recognize key public speaking skills
  • Attributes of effective public speakers
  • Identify components of persuasive speeches
  • Quantify techniques used by accomplished speakers
    • Identify your goal—Informing, persuading, motivating, and entertaining
      • The skill-building cycle—Presenting, evaluating, and improving
      • Determine your baseline public speaking skills
      • Eliminate fears and increasing confidence through practice and preparation
      • Define your own personality and style
      • Increase your awareness and abilities by evaluating other speakers
      • Absorb audience feedback to fine-tune your delivery

2/ Planning for Your Speech

  • Employ a public speaking preparation process
  • Construct the presentation
  • Assess and address the needs and wants of your audience
  • Brainstorm and mind map your ideas
  • Research and produce your own story
  • Shaping your sentences with powerful words and phrases
  • Match the media to your message
  • Make your message memorable with visual support

3/ Deliver Your Speech

  • Building confidence with practice
  • Effective rehearsal techniques
  • Incorporate audience feedback to improve your presentation
  • Stay within your time limit
    • Delivering your presentation
    • Set up the venue
    • Open dynamically and create a winning first impression
    • Close the speech strongly and inspirationally

4/ Engage Your Audience

  • Catch and keep the attention of the audience
  • Circulate dynamically within the presentation space
  • The impact of positive body language
  • Engage the audience with effective eye contact
  • Synchronizing gestures to the verbal message
  • Animating your speech with vocal variety—Stresses and pauses
  • Reduce verbal distraction
    • Interacting with Your Audience
    • Stimulate participation with preplanned questions
    • Convey content through topical questions
    • Tailor question types for your audience
      • Handling questions from the audience
      • Reward, restate and respond
      • Ice-breaking when there are no questions
      • Deal with tough, challenging questions
      • Get back on track after an unplanned interruption

5/ Course Summary

V. SUPPLEMENTARY HANDOUTS

VI. TRAINING METHODOLOGY

  • Discussions—We provide learners with the context of change through interactions, both amongst the learners and between the trainer and the learners. Rather than the traditional lecture method, the interaction and communication between the groups have proven to be a much more effective and powerful method of learning.
  • Demonstrations—Students conduct case studies, and learn from hands-on activities and through multi-media.
  • Consultative training—Students are provided with the necessary knowledge and tools to successfully apply the public speaking skills to their own business contexts.