Effective Speaking from a Dynamic Public Figure Part ONE
Credibility (Ethos)
Name a public figure who you believe is dynamic, but whose image suffers due to lack of competence, goodwill, and integrity.
Give supporting examples, in other words, action this person has taken to make you believe he/she lacks goodwill, integrity or competence.
Now name a public figure who you believe is competent or has great integrity, but whose image suffers due to lack of dynamism. Again, you’ll need to give examples.
My answer to these questions: Donald Trump, who is extremely dynamic, and energetic, and says whatever comes into his head. His integrity is lacking, he has proved this many times, recently by mocking a disabled reporter, and further back when he said that his daughter Ivanka is so hot if she wasn’t his daughter he’d be dating her.
My “competent” example is Ralph Nader. You may not know who he is, he used to run for President all the time as an independent and was very critical of both political parties. He never caught on, despite the fact that everything he said was true. He just didn’t have the dynamism, and charisma, to attract the American people. He’s credited with handing the 2000 election to George W. Bush since it is presumed many votes that would have gone to Democrat Al Gore went to Nader instead.
PART TWO
Effective Speaking from a Dynamic Public Informative Strategies
MY MAJOR IS: ACCOUNTING
You’re going to explain something about your major that isn’t common knowledge. You’ll be using the informative strategies found in chapter 21 to do this. As your text says, you’re going to effectively create a mental picture in your audience’s mind that will aid your listeners’ understanding. In other words, you will use these strategies and show us that you’re using them, to explain the thing we don’t understand. Here’s a list:
Organizing framework
Simple to complex
Familiar to unfamiliar
Organizers:
Signposts
Enumeration
Acronyms
Slogans, catchwords, memorable phrases
Emphasis cues
Examples
Analogies
Multiple channels
Repetition
My example would be the nature of radio. I used to go to “career day” at my kids’ elementary school and ask the question, “what is the purpose of radio?” This is an emphasis cue, it tells my audience I’m going to emphasize “purpose.” They would say “to play music,” or the smarter ones would say “to give the news.” “No,” I’d say, “it’s to SELL AIRTIME!!!” We play what people want to hear, and then offer companies the chance to try to sell their stuff to people, in between the songs, and/or news.
Then I’d use the example of a radio salesman going to a hat store and convincing the owner that people will buy more hats if he advertises on the radio. They will find out about his business, find out about specials he’s running, and the ads will give the people the desire to seek out his business. This is also going from simple to complex. The “complex” is, how many ads the client runs per week, what part of the day they run in, how many weeks they run for, etc.
I’d enumerate each position at the radio station. Air talent is only a small part, there’s engineers, commercial schedules, programming executives, promotions people, sales staff, even janitors.
I’d use the simple analogy that ad revenue is the only money that flows in, like the roots of a plant taking water up from the ground. Then it is transported to all the places it is needed, like everyone’s salary, CD’s (well, at the time that was true), electricity and heat for the building, and huge music licensing fees for all the songs we play.
Once or twice I brought an actual radio in and tuned it to my station, which represents multiple channels. Risky, since you could come in at the start of a 7 or 8-minute block of music.
