The art of public speaking in life stories
1 thanks to everyone who commented on the previous article on this topic. New article - for those who asked questions, and for those who feel like an experienced speaker. As before, all the tips here are my experience. Someone will work that worked for me, someone - something else. Magic pills and truths in the last instance in the text there.
Special thanks to karellen for the link to the Pitch Anything book. It is certainly worth learning from karellen : having written in a commentary to my previous article that in this book “the author very convincingly refutes almost all these“ truths ”, he intrigued me. Interestingly, someone denies something that works fine for me. I, of course, climbed on Amazon, bought the kindle-version of the book and read it with great pleasure. The book doesn’t actually refute anything: I told you exactly what I did to perform interestingly, and the book tells you why you should do that. The book is definitely worth reading, especially since it is written in fairly simple English.
By the way: at the beginning of the report, boldly thank the audience if you have something for that - for example, for good advice and good questions at the last meeting.
')
Before thanking, look at habrahabr.ru/post/57913 - I do not agree with everything, but it is interesting all the same. There, a comrade is indignant at the foolish beginnings of reports.
Make contact, engage the audience in a conversation if she is sleeping. A good way for large halls (two hundred or more people) is to make one half of the audience shout one short slogan or word, and the other the other. And then - all together something in common. It works on slogans that are well disassembled into parts and cause enthusiasm for a significant part of the audience, for example: “Russia - go ahead!”, “Uralmash is the champion!”, “PHP - taxis!”, Etc.
2 Do not rely on a certain type of microphone (for example, a wireless). The microphone in the room can be anything - and wired, and the headset, and with the stand, and without. Meanwhile, it is very inconvenient to simultaneously type commands on the keyboard and hold the microphone. Take a laser pointer with you if you need it for a presentation.
3 why do slides?
Slides either accompany the presentation, or are distributed to the audience and are published on the Internet, so that the audience can refresh the memory of the presentation. In the first case, the slides should be in large print (30 points), with pictures, with a small amount of text. In the second, they play the role of the notes, and therefore must be readable and well structured.
four
Once I spent a little more time than I should have spent explaining why, from my point of view, most tasks on the Web are better solved using UNIX than Windows. There were violent followers of Windows in the audience, engaging me in a discussion about why this system is worse than UNIX. They accused me of incompetence, asserting that this and that works fine under Windows (after all, you can almost always find a special case that refutes any point of view, right?).
In that case it was my miscalculation - I underestimated the level of knowledge of a part of the audience and my arguments were intended for less experienced listeners, while the more experienced ones had to be persuaded with much more technical examples from my experience, and this already looked like an excuse: I had to prove that I am not a camel.
How to avoid such a situation? Less distractions from the main topic, less reason for outsiders to discuss, prepare iron arguments in favor of their point of view in advance, and such that they are understood by everyone in the audience.
Another time, I taught UNIX courses for a group of great guys from the technical service of a large mobile operator. One of them was constantly clarifying with the other what I said or meant, because he tried to record everything and immediately check it in practice, constantly distracting from the discussion. His questions were on the topic, and explanations would be helpful to the whole group, so I asked him to ask questions not to his neighbor, but to me — I would answer them for everyone.
He promised to do so, and again took up his own. It was inconvenient to explain the material to the group when one in a loud whisper explains to another what I told a minute ago. Therefore, I began to laugh. They interrupt me and talk, and I laugh. The group, of course, stops everything, asks that it is me. I explain: “people, I’m just getting angry here: we’ve come specifically to listen to the answers of the person who has been practicing all this confusion for the twentieth year, and discuss among themselves the conjectures about how it all works. Yes, ask me, I'll tell you! ”It helped with the second time. And no tension - I laughed, not angry, I really was funny.
The third case was in my group of well-trained students, one of whom, at the very first hour of classes, began to ask difficult questions on one narrow topic in our program. It was clear that he understands the topic perfectly, and asks questions not so much to learn something new for himself as to test my knowledge and my reaction.
There were two ways out. You can promise to answer after the break or the next day (and there either the donkey dies, the shah, or Khoja Nasreddin, or you can prepare a short answer on a complex topic, a short one - so that the rest of the people in the group will not be bored).
It was possible to answer immediately. I chose this exit because I also knew this narrow topic well. And he answered the question in great detail and quickly, so that the group did not have time to get bored. Comrade heard everything that already knew, and something else new from related topics, and from that moment he was my best ally in class.
five
Fortunately, 99% of my listeners wanted to know what I told them. Sometimes, if I had doubts that the material was interesting to everyone, I honestly said: “People, we will study this and that. If someone does not need it, go in peace. ” It was easier for me than for teachers in high school: my students did not pass any exams or tests for me, and if they skipped courses, problems could arise only from themselves if their bosses suddenly required to apply the knowledge gained in the courses.
And what if the audience does not need your report, at least it seems so to her? Then read Pitch Anything . There are several tricks that intrigue the audience enough to give you three to five minutes, during which they will listen to you. Do not have time to show that it is worth listening to another 15 - are to blame.
6
Almost always, if you do not know the answer to a question, you must calmly and boldly answer "I do not know." If you feel confident in the subject as a whole, you can guess what the right answer might be, try to speculate out loud. However, if the topic is new for you, it makes no sense to do so.
In order to answer “I don't know” confidently, there is a good exercise: you plant friends in a semicircle, sit in front of them, and they start asking questions that you obviously do not know the answer to: “what is the name of the capital of Sierra Leone? When is Ladoga Bridge divorced? What was the name of the younger niece of Louis XVI? How many plays did Ostrovsky write? What is the name of Pavlov's dog? ”And you calmly answer“ I don't know. ” Train calm. An educated person does not have to know everything, he must know where to look for answers. Yes, yes, I meant not only Wikipedia, but also Habr, and Yandex, and even TSB and NLR.
7 Is it correct to keep your hands in your pockets, look at the ceiling and use parasitic words?
About "hands in pockets" I was asked in the comments to the previous post, and I will answer with a quote:
"- Listen, what are you doing in your pocket all the time? Do you caress your Bobby?
A notebook lay in the vast pocket of my storm jacket, and I blindly continuously recorded our conversation in it. When I explained to don Juan what the matter was, he laughed heartily. " © Carlos Castaneda. Journey to Ixtlan.
I met people who were good specialists and - less often - quite good lecturers, and some of them behaved strangely in front of the audience: one spoke all the time looking at the ceiling, the other constantly inserted into the speech "so to speak", and the third (he taught military department) finished all the sentences with the word "on", in which the continuation from a single consonant letter was easily guessed.
All these quirks add to the lecturer some zest, over which the audience (especially the young ones) will laugh more or less kindly. If you are pleased that you will be remembered as “that guy with his hands in his pockets” or “the guy who ends all sentences with the word“ la ”- there are no problems.
Some poses betray your insecurity or aggression, and the ability to speak in front of an audience is not to hide them, but to set yourself up to talk with confidence and without aggression. I am now talking about public speaking in neutral circumstances, because if you encourage prisoners to escape, aggression will be useful to you.
8 There is no universal way to look at the audience - 15 seconds per person or 30, you have to look at the reaction of people. Once I spoke in Tomsk, and for half an hour I forced myself to look at anyone except the prettiest girl in the hall. But then met
9 most important - if you consider yourself an experienced speaker, get ready for a report anyway. Especially after a long break. If you haven’t been telling anything in public for a few months, your skills haven’t gone away, but your knowledge of the topic should definitely be refreshed before the performance: during these months something could change, it would be better if you find yourself up to date with the latest news on the topic. was not like this: “Hmm, say that there is some kind of Solaris with KVM ported to the core? I wonder if I’ll google it in the evening. ”“ You don’t have to know everything, and you have to be able to admit with dignity that you didn’t know something, but you should know the main news on the topic to answer like this: „Solaris with KVM? You must be talking about Joyent SmartOS, which is made on the Illumos code, which is based on the OpenSolaris code. Yes, I heard, although I have not tried it yet. However, this project is not connected with the current Solaris, they are being developed by different companies. ”
The less self-importance you bring to the report, and the more you know about its subject, the less the audience wants to catch you in words, the more interesting your answers will be, the easier it will be for you to answer even tricky questions.
10 there is no universal rule “joke once every 10 minutes” - joke, when the situation allows, when you need to defuse the situation, when you need to attract divergent attention. Avoid constant deviations from the topic - it is important for your listeners to be able to return to what they came to hear for you.
11 Do not get involved in a dispute on topics not related to the topic of the report leading to an evil squabble. If you are talking about file systems or web service APIs, do not be quick to hurt someone’s religious feelings or scold politicians. Since among the audience, say, programmers, there can be zealous Cathollers together with Old Believers, as well as adherents of various political trends and views, I try to express my opinion about politics and religion only when absolutely necessary.
If the listener says that from his point of view, it is necessary to kill everyone, for example, raccoon dogs, because they destroy the ozone layer, I will certainly take an interest in the source of his knowledge and briefly express my dislike for generalizations, but I will further discuss the discussion, saying that it is not refers to the topic under discussion.
12 This has all been said, and in the last article I did too. I repeat, because it is important for both beginners and experienced: communicate. If your speech is a monologue, it will be boring faster than if you ask questions. Find out from the audience something useful for you - what they expect from this report, what they do, what tasks they are going to solve, having gained knowledge from you, what experience they have in this field, whether they had any experience from listed on the slide? Questions can be asked both at the beginning and along the way. Communication makes any report less boring, and the speaker is easier - you can not speak all the time.
13 more tips to an experienced teacher (the rest too, but experience can play a cruel joke of excessive self-confidence and complacency):
- Come to class on time. Buy plane tickets with a reserve, order a taxi in the evening, demand from the organizers a normal hotel not far from the place of study;
- do not drink at night before classes (and do not get drunk at all) - seriously! I myself once gave a lecture after plentiful libations; it’s terrible to feel that you cannot stand and urgently need to lean on a chair!
- do not go too far in demonstrating your superiority over the audience: you can joke about their knowledge or mistakes, but without hard offensive jokes;
- Try to remember what you have already told this group: if you lead five groups in a row or at the same time, forgetting who and what was said is easy. Neglect of this rule prevents people from understanding the material and can expose you to the old marazmatic (not the best image for someone who has not yet become marazmatic);
- when you are asked a question that requires a detailed answer, try to answer it after class, so that the part of the group that does not care about this question does not get bored;
- there is no need to get involved in life stories more than the main material. I like to tell some bike from the experience, but if the bike and its discussion is delayed for half an hour - this is already too much. In the end, people come to the courses not only to discuss which one who listened to the concert last week. Joint discussions make any lectures, seminars and courses more lively and more useful only if the main topic remains the main one, and much time is devoted to it.
An experienced speaker is always waiting for the temptation to talk about something from his experience instead of tedious discussion of stuff that has turned his backbite. It is necessary to overpower yourself and the main material is explained in detail and clearly. Business - time, fun - an hour.
14 if you are a student and missed an article from golodnyj in 2010 - read now :
Thanks to those who read to the end, and especially to those who looked to the end immediately and now press Up to see what the article was about.
Special thanks to karellen for the link to the Pitch Anything book. It is certainly worth learning from karellen : having written in a commentary to my previous article that in this book “the author very convincingly refutes almost all these“ truths ”, he intrigued me. Interestingly, someone denies something that works fine for me. I, of course, climbed on Amazon, bought the kindle-version of the book and read it with great pleasure. The book doesn’t actually refute anything: I told you exactly what I did to perform interestingly, and the book tells you why you should do that. The book is definitely worth reading, especially since it is written in fairly simple English.
By the way: at the beginning of the report, boldly thank the audience if you have something for that - for example, for good advice and good questions at the last meeting.
')
Before thanking, look at habrahabr.ru/post/57913 - I do not agree with everything, but it is interesting all the same. There, a comrade is indignant at the foolish beginnings of reports.
Make contact, engage the audience in a conversation if she is sleeping. A good way for large halls (two hundred or more people) is to make one half of the audience shout one short slogan or word, and the other the other. And then - all together something in common. It works on slogans that are well disassembled into parts and cause enthusiasm for a significant part of the audience, for example: “Russia - go ahead!”, “Uralmash is the champion!”, “PHP - taxis!”, Etc.
2 Do not rely on a certain type of microphone (for example, a wireless). The microphone in the room can be anything - and wired, and the headset, and with the stand, and without. Meanwhile, it is very inconvenient to simultaneously type commands on the keyboard and hold the microphone. Take a laser pointer with you if you need it for a presentation.
3 why do slides?
Slides either accompany the presentation, or are distributed to the audience and are published on the Internet, so that the audience can refresh the memory of the presentation. In the first case, the slides should be in large print (30 points), with pictures, with a small amount of text. In the second, they play the role of the notes, and therefore must be readable and well structured.
four
what to do in conflict situations?
Once I spent a little more time than I should have spent explaining why, from my point of view, most tasks on the Web are better solved using UNIX than Windows. There were violent followers of Windows in the audience, engaging me in a discussion about why this system is worse than UNIX. They accused me of incompetence, asserting that this and that works fine under Windows (after all, you can almost always find a special case that refutes any point of view, right?).
In that case it was my miscalculation - I underestimated the level of knowledge of a part of the audience and my arguments were intended for less experienced listeners, while the more experienced ones had to be persuaded with much more technical examples from my experience, and this already looked like an excuse: I had to prove that I am not a camel.
How to avoid such a situation? Less distractions from the main topic, less reason for outsiders to discuss, prepare iron arguments in favor of their point of view in advance, and such that they are understood by everyone in the audience.
Another time, I taught UNIX courses for a group of great guys from the technical service of a large mobile operator. One of them was constantly clarifying with the other what I said or meant, because he tried to record everything and immediately check it in practice, constantly distracting from the discussion. His questions were on the topic, and explanations would be helpful to the whole group, so I asked him to ask questions not to his neighbor, but to me — I would answer them for everyone.
He promised to do so, and again took up his own. It was inconvenient to explain the material to the group when one in a loud whisper explains to another what I told a minute ago. Therefore, I began to laugh. They interrupt me and talk, and I laugh. The group, of course, stops everything, asks that it is me. I explain: “people, I’m just getting angry here: we’ve come specifically to listen to the answers of the person who has been practicing all this confusion for the twentieth year, and discuss among themselves the conjectures about how it all works. Yes, ask me, I'll tell you! ”It helped with the second time. And no tension - I laughed, not angry, I really was funny.
The third case was in my group of well-trained students, one of whom, at the very first hour of classes, began to ask difficult questions on one narrow topic in our program. It was clear that he understands the topic perfectly, and asks questions not so much to learn something new for himself as to test my knowledge and my reaction.
There were two ways out. You can promise to answer after the break or the next day (and there either the donkey dies, the shah, or Khoja Nasreddin, or you can prepare a short answer on a complex topic, a short one - so that the rest of the people in the group will not be bored).
It was possible to answer immediately. I chose this exit because I also knew this narrow topic well. And he answered the question in great detail and quickly, so that the group did not have time to get bored. Comrade heard everything that already knew, and something else new from related topics, and from that moment he was my best ally in class.
five
audience motivation
Fortunately, 99% of my listeners wanted to know what I told them. Sometimes, if I had doubts that the material was interesting to everyone, I honestly said: “People, we will study this and that. If someone does not need it, go in peace. ” It was easier for me than for teachers in high school: my students did not pass any exams or tests for me, and if they skipped courses, problems could arise only from themselves if their bosses suddenly required to apply the knowledge gained in the courses.
And what if the audience does not need your report, at least it seems so to her? Then read Pitch Anything . There are several tricks that intrigue the audience enough to give you three to five minutes, during which they will listen to you. Do not have time to show that it is worth listening to another 15 - are to blame.
6
what to answer if you don't know the answer to the question
Almost always, if you do not know the answer to a question, you must calmly and boldly answer "I do not know." If you feel confident in the subject as a whole, you can guess what the right answer might be, try to speculate out loud. However, if the topic is new for you, it makes no sense to do so.
In order to answer “I don't know” confidently, there is a good exercise: you plant friends in a semicircle, sit in front of them, and they start asking questions that you obviously do not know the answer to: “what is the name of the capital of Sierra Leone? When is Ladoga Bridge divorced? What was the name of the younger niece of Louis XVI? How many plays did Ostrovsky write? What is the name of Pavlov's dog? ”And you calmly answer“ I don't know. ” Train calm. An educated person does not have to know everything, he must know where to look for answers. Yes, yes, I meant not only Wikipedia, but also Habr, and Yandex, and even TSB and NLR.
7 Is it correct to keep your hands in your pockets, look at the ceiling and use parasitic words?
About "hands in pockets" I was asked in the comments to the previous post, and I will answer with a quote:
"- Listen, what are you doing in your pocket all the time? Do you caress your Bobby?
A notebook lay in the vast pocket of my storm jacket, and I blindly continuously recorded our conversation in it. When I explained to don Juan what the matter was, he laughed heartily. " © Carlos Castaneda. Journey to Ixtlan.
I met people who were good specialists and - less often - quite good lecturers, and some of them behaved strangely in front of the audience: one spoke all the time looking at the ceiling, the other constantly inserted into the speech "so to speak", and the third (he taught military department) finished all the sentences with the word "on", in which the continuation from a single consonant letter was easily guessed.
All these quirks add to the lecturer some zest, over which the audience (especially the young ones) will laugh more or less kindly. If you are pleased that you will be remembered as “that guy with his hands in his pockets” or “the guy who ends all sentences with the word“ la ”- there are no problems.
Some poses betray your insecurity or aggression, and the ability to speak in front of an audience is not to hide them, but to set yourself up to talk with confidence and without aggression. I am now talking about public speaking in neutral circumstances, because if you encourage prisoners to escape, aggression will be useful to you.
8 There is no universal way to look at the audience - 15 seconds per person or 30, you have to look at the reaction of people. Once I spoke in Tomsk, and for half an hour I forced myself to look at anyone except the prettiest girl in the hall. But then met
9 most important - if you consider yourself an experienced speaker, get ready for a report anyway. Especially after a long break. If you haven’t been telling anything in public for a few months, your skills haven’t gone away, but your knowledge of the topic should definitely be refreshed before the performance: during these months something could change, it would be better if you find yourself up to date with the latest news on the topic. was not like this: “Hmm, say that there is some kind of Solaris with KVM ported to the core? I wonder if I’ll google it in the evening. ”“ You don’t have to know everything, and you have to be able to admit with dignity that you didn’t know something, but you should know the main news on the topic to answer like this: „Solaris with KVM? You must be talking about Joyent SmartOS, which is made on the Illumos code, which is based on the OpenSolaris code. Yes, I heard, although I have not tried it yet. However, this project is not connected with the current Solaris, they are being developed by different companies. ”
The less self-importance you bring to the report, and the more you know about its subject, the less the audience wants to catch you in words, the more interesting your answers will be, the easier it will be for you to answer even tricky questions.
10 there is no universal rule “joke once every 10 minutes” - joke, when the situation allows, when you need to defuse the situation, when you need to attract divergent attention. Avoid constant deviations from the topic - it is important for your listeners to be able to return to what they came to hear for you.
11 Do not get involved in a dispute on topics not related to the topic of the report leading to an evil squabble. If you are talking about file systems or web service APIs, do not be quick to hurt someone’s religious feelings or scold politicians. Since among the audience, say, programmers, there can be zealous Cathollers together with Old Believers, as well as adherents of various political trends and views, I try to express my opinion about politics and religion only when absolutely necessary.
If the listener says that from his point of view, it is necessary to kill everyone, for example, raccoon dogs, because they destroy the ozone layer, I will certainly take an interest in the source of his knowledge and briefly express my dislike for generalizations, but I will further discuss the discussion, saying that it is not refers to the topic under discussion.
12 This has all been said, and in the last article I did too. I repeat, because it is important for both beginners and experienced: communicate. If your speech is a monologue, it will be boring faster than if you ask questions. Find out from the audience something useful for you - what they expect from this report, what they do, what tasks they are going to solve, having gained knowledge from you, what experience they have in this field, whether they had any experience from listed on the slide? Questions can be asked both at the beginning and along the way. Communication makes any report less boring, and the speaker is easier - you can not speak all the time.
13 more tips to an experienced teacher (the rest too, but experience can play a cruel joke of excessive self-confidence and complacency):
- Come to class on time. Buy plane tickets with a reserve, order a taxi in the evening, demand from the organizers a normal hotel not far from the place of study;
- do not drink at night before classes (and do not get drunk at all) - seriously! I myself once gave a lecture after plentiful libations; it’s terrible to feel that you cannot stand and urgently need to lean on a chair!
- do not go too far in demonstrating your superiority over the audience: you can joke about their knowledge or mistakes, but without hard offensive jokes;
- Try to remember what you have already told this group: if you lead five groups in a row or at the same time, forgetting who and what was said is easy. Neglect of this rule prevents people from understanding the material and can expose you to the old marazmatic (not the best image for someone who has not yet become marazmatic);
- when you are asked a question that requires a detailed answer, try to answer it after class, so that the part of the group that does not care about this question does not get bored;
- there is no need to get involved in life stories more than the main material. I like to tell some bike from the experience, but if the bike and its discussion is delayed for half an hour - this is already too much. In the end, people come to the courses not only to discuss which one who listened to the concert last week. Joint discussions make any lectures, seminars and courses more lively and more useful only if the main topic remains the main one, and much time is devoted to it.
An experienced speaker is always waiting for the temptation to talk about something from his experience instead of tedious discussion of stuff that has turned his backbite. It is necessary to overpower yourself and the main material is explained in detail and clearly. Business - time, fun - an hour.
14 if you are a student and missed an article from golodnyj in 2010 - read now :
Thanks to those who read to the end, and especially to those who looked to the end immediately and now press Up to see what the article was about.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/147031/
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