Carnegie Language Breakthroughs and the Art of Communication

Chapter 11 Basic Principles for Efficient Speech (5)
What is an appropriate topic?If you have had this kind of life experience and experience, and through experience and reflection make it into your mind, you can determine whether a certain topic is suitable for you.How to find the topic?Dig deep into your own memory and search for those meaningful and vivid impressions in your life from your own background.A few years ago, we did a survey based on the topics that captured our audience's attention, and found that the topics that our audience appreciates most relate to certain personal backgrounds, such as:
a. The course of early growth.Topics related to family, childhood memories, and school life are sure to attract the attention of others.Because we are most interested in how others face and overcome obstacles in the environment in which they grew up.

Whenever possible, punctuate your speech with examples from your own early years.You can also use some well-known plays, movies and stories, the early challenges of public figures, etc.But how can we be sure that others will be interested in what happened to us as children?There is a way to test it.Years later, if something is still vividly imprinted on the mind, ready to come out, it is almost guaranteed to interest the audience.

b. The early struggle to get ahead.It's an experience oozing with humanity.For example, recounting one's early struggles to get rich can also grab the audience's attention.How did you get into a particular job or industry?What kinds of intertwined circumstances have shaped your career?Tell us about your setbacks, your hopes, and your successes in building a business in this competitive world.A true and vivid depiction of a person's life is the safest subject.

c. Your hobbies and entertainment.This aspect of the topic depends on each person's preferences, so it is also a subject that can attract attention.It is impossible to make a mistake when you say that you do something because you like it.Your genuine enthusiasm for a particular hobby enables you to communicate the subject clearly to your audience.

d. Specific areas of knowledge.After working in a certain field for many years, you can definitely become an expert in this field.Even discussing things about your work or career based on years of experience or research can command the attention and respect of your audience.

e. Unusual experience.Have you ever met some great people?Ever risked your life under the fire of war?Have you ever experienced a crisis of spiritual depression in your life?These experiences can be the best speech materials.

f. Faith and belief.Perhaps you have spent a lot of time and effort thinking about your attitude to the major situations facing the world today.If you've spent a lot of time working on big issues, there's a good reason to talk about them.Just be sure to give examples of what you believe in when you do it.Audiences don't like to hear speeches full of clichés.Never read newspapers and magazines at random to prepare for the topics you are talking about.If you don't know much more about a subject than you hear, it's better to say less.But, on the other hand, if there is a subject that you have spent years studying, there is no doubt that it is the topic of choice for your speech.

Preparing for a speech is not simply putting words on paper, or reciting a string of words, or drawing second-hand opinions from hastily read newspapers and magazines.It is digging deep in your own mind and heart and extracting the important beliefs that your life has stored there.There is no need to wonder if the material is there, of course it is there, in abundance, waiting to be discovered.Don't dismiss such topics because they are too personal and minor, and the audience won't like to listen to them.In fact, such a speech can make the audience happy and move them. It makes them happier and moves me more than the speeches of many professional speakers they have heard.

Only by talking about things you are familiar with and using subjects you are passionate about can you quickly and easily learn to speak in public.

2. Passionate about the subject matter you choose

Not all topics that you and I are qualified to discuss interest us.For example, I'm a "do-it-yourself" type of person, and I'm really qualified to talk about how to wash dishes.But somehow I just can't get excited about the subject, and in fact, I don't want to think about it at all.And yet, I've heard housewives—that is, household executives—say admirably on the subject.They either harbor a burning rage at the never-ending dishes, or they discover new ways to handle this annoying chore.In any case, they were very enthusiastic about the subject.So they can talk fluently on the topic of washing dishes.

Here is a question, that is, whether the topic you think is suitable for public discussion.Suppose someone stood up and spoke out against your views. Would you defend yourself with confidence and passion?If you do, you're on the right track.

In 1926, I visited the venue of the Seventh Congress of the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, and took notes afterwards.Recently, I accidentally came across these notes again.Here is one of the paragraphs:
After three or four dead speakers had read his manuscript, the Canadian Sir George Fester took the stage.I noticed with great admiration that he carried no paper or note.He often gestures, without any distractions, and concentrates on what he has to say.There are some things he very much wants his audience to know.His eagerness to convey to his listeners something inherent in his heart was as clear as Lake Geneva outside the window.The principles that I have always advocated in teaching were perfectly demonstrated in that lecture.

I often think of Sir George's speeches, he was sincere and warm.This kind of sincerity will be fully revealed only when you really feel and really think about the selected topic.Bishop Fisher Bussing, America's most powerful orator, learned this lesson early in his life.

In his book "This Life Is Not False", he wrote:

I was selected to be on the debate team at my college.The night before the Marian debate, our debate professor called me into his office to scold me.

"You're an idiot! There hasn't been a worse speaker than you in the history of this house!"

"Then," I said, trying to defend myself, "if I'm such a jerk, why did you pick me on the debate team?"

"Because," he answered, "you think, not you speak. Go into that corner and take a passage out of the speech and tell it." I repeated a passage for an hour, At last he said, "See what's wrong?" "No." And then another hour and a half, two hours, two and a half hours.In the end, I was exhausted.He said, "Can't you see what's wrong?"

Because of my natural quick reaction, after two and a half hours, I understood.I said, "You see, I'm not sincere. I'm not paying attention at all. I don't mean it."

In this way, Bishop Bussin learned a lesson he will never forget: put yourself into the speech.So he began to make himself enthusiastic about his subject.Only then did the learned professor say, "Now you can speak!"

If a student in our class said, "I can't get excited about anything, I lead a normal, monotonous life." Our trained teacher would ask him, what does he do in his spare time?Their responses varied: Some went to the movies, others went bowling, and others planted roses.Another student told the teacher that he collected books about matches.As the teacher continued to ask about his unusual hobby, he gradually began to cheer up.After a while, he gesticulated and described the small room he stored and collected.He told the teacher that he has a collection of match books from almost all countries in the world.After he got excited about his favorite topic, the teacher interrupted him: "Why don't you tell us about this topic? I think it's very interesting." He said he never thought that anyone would be interested in this matter !This man has spent many years pursuing a hobby that has almost become a passion, but he denies its value and thinks it is not worth talking about.The teacher earnestly told him that the only way to test the interest value of a subject matter was to ask himself how interested he was in it.So, he talked all night as a collector.I later heard that he also went to various lunch clubs to give lectures on collecting matchbooks and gained local respect for it.

If you want to learn to speak in public quickly and easily, the above example just illustrates the second principle.

3. Motivate your audience to empathize with you

All speaking situations are made up of three elements: the speaker, the speech (content), and the audience.The first two laws in this chapter dealt with the interrelationship between the speaker and the speech, and so far we haven't really talked about the situation in the speech.Only when the speaker makes his speech relevant to a living audience does the speech really take shape.A speech may be well prepared, it may be on a topic the speaker is passionate about, but to be completely successful there is another factor to consider: he must make what he has to say important; Enthusiasm, and this enthusiasm has to be passed on to the audience.Famous rhetoricians in history all possessed the art of selling melons, or the art of evangelism—you can call it whatever you like, and you can’t go wrong.A good speaker is eager for his audience to feel what he feels, to agree with him, to do what he thinks they should, to share his joys and his sorrows.He should be listener-centered, not ego-centered.He understands that the success or failure of his speeches is not for him to decide--but for the heads and hearts of his audience.

During the frugality campaign, I trained a group of people for the New York chapter of the Institute of American Bankers, and one of them was particularly incapable of communicating with his audience.To help him, the first step we take is to get his mind and heart on fire with his own topic.I told him, go to the side and think about the topic again and again, and you must make yourself enthusiastic.I want him to remember: New York's "Probate Court Records" show that 85% of people die with nothing, and 3% leave $3 or more.He should always think that he is not asking for favors, or asking people to do something that cannot be afforded financially. He should say to himself: "I am preparing for these people, so that they will have food, clothing and comfort in their old age. And leave a guarantee for the safety of his wife and children."I want him to remember that he is out doing a great social service.

He thought it over, and after he had considered these facts, he finally made them burn in his mind.He awakened his interest, fired his enthusiasm, and felt that he was indeed on a mission.So he began to go out and speak, and the words that conveyed his belief won a wave of echoes, and he shared the benefits of frugality with his audience because he was eager to help people.He was no longer just a speaker with some facts in his head, he became a preacher, trying to get people to believe in worthwhile beliefs.

At one point in my teaching career, I struggled with the principles of public speaking in my training courses.These tutorials only reflect some of the experience and knowledge instilled by teachers over the years, and they have not made a breakthrough from empty pompous oratory.

I will never forget the first speech class I took.The teacher taught me to hang my arms lightly by my sides, with my palms facing backwards, my fingers half-curved, and my thumbs lightly touching my thighs.He trained me again, raising the arm, drawing a graceful arc, turning the wrist gracefully, and then spreading the index finger, then the middle finger, and finally the little finger.After the entire set of movements that seems to meet the aesthetic standard is completed, the arms return to the original arc and rest on the sides of the legs again.The performance as a whole is lifeless and ham-fisted, irrational and devoid of sincerity.

My teachers didn't teach me to bring my own personality into my speeches, or try to make me come alive and talk to my audience like a normal human being.

Contrast this mechanical approach to speaking training with the three main principles we've discussed.These three principles are the foundation of my entire approach to effective speaking training.

(End of this chapter)