Sometime ago, I attended a programme in which someone made a presentation. After that presentation, other people were asked to contribute and they did. Among the contributors was a particular individual who spent a while talking, but I did not understand a single word he said. I looked around me and saw several blank faces belonging to people who were also trying to understand what was being said. After the contribution, some people clapped and so did I. A friend sitting next to me asked me about what the contributor said and I replied, “Actually I didn’t hear what he said, but it must have been interesting for people to have clapped.” This is a clear case of an ineffective communication, at least for the majority of the audience.
A similar case occurred in another programme I attended. An important personality was celebrating his birthday and a public lecture was held in his honour. After the keynote address presenter had delivered his outstanding speech, one of the dignitaries was invited to present a summary of the keynote address. Of course, it presupposed that if the speech lasted about 45 minutes, the summary should not be more than 10 minutes. Well, the summary kicked off well by focusing on the salient points of the lecture…then, it veered into the personal contribution of the dignitary. Five minutes went by, then ten, fifteen, twenty… until the summary was almost as long as the speech itself. Unlike the first case above, I understood what the dignitary said, only that the longer he spoke, the lesser the effect it had on me.
If effectiveness is your intention, then you must learn that there are different speeches for different events. You must also learn that speeches must vary in lengths depending on the occasion. Inappropriate speeches distract the audience and produce contrary results to what the speaker expects. Appropriateness is the key in public speaking. What may be suitable for one event may not be suitable for another. A speaker was invited to speak at an event and he was given one hour for his presentation. He, however, concluded his speech after 20 minutes. Think of that! Imagine what the organizers would have to do to fill up the remaining time if they are working strictly by schedule! Also imagine what they would do if they actually paid the speaker for the entire hour! True, people would rather have a shorter-than-necessary speech any day than a longer-than-necessary one, but sometimes, the length of a presentation can give you an idea of how much value is contained therein. For instance, how much are you willing to pay to learn to fly a plane in 30 minutes? Do you suppose a 30 minutes lecture (if we can call it that) would do justice to the subject matter? That is exactly my point. Some speeches are designed to be long while some others are designed to be short. Talking of short speeches, what will you do if you attend a wedding reception and the chairman of the event produces a 10 page document to present his opening remark?
The event should determine the purpose of the speech and the purpose should determine the nature of the speech. What I mean is this, if the event is an academic public lecture, then we know that the purpose of the speech is to inform or teach. That being the case, the speech should be long enough to allow the speaker to pass across the message and also allow the audience to receive the information. A major problem will arise if a speaker does not understand this basic principle. I am of the strong opinion that the success of any speech depends solely on the perception of the audience. Perception can be simply described as the way people see things. We all know that perception is subjective because people tend to change their minds. Hence, their perception is open to external influence. When people are in a relaxed environment, their minds will be relaxed and they will not be receptive to any serious lecture. On the other hand, if they are in a formal or serious environment, they may consider too much jokes by the speaker as unnecessary.
There are five major types of speeches and they are informative speech, entertaining speech, persuasive speech, technical speech and brief remarks. These are the broad categories for majority of the speeches you will encounter. Each of these speeches has its unique audience, duration and technique. Informative speech is a speech that aims at enlightening the audience on a particular subject; it is educative in nature. Entertaining speech is structured to amuse the audience. Persuasive speech is used to convince the audience to see an issue from the speaker’s point of view and brief remark is a short speech presented when much has already been said and done. It is very important to note that a single speech may make use of any combination of the above. This means that an informative speech may still be persuasive. Nevertheless, each of these speeches will require proper treatment. Hence, we shall dedicate the next few weeks to exploring them and learning how they can be used to achieve maximum communication results.
