Public Speaking; Being Assertive

In my Women and Leadership class today, I learned how to present myself when speaking to the public during a presentation. We had the fortunate opportunity to have Jennifer Madden, a graduate from Brown University in 2008, come and teach us how to prepare better public speaking presentations for our Action Plans next Thursday in Browns Leadership Institute. I felt it was very much true that public speaking is one of the most common fears as it is definitely, currently one of mine. I will learn more about it so that I am comfortable giving presentations. What struck me as shocking, were the facts of what your audience actually takes from the presentation. Sixty-percent of the presentation is visual, such as eye contact, body movement, and appropriate clothing. Thirty-percent is vocals, tone, how loud a person projects their voice and perceived by the audience of being assertive or aggressive. Lastly, ten-percent of your presentation taken in by the audience is the messages. I need to focus working on how I am presented to my audiences. Using hand gestures to convey your message makes an impact difference in the audience trust and beliefs. Also being assertive not aggressive is key. What makes it difficult during presentation is that I often do not notice my physical movements that are cons. I need to practice a lot more to give calm, coherent, and moving presentations. Our speaker told us some tongue twisters phrases that can help before a presentation. One of them was, “black leather, yellow leather” while speaking it aloud faster and faster.

After lecture/workshop, we were dismissed for lunch break. My cohorts and I went to ‘The Ratty’ dining hall, which I believe was closest to our classroom. I had a delicious BLT (bacon, lettuce, tomato) sandwich, a roasted herb potato, with some sweet potato fries. When we all finished eating, we found that we had almost an hour before class reconvened.

From Back to Front: Jessie, Maria, Thao and Me

A statue in front of 'The Ratty' dining hall

The Women and Leadership class was separated into two smaller groups to do an impromptu exercise. There were ten people including me in a group directed by our professor, Dean Almandrez. The instructions were to write two controversial topics on a piece of paper and choose one topic to give a three minute presentation to our class. Impromptu was so helpful to us all, practicing for our Action Plan presentations. We got to give constructive feedback and ask each other questions on visual, vocals, and message of the presentation. Overall, the Public Speaking Workshop today went better than I expected. I have more knowledge about how to give a better presentation.