Ranting is not Speaking

Posted by Faith Pincus on April 04, 2012

Last week I had the misfortune of attending a "lecture" on the Eichmann Trial, in Palm Desert.  

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I don't remember who put it on and I'm not going to mention the speakers by name because I don't want to embarrass them.  At least two were sweet older gentlemen and a third was an academic from Loyola Marymount (who seriously needs speaker training).

I will say, however, that I walked out of the lecture mid-way, after the third speaker.  Can't remember ever doing that.

Now why would I do that?  Because the speakers weren't speaking, they were ranting.  And even worse, they were ranting to the wrong audience.  The audience of probably 100+ attendees was made up of 50 - 80 year old Jews.  This is an audience who already knows the damage of the holocaust and the evilness of those who perpetrated it.  Some of them were probably survivors and lots of them have family who didn't survive.

This was supposed to be a lecture and discussion about the Eichmann Trial itself. 

Instead what we got was as follows (at least until I walked out):

They started the program without telling us what was going to occur and instead just played video clips from you tube. OK, I'll play along for a minute or two, but unfortunately they didn't bother to download any videos to their computer, nor did they bother to download the links directly to their desktop.

So we got to watch them go into their email for video clip link after video clip link.  Yep, we got to see their email list, and each email that they went into to get the clip. Oh, and there was the nifty "so and so is now online" Skype pop up that entertained us every few minutes as well.

Unfortunately they tortured us with this silliness for about 15 minutes, the last 8 - 10 of which was just streaming download pauses and 10 seconds of video then another streaming download pause.  

The only thing more irritating than sitting at a speech/lecture and watching a video try to download is watching Oscar speeches.

Bad enough.... but then...

Speaker #1/MC: basically just told a story of his father's escape from Germany.  I'm guessing more than half the audience had heard similar stories from their own parents while growing up.  What was the point? 

Speaker #2: basically paced back and forth telling us how evil Eichmann was and how Hannah Arendt's "the Banality of Evil" was completely baseless.  OK... tell this audience something they don't know already.  And stop pacing, it's distracting.

Speaker #3: this lovely older gentleman was the worst, simply because all he did was rant about what a horrible person FDR was and how he was totally complicit in the Holocaust.  Still not sure what he was trying to do either. 

I walked out after Speaker #3.

What are the lessons?

  • Organize your conferences even if you are an all-volunteer force. Your audience should be treated with respect and that means respecting our time. Even retired people get annoyed when their time is wasted.
  • Prepare your audio and video in advance.  Either:
    • download the video onto your hard drive (preferable), or
    • put the direct link to the video on your desktop so we don't have to see all of your emails and wait for you to find the right link
  • When preparing your audio and video clips in advance, you also need to
    • Make sure the facility has adequate streaming capability, or go wired, and still make sure there is adequate streaming capability.  
    • If there isn't, you have to download to your hard drive or find another source.  
    • Make sure you remember to kill all programs on your computer and turn off all alerts, so we don't sit there watching your email, Skype and IM alerts.
  • Meet your audience's needs - not your own.  I've said this a million times before. If you make this mistake, you can't recover.  
  • Prepare an actual presentation, with an outline and all, or at least a few talking points.'
    • Don't rant. We don't care about your rants.  Rants turn an audience off and make them uncomfortable.
    • Don't rant. Speak to us, be thoughtful, organized, easy to follow.  Have a point.  Have three main points if you want people to follow you.
    • Don't rant. What is the point of your presentation? Decide in advance and create one - don't wing it or you may end up ranting.

Moral of the Story:  Passion is good.  Ranting is bad.  

 

Rhetorical Techniques: Sample Analogy

Posted by Faith Pincus on August 15, 2011

Now that I'm on a Rhetorical Technique roll, here's a great sample of an analogy I found while reading The Week on the plane to Boston last Saturday in an article by Charles Fishman.  The article is an extract from Fishman's 2011 book, The Big Thirst.  It appears in the July 29th Print Edition of the news aggregation magazine called The Week, in their column called "The Last Word."

This is a paraphrase of the analogy, since I managed to misplace the page I ripped out of the magazine.  But the fact that I can remember even a paraphrase of something I read on a plan 10 days ago, when I can barely remember what I ate for lunch these days, shows how effective the analogy is:

The United States uses 5.7 billion gallons of water every day, to flush the toilet.  5.7 billion gallons of water every day.  That's a hard number to get your mind around, so what does it mean? It means that the United States flushes the same amount of water every day that the UK and Canada, combined, use for all of their daily household water needs.

Why is this a great sample?

Because the author is dead on.  It's impossible for the average human being to have any grasp of the meaning of that quantity of water.  5.7 Billion Gallons a day?  What does that look like?

By telling us what it means - what it looks like - we can understand the concept and we can appreciate how devastating a number like that is. 

Americans flush more water down the toilet every single day than all of the UK and Canada combined uses for all of their household uses?  Seriously? iStock toilet flush Small.jpg 

That's a pretty significant comparison.  Enough to make me think about an issue that I rarely thought about before.

And it is a comparision that is guaranteed to have an impact upon its readers (or listeners).

That's the type of comparison you want to use when talking with an audience about numbers that are incomprehensible.  Create an analogy (research your facts and get it right) so that you bring the incomprehensible down to the knowable and relateable in your speech and you will keep your audience with you instead of losing them.  

Oh, and the first person to pull out the Antithesis in my prior blog post and note it in the comments below gets a free copy of my Public Speaking for Attorneys DVD (worth $395).  I just want to see if you're paying attention. :-)

A Sample of Rhetorical Techniques in Use

Posted by Faith Pincus on August 03, 2011

A week ago Monday, as most folks know, President Obama and Congressman John Boehner gave duelling speeches regarding the debt ceiling. And believe me, they weren't half as fun as listening to dueling pianos at Howl at the Moon.

Obama, as usual, used multiple rhetorical techniques in his speech.  Rhetorical techniques are easy ways to improve your presentation.  These techniques help boost interest, memory, comprehension and the general "oomph" of your speech (no not a technical term).  They are one of my favorite thing to teach.  

You can find a list of Rhetorical Techniques, with lots of audio examples, at American Rhetoric.  American Rhetoric is a fantastic website dedicated to public speeches and rhetorical techniques. If you check the site out, just remember - you don't need to be able to pronounce the name of the tecnnique - you just need to use it.

Today's rhetorical tip of the day relates to a very powerful, thought provoking technique: antithesis. 

Antithesis is, as it sounds, using opposites in a sentence (or two back-to-back sentences if you wish).  It's a very effective technique to pull at your listeners and their consciousness.  You will see antithesis used most frequently in political speeches.  Think, "ask not what your country can do for you, but .......   what you can do for your country."  And if you didn't know the end of that one, you need to bone up on your history.  JFK, inauguration speech, 1961.

Antithesis can be effectively and powerfully employed in any presentation.  It just takes a little thought and creativity on your part.

For example, when teaching public speaking and oral argument, and discussing why an interactive delivery style is effective, I use the following antithesis: "it's a dialogue not a monologue."  A friend of mine, Public Affairs genius John Davies, once used this in a speech: "Communication is speaking so people listen and listening so people speak." 

And for a more lofty example of antithesis, there is this thought provoking quote from Disraeli: "Man is not the creature of circumstances.  Circumstances are the creatures of men."  Frankly, that one applies to the current debt crises issues pretty aptly.

Two more of my favorites, since I'm a total quote geek, are:

"We don't see things as they are.  We see them as we are." - Anais Nin

"If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him, you will always remember. " - Kahlil Gibran

The Power

The power of antithesis is the power to make you think. It's the power to capture your attention, your thoughts, and eventually your emotions.  How many people can read or hear Kahill Gibran's quote above and not feel the truth in it and not - even fleetingly - think about those they might have hurt in the past?

That's the power of speaking and the power of antithesis.  

Antithesis is easy to use because it only requires you think and be creative as I mention earlier.  It is not half as difficult as eliminating the habit of saying "um" or getting away from a monotone delivery.

So, back to Obama and Boehner.  Here are a few examples of Obama's use of the rhetorical technique called antithesis:

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