Using Delivery to Influence: Strategic Choices
The following points list factors you should consider when
planning the actual delivery of an oral message.
From Ehninger, Douglas, et al. Principles and Types of Speech Communication.
9th Ed. Glenview, IL:
Scott, Forseman and Co., 1986.
Use your nonverbal channels
to exert influence in the following ways:
1.
Start with your “self.”
a.
Ask
i.
Are
you quiet or out-going?
ii. Are
you physical or sedate?
iii. Do
you prefer talking or listening?
b.
The
point is:
i.
Do
not try to copy some speaker you’ve heard and admire if your personality is
very different from that person’s,
ii.
Do
not reach for delivery techniques which are unnatural to your self-image.
c.
Don’t model yourself on someone else; learn to work
publicly as the person you really are.
2.
Plan a proxemic relationship with your audience
which reflects your own needs and attitudes toward your subject and listeners.
a.
If you feel more at home behind the lectern, plan to
have it placed accordingly.
b.
If
you want your whole body visible to the audience, yet feel the need to have
notes at eye level, stand beside the lectern and arrange your cards on it.
c.
If you want to relax your body-and are sure you can
compensate for the resulting loss of action by increasing your vocal volume-sit
behind a table or desk.
d.
If
you feel physically free and want to be wholly “open” to your audience, stand
in front of a table or desk.
e.
As far as possible, make the physical arrangements work
for you.
3.
The farther you are from your listeners, the
more important it is for them to have a clear view of you.
a.
The speaker who crouches behind a lectern in an
auditorium of three hundred people soon loses contact with them.
b.
The
farther away your audience is, the harder you must work to project your words
and the broader your physical movements must be.
4.
Insofar as practical, adapt the physical setting
to the visual aids you plan to use.
a.
If you are going to use such visual aids as a
chalkboard, flipchart, working model, or process diagram, remove the tables,
chairs, and other objects which would obstruct the listeners’ view and
therefore impair their understanding of your messages.
5.
Adapt the size of your gestures, the amount of
your movement, and the volume of your voice to the size of audience.
a.
You should realize that subtle changes of facial
expressions, small movements of your fingers, and small changes of vocal
characteristics cannot be detected when you are twenty-five feet or more from
your listeners.
b.
Although
many auditoriums have a raised platform and a slanted floor to allow a speaker
to be seen and heard more clearly, you should, nonetheless, adjust to the
physical conditions.
6.
Regularly scan your audience from side to side
and from front to back, establishing eye contact with specific individuals.
a.
This does not mean, of course, that your head is to be
in constant motion. Regularly does not imply rhythmical, nonstop bobbing.
b.
Rather,
it implies that you must be aware-and must let an audience know you are
aware-of the entire group of human beings in front of you.
c.
Take them all into your field of vision periodically;
establish firm visual bonds with them. Such bonds enhance your credibility and
keep listeners’ attention from wandering.
7.
Use your body to communicate your feelings about
what you are saying.
a.
When you are angry, don’t be afraid to gesture
vigorously.
b.
When
you’re expressing tenderness, let that message come across a relaxed face.
c.
In other words, when you are communicating publicly,
employ the same emotional indicators you do when you are talking on a
one-to-one basis.
8.
Use your body to regulate the pace of your
presentation and to control transitions.
a.
Shift your weight as you move from one idea to another.
Move more when you are speaking rapidly.
b.
When you are slowing down to emphasize particular ideas, decrease
bodily and gestural action accordingly.
c.
What these changes in movement and action do is allow
your listeners to get the same message across multiple communication channels.
d.
Your
words, your vocal characteristics, and your physical movements, when
orchestrated, mutually reinforce each other and hence emphatically drive home
your ideas.
9.
Adjust both vocal characteristics and head
movements when you must use a microphone.
a.
If you’re ever interviewed or if you have occasion to
speak to a large audience in a room with a public address system, you’ll be
confronted with a threatening device: a microphone.
b.
Mikes
can create terror in some speakers in two ways:
i.
If
you’re being interviewed or are broadcasting a talk or interview, you have to
watch your pronunciation, as the mike tends to “explode” certain sounds; and
you must keep an optimal distance-not too close and not too far away-from the
mike, which freezes your body in one position.
ii. When
using a public address system in a large auditorium, you can easily become
disoriented because your voice seems to come back to you; about the time you’re
trying to form the third word in an important sentence, your first two words
have bounced off the back wall and come running for your ears.
c.
There’s not much you can do about either set of
problems, outside of avoiding microphones altogether. You can, however,
minimize the terror and disorientation produced by mikes:
i.
Practice
with mikes before you go on live.
ii. Slow
down a bit when talking to others via a public address system.
iii. Remember
to decrease your volume and to minimize variations in volume.
iv. Likewise,
pay special attention to articulation.
10.
Finally, use your full repertoire of descriptive
and regulative gestures while talking publicly.
a.
You probably do this in everyday conversation without
even thinking about it; re-create that same attitude when addressing an
audience.
b.
Physical
readiness is the key.
i.
Keep
your hands and arms free and loose so that you can call them into action
easily, quickly, naturally.
ii. Let
your hands rest comfortably at your sides, relaxed but in readiness.
iii. Occasionally,
rest them on the lectern.
iv. Then,
as you unfold the ideas of your speech, use descriptive gestures to indicate
size, shape, or relationship, making sure the movements are large enough to be
seen in the back row.
c.
Use conventional gestures also to give visual dimension
to your spoken ideas.
d.
Keep
in mind that there are no “right” numbers of gestures that you ought to use.
e.
However, during the preparation of your talk, think of
the kinds of bodily and gestural actions that will complement your personality,
ideas, language, and speaking purposes.
