Rhetoric for Public Speech, Persuasion & Inspiring Others (2235.YR.008421.1)

General information

Type:	OPT	Curs:	1	Period:	S semester
ECTS Credits:	2 ECTS

Teaching Staff:

Group	Teacher	Department	Language
Year 1	Steven Guest	Dirección de Personas y Organización	ENG

none: just a willingness and desire to be an inspiring speaker

Take on board this quote by Pericles: "One who forms a judgment on any point but cannot explain it clearly, might as well never have thought at all on the subject.?

17.5 hour course in plenary session
Additional time required for reading and preparation of speeches for in-class presentations

Rhetoric is the study of persuasion by symbols and words. Our great captains of industry and politicians have to be able to speak well in public to inspire others and influence followers. But public speech is a key skill for any professional, from start-up entrepreneurs to teachers, preachers to prosecutors. So what's the key to success?

Well, these great speakers appear confident, persuasive and convincing. They know how to get across key messages, and they know what language to use; they know how to work the audience and win people over. But how do they do it? Well, this class aims to discover just that, and to apply it so you can develop your public speaking and persuasive abilities using techniques based on rhetoric. The benefits will be noticed almost immediately, and you will need them throughout your careers.

So, imagine you're faced with the following scenarios.

- You have been asked to present the latest sales figures and interpret the findings and make recommendations to the Board.
- You are asked to give a speech to a group of Masters students that are on a visit to your company. Your boss was to make the company presentation, but she has been called away. You have five minutes to get it together.
- You have been promoted to head of the 20-person, highly-experienced sales team. You want to ensure that everyone is going to get behind your agenda and your leadership. You plan to make a speech on your first day as the new manager.
- Performance is down and you know the team need motivating to get behind the project. You tell yourself now is the time to seize the moment and get the team back on course. You stand up to address the crowded room.

By the end of this course you will be in a much better position to take any opportunity to get up to speak with charisma and persuasion in front of others!

People that can speak confidently and persuasively in public will always be in demand. It's an essential skill for all leaders in today's business world and beyond.

Key words: oral presentations, public speaking, non verbal communication in public, persuasion, rhetoric skills, organizing a speech, influencing emotions, being credible as a speaker, leading and setting out visions, story-telling.

This is much more than a course about how to make a presentation. It's about how to put together strong arguments that influence and inspire others.

There is an enormous difference between a presentation which is confident, well-prepared, competently organized, clearly expressed, successful in establishing rapport with the audience, effective in communicating its message and competent in handling the questions and objections of the audience and one without these qualities. This seminar is about how to give your presentation and public speaking these qualities and improve your rhetoric skills in general. This importance given to rhetorical structures and debate will be a central feature of the course.

A speaker needs the skills to motivate the audience and involve them emotionally and rationally in the presentation, and to ensure that they retain the ideas that the speaker considers central to the message. Beyond having sound content and organization, techniques of verbal and non-verbal delivery are vital in giving credibility to the speaker. The availability of a range of support systems such as power point slides and a wide range of mixed media tools must be used to best advantage to convince rather than alienate, confuse or bore the audience: it is not the technology alone but its convincing use which is important.

Participants explore by practice and observation how best to address the ever-present issues faced when we have to stand up and persuade others.

The principal emotional intelligence competence we aim to develop in this seminar is Communication:

- Listening openly and sending convincing messages.
- Uses engaging style in presenting to an audience.
- Uses non-verbal cues to reinforce messages in presentations.
- Uses examples and/or visual aids to clarify or emphasize the message.
- Use rhetorical structures to influence others and get across your messages in a better way

By the end of the course, students will have gained the rhetoric tools to persuade audiences in different public speaking situations. And while verbal skills are very important, we also work on our non-verbal skills, which are equally important. During the seminar we also examine some of the great speeches we have heard and seen down the ages, and others that certainly shouldn't be remembered. We engage the rhetoric used by politicians, business people and anyone that has to present something in public and we try to use these in our own personal presentations.

1. Golden Rules of Rhetoric The fundamentals of public speech require some key building blocks which we work on in the first sessions. We learn about the five key rules that can transform our speeches including how we can create the story we want to inspire with, the passion needed to engage or some attention grabbers to ensure engagement from our listeners.

2. Enriching a speech The delivery of speech is hugely important and although we might have a great intro to our talk written down, if we can not use the right tone of voice or engage with eye contact, it might all be for nothing. We need to show our confidence to be persuasive and rhetoric can help us to be more charismatic.

3. Rehearsing and practice We look at a series of strategies and techniques to help us when preparing for our speeches, and address key issues like how to remember what we are going to say when speaking to others without having to consult our paper at the end of every sentence.

This course is a highly-practical public speaking course based on the rhetoric principles that have been handed down to us by the Greeks over 2,000 years ago. Students take a highly active role, making numerous presentations. To improve public speaking skills, feedback is very important. So this course involves lots of feedback both from the teacher and peers. Students gain confidence because they have the chance to try out their skills and creative speaking in a safe environment.

Leith, S. "Are You talkin' to Me? Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama".(Profilebooks) 2012
Corbett, E., Connors, R, "Classical Rhetoric and the Modern Student" (Oxford University Press) 1999
Herrick, J.A. "The History and Theory of Rhetoric: An Introduction 6th edition (Routledge) 2018
Huxman, S, Burkholder, T, Kohrs Campbell, K. "The Rhetorical Act: Thinking, Speaking, and Writing Critically" (5th edition, Cengage) 2015

Various articles on presentations, charisma, storytelling and rhetoric from Harvard Business School
Various historical speeches (examples include Martin Luther King Jn, Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln)
Harvard Communication Letter selected articles
Various TED conferences
Topical newspaper articles on public speech, persuasion and inspiration

Group	Teacher	Department
Year 1	Steven Guest	Dirección de Personas y Organización