Public Speaking 101 - Use These Ground Rules Before You Start Your Training Session

How many of you are currently doing public speaking? If so, how many of you will start presenting your topic at the very beginning because you are afraid of time overrun? Here is my opinion. Even though I have only 60 minutes to present a topic, I will still spend at least 7 to 10 minutes to set up a few rules to be used in my presentation. This is done regardless of whether the training is conducted in my training room or someone else’s training room. You may wonder why it is a must for me to set up my rules at the beginning of the presentation. There are at least two reasons for doing so. Firstly, it allows me to finish the entire presentation on time based on my game plan and script prepared in advance. Secondly, it helps my participants to achieve the maximum learning experience because of the context I set up to facilitate their learning. As a trainer, I keep on learning new things in public speaking. Recently, I have refined three of my rules used in my training. In this article, I am going to share with you these three rules and I would appreciate it if you could let me have your comment or feedback on these rules as I would love to hear from you. Rule No.1 – We Work as a Team Would you agree that there is a limit of what the trainer could do in any training session? Would you also agree that a successful training requires the co-operation between the trainer and all his participants? The reality is we just need one participant to be selfish or not co-operative to bring down the entire learning process. Here is my first rule – “Work as a Team”. On my part, I undertake to do whatever it takes to facilitate my participants’ learning. On their part, my participants must agree to do whatever it takes to participate in my training session. As a team, everyone agrees that no one will be left behind when the training is in progress. If I notice someone is indeed behind in his learning, I will call out the team and check the current status of everyone’s learning progress. The entire “team” must be on par before the training continues. Rule No. 2 – “Q & A” Part of the Accelerated Learning Method requires the trainer to fully engage his participants. Here is my second rule – “Q & A”. Typically when I introduce this rule, I will ask my participants what “Q & A” stands for and I expect them to say “Questions & Answers”. After this, I will let them know I am looking for “Questions and Asks”. How many of you have seen some trainers before who try to answer every question from their participants? One thing I learnt in the Accelerated Learning Method is that most of the time, the participants actually have the answer to their own questions. What they need is the trainer’s endorsement and/or confirmation. Accordingly, when a participant asks me a question, I will typically ask him a few more questions. My intention is to help him to confirm the answer he already knew. This is what “Questions & Asks” is all about. In order for this approach to work, I must be given the authority to do so and therefore, I must seek my participants’ agreement right at the beginning of my training. Does this make sense to you? Rule No.3 – I Know You Are a High Integrity Person The third rule is a safeguard measure just in case someone decides to back off even though he has already agreed to be bound by the first and second rules as discussed above. Typically, I will invite my participants to come up with some adjectives to describe the word “integrity” and I am specifically looking for adjectives such as “honest”, “ethical” and “moral”. Once these adjectives have been identified, I will share with my participants my belief that they are all high integrity people because they are honest, moral and ethical. I also believe that they will follow the first and second rules because they have agreed to be bound by them. From a practical experience, I notice that this rule is very effective if I am dealing with participants who are professional people (e.g. lawyers and accountants). I am still exploring the effectiveness of implementing this rule in other situations. I hope you will find my sharing insightful. As I said, please let me have your comments or feedback, as I would love to hear from you.