The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking

by Dale Carnegie

“I promise that, if you will listen to me for ten minutes, I’ll tell you one sure way to make yourself more popular.” The “promise” type of opener is sure to get attention because it goes straight to the self-interests of the audience.

No rational person would begin a talk by insulting his audience or by making any obnoxious or disagreeable statement that would turn them against him and his message.

To begin a talk with an apology does not get you off to a good start either. How often we all have heard speakers begin by calling the attention of the audience to their lack of preparation or their lack of ability. If you are not prepared, the audience will probably discover it without your assistance. Why insult your audience by suggesting that you did not think them worth preparing for, that just any old thing you had on the fire was good enough to serve them? No, we don’t want to hear apologies; we want to be informed and interested—to be interested: remember that.

For some lamentable reason, the novice feels that he ought to “lighten up” his talk by telling a joke; he assumes that the mantel of Mark Twain has descended upon his shoulders.

Perhaps the easiest way to create merriment is to tell a story on yourself. Depict yourself in some ridiculous and embarrassing situation. That gets down to the very essence of humor.

The close is really the most strategic point in a talk, what one says last, the final words left ringing in the ears when one ceases—these are likely to be remembered longest.

You see what he has done? You can see it and feel it without having heard the rest of the talk. He has summed up in a few sentences, in sixty-two words, practically all the points he had made in the entire talk.

In addition to using the principles of this book in everyday speech, where incidentally you will reap the greatest rewards, you should seek every opportunity to speak in public.

When we learn any new thing, like French or golf or speaking in public, we never advance steadily. We do not improve gradually. We do it by waves, by abrupt starts and sudden stops. Then we remain stationary a time, or we may even slip back and lose some of the ground we have previously gained. These periods of stagnation, or retrogression, are well known by all psychologists; they have been named “plateaus in the curve of learning.”

How well you succeed is largely determined by thoughts you have prior to speaking. See yourself in your imagination talking to others with perfect selfcontrol. It is easily in your power to do this. Believe that you will succeed. Believe it firmly, and you will then do what is necessary to bring success about.

Once you have selected your topic, the first step is to stake out the area you want to cover and stay strictly within those limits. Don’t make the mistake of trying to cover the open range.

In a short talk, less than five minutes in duration, all you can expect is to get one or two main points across. In a longer talk, up to thirty minutes, few speakers ever succeed if they try to cover more than four or five main ideas.

Assemble a hundred thoughts around your theme, then discard ninety.

Always prepare so that you are ready for any emergency, such as a change of emphasis because of a previous speaker’s remarks, or a well-aimed question from the audience in the discussion period following your talk.

“If a speech is to be of any importance at all, the speaker should live with the theme or message, turning it over and over in his mind.

While you are involved in this process you will be under strong temptation to write your talk out, word for word. Try not to do this, for once you have set a pattern, you are likely to be satisfied with it, and you may cease to give it any more constructive thought. In addition, there is the danger of memorizing the script.

Readers of my books are soon aware of my use of the anecdote as a means of developing the main points of my message. The rules from How to Win Friends and Influence People can be listed on one and a half pages. The other two hundred and thirty pages of the book are filled with stories and illustrations to point up how others have used these rules with wholesome effect. How can we acquire this most important technique of using illustrative material? There are five ways of doing this: Humanize, Personalize, Specify, Dramatize, and Visualize.

The average speech would be far more appealing if it were rich with human interest stories. The speaker should attempt to make only a few points and to illustrate them with concrete cases. Such a method of speech building can hardly fail to get and hold attention.

“Nothing adds more realism to a story than names; nothing is as unrealistic as anonymity. Imagine a story whose hero has no name.”

If you clutter your talk with too much detail, your audience will blue-pencil your remarks by refusing to give you their complete attention. There is no blue pencil more severe than inattentiveness.

Psychologists tell us that more than eighty-five per cent of our knowledge comes to us through visual impressions. No doubt this accounts for the enormous effectiveness of television as an advertising as well as entertainment medium. Public speaking, too, is a visual as well as auditory art.

The speaker who is easy to listen to is the one who sets images floating before your eyes. The one who employs foggy, commonplace, colorless symbols sets the audience to nodding.

If a speaker believes a thing earnestly enough and says it earnestly enough, he will get adherents to his cause, even though he claims he can produce blue grass from dust and ashes. How much more compelling will our convictions be if they are arrayed on the side of common sense and truth!

As I have pointed out repeatedly, you cannot help but succeed if you choose the right topic for you. One area of topics is sure-fire: talk about your convictions! Surely you have strong beliefs about some aspect of life around you. You don’t have to search far and wide for these subjects— they generally lie on the surface of your stream of consciousness, because you often think about them.

Learn more and more about what you now consider a pretty good topic. The more you know about something the more earnest and excitedly enthusiastic you will become.

So, the more you relive the scene you are describing, or recreate the emotions you felt originally, the more vividly you will express yourself.

When you walk before your audience to speak, do so with an air of anticipation, not like a man who is ascending the gallows. The spring in your walk may be largely put on, but it will do wonders for you and it gives the audience the feeling that you have something you are eager to talk about. Just before you begin, take a deep breath. Keep away from furniture or from the speaker’s stand. Keep your head high and your chin up. You are about to tell your listeners something worthwhile, and every part of you should inform them of that clearly and unmistakably. You are in command, and as William James would say, act as if you are. If you make an effort to send your voice to the back of the hall, the sound will reassure you. Once you begin making gestures of any kind, they will help to stimulate you.

This principle of “warming up our reactivity,” as Donald and Eleanor Laird describe it, can be applied to all situations that demand mental awareness. In their book Techniques for Efficient Remembering, the Lairds point to President Theodore Roosevelt as a man who “breezed through life with a bounce, vigor, dash, and enthusiasm which became his trademark. He was absorbingly interested, or effectively pretended he was, in everything he tackled.” Teddy Roosevelt was a living exponent of the philosophy of William James: “Act in earnest and you will become naturally earnest in all you do.”

My point is that once you let your hair down before a group you are not likely to hold yourself back when it comes to the normal, everyday expression of your opinions whether to individuals or before groups.

There is an old saying in the English Parliament that everything depends upon the manner in which one speaks and not upon the matter.

Please, I beg you, do not attempt to force yourself in a mold and thereby lose your distinctiveness.

The so-called variables, or modulations of tone, are under the direct influence of our mental and emotional state. That is why it is so important that we have a topic we know and a topic we are excited about when we go before an audience. That is why we must be so eager to share that topic with our listeners. Since most of us lose the spontaneity and naturalness of youth as we grow older, we tend to slip into a definite mold of physical and vocal communication.

Dr. Conwell knew that audiences differ. He recognized that he had to make each successive audience feel that his talk was a personal, living thing created for it, and it alone. How did he succeed in keeping this interrelationship between speaker, speech, and audience alive from one speaking engagement to the next? “I visit a town or city,” he wrote, “and try to arrive there early enough to see the postmaster, the barber, the hotel manager, the principal of the schools, some of the ministers, and then go into the stores and talk with people, and see what has been their history and what opportunities they had. Then I give my lecture and talk to those people about the subjects that apply to them locally.”

Dr. Conwell did not give the same lecture twice, although he addressed almost six thousand different audiences on the same subject.

He made a point of working into his lecture plenty of local allusions and examples. His audiences were interested because his talk

When asked what interests people, Lord Northcliffe, the William Randolph Hearst of British journalism, replied, “themselves.” He built a newspaper empire on that single truth.

Audiences are composed of individuals, and they react like individuals. Openly criticize an audience and they resent it. Show your appreciation for something they have done that is worthy of praise, and you win a passport into their hearts. This often requires some research on your part.

In the words of a great speaker, Chauncey M. Depew, you have to “tell them something about themselves that they didn’t think you could possibly know.”

If you can’t show sincere appreciation, don’t show any!

One word of caution: If you are going to work strange names into your talk, having learned them through inquiries made for the occasion, be sure you have them exactly right; be sure you understand fully the reason for your use of the names; be sure you mention them only in a favorable way; and use them in moderation.

By skillfully using “you” and inserting his listeners into the picture, this speaker was able to keep attention alive and glowing. There are times, however, when the pronoun “you” is dangerous, when it may establish a cleavage between speaker and audience rather than a bridge. This occurs when it might seem as though we were talking down to our audience or lecturing it. Then it is better to say “we” instead of “you.”

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. – Dale Carnegie

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.

What is the Magic Formula? Simply this: 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.

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 devices in the world to get attention—the story.

too 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.

Assume you are talking for two minutes. You have about twenty seconds in which to hammer home the desired action you wish the audience to take and the benefit they can expect as a result of doing what you ask. The need for detail is over. The time for forthright, direct assertion has come. It is the reverse of the newspaper technique. Instead of giving the headline first, you give the news story and then you headline it with your Point or appeal for action.

Be precise in telling the audience exactly what you want them to do.

Speakers who give detailed action points are more apt to be successful in motivating their audiences than those who rest upon generalities.

BE SURE THE REASON IS RELEVANT TO THE EXAMPLE