Public Speaking for My Peeps

Yo, RMo here with the lowdown on public speaking.

Let the following tips run barefoot down your mental hallway. You will be a better speaker for it.

Be Yourself.
Don't imitate someone else's speaking style at the expense of losing your identity. Sure, you can learn a thing or two from other speakers, but don't be a carbon copy of someone else. The world already has them. What it needs is you--and you offer a uniqueness that can only come from, well, you. Where would civilization be if Jim Varney had tried to imitate Martin Luther King, Jr.? Okay, never mind.

Be Prepared
In other words--practice your speech in private before you get on the "big stage." Personally, I recommend camping out in an empty classroom or auditorium--preferably the one you'll be speaking in--and running through your speech several times.

Be Visual
Let's face it, we live in a visual culture. Although some listeners get distracted with visual aids, most of us appreciate the help. It keeps our attention better. In fact, anything you can do to engage the five senses is likely to help your audience.

Be Unpredictable
Predictability is the spice of boringness, or something. Zag after you have zigged. Change gears abruptly. Leave metal shavings on the rhetorical highway. Just make sure your audience can handle it. Hint: If you listeners can't watch CNN because the scrolling headlines are too distracting, then you might be more traditional in your approach.

Be Uniquely Differentiated
A prominent motivational speaker talks about the "Unique Differentiating Factor"--that element that makes you distinct as a communicator. It's Walter Cronkite ending each CBS broadcast with the line, "And that's the way it is on...(insert date here)." It's Marty Brenneman, the broadcaster of the Cincinnati Reds ending each Red's win with, "And this one belongs to the Reds." What unique stamp could you place on your speeches?

Be Original
I'll leave you with some examples of speeches I've seen that have been original:

Joshua, a student at IUK, gave a speech against eating meat. He pulls out a food storage container in which he has kept a pound of meat--for a week--under the front seat of his car--in the middle of July. If anything could simulate the smell of--let me put this delicately--a person implementing the facilities in the grossest of all possible ways, this was it. Some students walked out, while others recoiled in horror. Skunks fainted. Onions cried. NO ONE has forgotten about the time that Joshua pulled back the lid on that that rancid putrification. [For the record, I didn't eat meat for a week after that.]

Wyatt Folds, the former Senior Pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Lakeland, Florida, gave a sermon on the text in James chapter 2 from the New Testament that says if you have broken one of God's laws, then you are guilty of having broken them all. So I walk into the sanctuary on Sunday morning and I see on the platform, the largest light bulb I have ever seen. The thing must have been twice the size of a basketball, and a grid of ten sections had been drawn across the surface of the bulb with a marker. All through the singing, guess what I'm thinking about? "What's he going to do with that thing?" In the beginning of the sermon, guess what I'm thinking? Still, "What's he going to do with that thing?" Finally, at the end, he takes out a hammer from behind the pulpit. Now he's really got my attention! Remember the claim: If you break just one of God's laws, then you are guilty of breaking them all. The ten areas represented the 10 commandments. The question: What would happen if you broke only one commandment? At this point, he smashed the hammer through only one of the 10 surface areas on the light bulb causing the whole thing to shatter with a great puff of smoke. Cool. Very cool.