I was lucky to be a representative of the oldest profession, which is not threatened with extinction in the age of artificial intelligence and biotechnology. But this is not what you think about, because there are several ancient and therefore eternal professions. One of them is a teacher of rhetoric.
Rhetoric is the management of people through speech. Presentations, which will be discussed, are a private type of public speaking. Maybe you didn’t want to practice rhetoric when you made a presentation to investors, colleagues or superiors. But you practice it. Without knowing it. But what is most remarkable - on the sly on your own and others' mistakes, you come up with rhetoric, create it on your own. As once Aristotle and his comrades. Here he is sad that he was forgotten:
But in general, this is not at all sad. After all, most often the attempts to create something that was already created two thousand years ago look funny, and my colleagues love to sneer at such efforts. I think otherwise. IT-shniki are hard-nosed guys, so there is no doubt that even not in your core area you will succeed and one day you will invent the art of speaking. Let me save your time and tell a few basic things that I somehow could not find in the local
presentation materials.
Before you start drawing graphs, selecting illustrations and building up an abundance of thoughts in a certain sequence of statements, you need to forget about your bright ideas and rich experience, forget about yourself. And about the goals that you decided to pursue with your presentation, you also need to forget.
Instead, you need to carefully look at your future audience.
Audience problem
Any monologue is violence against the audience, so you must have a serious excuse for your performance. The only worthy excuse is to solve the problem of the audience. With your presentation you have to solve the problem of the audience, and if you come out to solve your own problem, to achieve some of your goals - you are not a speaker. When you solve your problem - the audience doesn't care about you, but if you solve its problem, it will follow you. A good speaker always solves the problem of the audience. An excellent speaker solves the problem of the audience so that at the same time to solve their problems.
Therefore, the first thing to do is to understand what problem you are going to solve.
Fact based on speech
To understand the problem of the audience, you need to understand what happened. The fact creates a problem. Something happened, I do not know what to do with it, you appear and save me. So what happened? Because if nothing happened, you shouldn’t speak at all. It all starts with the fact. If it is not, it must be created and imposed. If he is weak, he needs to be inflated. If he does not catch the audience, it should be sharpened.
When you have a fact that gives the audience a problem that you are able to solve, you can move on.
Thesis of the speech
And then you need to formulate the main idea of his speech, the thesis of his speech. This is important to do, because the audience is a fool, and will not catch more than one main thought. Get over it. There are not so smart audiences that can take more than one main idea. Even if every person in the hall is smarter than you by an order of magnitude, the audience in general is eager for one single main thought. Not two and not three, but one. The thought that remains in her head when you finish talking.
Speech thesis is one sentence that contains your entire presentation. If you have a thesis, and you can shove it into people's heads, then there it will independently unfold in all its beauty and strength. Your task, the task of your entire performance is to put a thesis in the head of the audience. If you don't do it, everything will be wasted.
Thesis of speech looks like this: What happened - What to do - Why.
What happened is a fact that you find and which causes a problem. What to do is a way to solve the problem. Why is the reason for the correctness of your proposed solution. And all this in one sentence. Nothing complicated.
example for fixingThere is really nothing difficult in drawing up theses, therefore it is strange that nobody is engaged in them. Make one for the following situation: "People in your city turned into zombies, you took refuge in the supermarket with the remnants of normal people, you ran out of water and food, you need to be saved, you decided to take the floor."
Do not read below until you compile. And when you make up, check yourself on this passage from “Romana with rhetoric”:
- People in your city turned into zombies. You with the remnants of normal people took refuge in the supermarket. You ran out of water and food, you need to be saved, you decide to take the floor. Construct the thesis of this speech.
- Ok, come on.
- ... well? let's.
- Oh yes. So the audience is people in the supermarket, the speaker is me, the fact is zombies, the problem is we all die, the solution to the problem is to get out of the city.
- Not.
- In which part - no?
- The fact is wrong. And the problem is after him. And the solution.
- Not a zombie fact? .. Oh, I realized - the fact that the water and food ran out.
- Yes, if it had not ended, you would have quietly sat in the supermarket and waited for the military or who are usually expected there in such cases.
- Then the problem - we can die from hunger. And the solution to the problem is that we need to find food.
- Finding food is not a solution, it is a problem in other words.
- Then we need to break into the next supermarket, where there may be food.
- Let it be so, although I am confused by this “maybe”. Let's take a thesis. What happened, what to do, why.
“You and I have run out of water and food, we need to break through to the next supermarket, because there we will be able to replenish our provisions.”
- Yes, sort of. We face death from starvation due to the fact that water and food have run out, so I propose to break into a nearby supermarket to replenish stocks of provisions. This is the thesis, and the whole speech will be needed in order to prove this thesis, to reveal each part of it and to make people act according to this thesis. Nothing complicated. Thesis properties write down?
- Of course.
- First. Thesis speech should be clear. What is the point in trying to convey to people of your main thought, if it is vague and mysterious? No, the thesis should be clear and thoughtful. The second. Speech thesis should be easy to remember. The audience should not just hear it, it should carry it further, beyond its limits, to new listeners. Therefore, make the thesis convenient for memorization and subsequent reproduction. Third. Thesis speech should be new. There is nothing worse when the public hears from the speaker what she already knows. Although no, worse, when the public hears from the speaker what she already knows, there is a situation where the public hears from the speaker what she could guess herself. Therefore, the fourth - the thesis of speech should be controversial. And finally, the fifth. Thesis speech should be feasible by the forces of the audience. After all, a thesis is the answer to a question, a solution to a problem. It makes no sense to offer impracticable things.
- Does our thesis about zombies correspond to these qualities?
- Quite, provided that you said the speech immediately after the problems with food and water were clarified, otherwise the thesis will not be new. And provided that your audience is healthy adults who can break through the crowds of zombies to a nearby supermarket, otherwise the thesis will not be possible. And so - quite a working thesis.
The success of the presentation
The success of the presentation is one hundred percent dependent on the correctness of the thesis. On. Hundred. Percent. What fonts, colors and graphics you will use - all this is absolutely secondary. How talented and incendiary you will tell everything, what you will be wearing, whether you will speak in short or long sentences, whether you will joke or not - all this is optional and optional. The main thing is the thesis.
Do you know why everyone is focused on the number of slides or demonstrations of their passion for the subject of speech? Because it is very simple. It is just to tell, it is just to learn, just to apply. But this will not give you any advantages over anyone, because everyone can do it. But few can find out the problem of the audience and solve it with the help of the correct thesis.
I had the opportunity to teach owners and employees of IT companies, I saw their presentations and always wondered how much attention was paid, for example, to the ratio of the number of slides to the time of the performance or the technique on which there would be a demonstration, and how little to the listeners for whom this presentation was prepared . If you do not pay attention to the person you are speaking to - then why do you think that they should be interested or useful to listen to you? Because you have the right animation? Come on.
All the oratorial techniques, all the tricks of the presentations, all the tricks of persuasion and ways to pump out the charisma are needed only to help the speaker. But he himself must help his listeners solve their problems. In this and only in this case, he will be a successful speaker.