The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking

by Dale Carnegie

delivered straight from the mind and heart of the speaker to their minds and their hearts.

That is what the audience wants: “your natural tones of eloquence,” enlarged a bit. The only way to acquire the knack of this enlarged naturalness is by practice.

You may go so far as actually to ask questions and answer them. For example, in the midst of your talk, you may say, “and you ask what proof have I for this assertion? I have adequate proof and here it is...” Then proceed to answer the question. That sort of thing can be done very naturally. It will break up the monotony of one’s delivery; it will make it direct and pleasant and conversational.

Put Your Heart into Your Speaking

When a man is under the influence of his feelings, his real self comes to the surface.

put your heart into your talks.

Practice Making Your Voice Strong and Flexible

We find ourselves less ready to use gestures and animation; we rarely raise or lower our voices from one pitch to another. In short, we lose the freshness and spontaneity of true conversation. We may get into the habit of talking too slowly or too rapidly, and our diction, unless carefully watched, tends to become ragged and careless.

It is an excellent idea to evaluate oneself in terms of volume, pitch variation, and pace.

This can be done with the aid of a tape recorder. On the other hand, it would be useful to have friends help you make this evaluation.

Talk in Terms of Your Listeners’ Interests

Ask yourself how knowledge of your subject will help the members of your audience solve their problems and achieve their goals.

The next time you face an audience, visualize them as eager to hear what you have to say—as long as it applies to them. Speakers who fail to take this essential egocentricity of their listeners into account are apt to find themselves facing a restless audience, one squirming in boredom, glancing at wristwatches, and looking hopefully toward the exit doors.

Show your appreciation for something they have done that is worthy of praise, and you win a passport into their hearts.

Be exactly one hundred per cent sincere. An insincere statement may occasionally fool an individual, but it never fools an audience.

Identify Yourself with the Audience

As soon as possible, preferably in the first words you utter, indicate some direct relationship with

the group you are ad...

Another way to open the lines of communication is to use the names of people in the audience.

Another method of keeping the audience at peak attentiveness is to use the pronoun “you” rather than the third-person “they.”

Make Your Audience a Partner in Your Talk

Did it ever occur to you that you can keep an audience hanging on every word by using a little showmanship?

One of my favorite methods of getting audience participation is simply to ask questions and to get responses, I like to get the audience on its feet, repeating a sentence after me, or answering my questions by raising their hands.

to make the audience a partner in the enterprise.” I like that description of the audience as “a partner in the enterprise.” It is the key to what this chapter is all about. If you use audience participation you confer the rights of partnership on your listeners.

Play Yourself Down

Of course, nothing will take the place of sincerity in this speaker-audience relationship.

The surest way to antagonize an audience is to indicate that you consider yourself to be above them. When you speak, you are in a showcase and every facet of your personality is on display. The slightest hint of braggadocio is fatal.

On the other hand, modesty inspires confidence and good will. You can be modest without being apologetic. Your audience will like and respect you for suggesting your limitations as long as you show you are determined to do your best.

They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

What do we mean by the purpose of a talk? Just this: every talk, regardless of whether the speaker realizes it or not, has one of four major goals. What are they? * * * To persuade or get action. To inform. To impress and convince. To entertain.

Because so many speakers fail to line up their purpose with the purpose of the meeting at which they are speaking, they often flounder and come to grief.

Fit the purpose of your talk to the audience and the occasion.

Start your talk by giving us the details of your Example, an incident that graphically illustrates the main idea you wish to get across. Second, in specific clearcut terms give your Point, tell exactly what you want your audience to do; and third, give your Reason, that is, highlight the advantage or benefit to be gained by the listener when he does what you ask him to do.

This is a formula highly suited to our swift-paced way of life. Speakers can no longer afford to indulge in long, leisurely introductions. Audiences are composed of busy people who want whatever the speaker has to say in straightforward language.

The formula is ideal for short talks, because it is based upon a certain amount of suspense.

BUILD YOUR EXAMPLE UPON A SINGLE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

The incident type of example is particularly powerful when it is based upon a single event that had a dramatic impact upon your life.

A single personal experience that taught you a lesson you will never forget is the first requisite of a persuasive action talk.

With this kind of incident you can move audiences to act—if it happened to you, your listeners reason, it can happen to them, and they had better take your advice by doing what you ask them to do.

START YOUR TALK WITH A DETAIL OF ...

One of the reasons for starting your talk with the Example step is to ca...

begin right in your example and you will capture the attention of your audience immediately.

Here are some opening sentences that drew my attention like a magnet: “In 1942, I found myself on a cot in a hospital”; “Yesterday at breakfast my wife was pouring the coffee and...”; “Last July I was driving at a fast clip down Highway 42...”; “The door of my office opened and Charlie Vann, our foreman, burst in”; “I was fishing in the middle of the lake; I looked up and saw a motor boat speeding toward me.”

If you start your talk with phrases that answer one of the questions, Who? When? Where? What? How? or Why?, you will be using one of the oldest communication dev...

FILL YOUR EXAMPLE WITH RELEVANT DETAIL

many details—unimportant details—make conversation and public speaking a boring test of endurance.

The secret is to select only those details that will serve to emphasize the point and reason of the talk.

But relevant detail, couched in concrete, colorful language, is the best way to recreate the incident as it happened and to picturize it for the audience.

paint a word picture of your frightening experience, using the full range of multi-sensory phraseology, will etch the event upon the consciousness of the listeners.

your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. The only way you can possibly achieve this effect is to use an abundance of concrete details.