All who wish to persuade and entertain, including most wellness promoters recognize the importance of public speaking skills.
They know the ability to connect with an audience is vital to convey the expertise they have in their subject.
All wellness promoters can benefit from a study of the key principles for speaking effectively.
When promoting a better lifestyle, the wellness expert must persuade, energize, entertain and motivate.
In some fields, including wellness, certification programs are available, though few of the top speakers have ever been certified.
One problem is there are few to no certification programs for the certifiers! One such program is that provided by a group endorsed by the nation's only wellness association, the NWI located in Wisconsin.
The contractor evaluates and provides training in the basic skills, including how to work with the media, how to convey ideas with passion and supplement delivery with illustrations, humor, experiential exercises, stories and more.
Sounds good to me, if the price is right The goal is to excite participants about the wellness message.
I like that, too.
Wellness promoters who train with the NWI-endorsed program learn to: * Discover their talents and create unique and effective presentations.
* Research an audience and customize a presentation to that audience.
* Find illustrations that convey key points.
* Recognize the value of personal stories for effective messages.
* Master and utilize the key principles of storytelling.
All this is fine and good, but there is another dimension of public speaking.
It is a dimension that no speaker bureau or coach can provide.
It is the nature of the wellness message itself.
The topic of wellness can encompass dozens of skill areas - some clearly of more consequence to the quality of life and destiny of those assembled than others.
All wellness messages, in my opinion, are not equal.
Separate maybe, but definitely not equal in the consequences, potentials and life-changing possibilities they convey.
Some messages, even when delivered in accordance with the highest level of public speaking skill, can do all that the experts advise and the speakers desire (e.
g.
, entertain, inform, etc.
) but, like a good meal, a sunset or a play, book, movie or song, are enjoyed and then forgotten.
Others become a part of those who have the good fortune to become immersed in their power; they remain forever in the hearts and minds of a grateful audience.
At this time of year, high schools and colleges across the land have graduation speakers.
Most speakers at these gatherings display competent delivery techniques, with a generous complement of gestures, stories, humor, passion and so on.
But, how many commencement addresses or wellness speeches meet the highest tests of public speakers? What, you might ask, ARE these highest tests? To answer that question, I offer a very brief sample of Robert Green Ingersoll's reply to a New York Sun reporter given on an April day in 1898.
The reporter asked, "What advice would you give to a young man who was ambitious to become a successful public speaker or orator?" His reply follows: In the first place, I would advise him to have something to say...
something that people would be glad to hear...
Back of the art of speaking must be the power to think.
I would advise the young man to study his subject, to find what others had thought, to look at it from all sides...
Waste no time on the how until you are satisfied with the what.
After you know what you are to say, then you can think of how it should be said.
The orator should be true to his subject, should avoid any reference to himself.
The great column of his argument should be unbroken.
He can adorn it with vines and flowers, but they should not be in such profusion as to hide the column.
The man who wishes to become an orator should study language.
He should know the deeper meaning of words.
He should understand the vigor and velocity of verbs and the color of adjectives.
He should know how to sketch a scene, to paint a picture, to give life and action.
He should be a poet and a dramatist, a painter and an actor.
He should cultivate his imagination.
He should become familiar with the great poetry and fiction, with splendid and heroic deeds.
He should be a student of Shakespeare.
He should read and devour the great plays.
From Shakespeare he could learn the art of expression, of compression and all the secrets of the head and heart.
The great orator is full of variety and surprise.
Like a juggler, he keeps the colored balls in the air...
Only a great orator knows when and how to close.
Most speakers go on after they are through.
They are satisfied with a lame and impotent conclusion.
Most speakers lack variety.
They travel a straight and dusty road.
The great orator is full of episode.
He convinces and charms by indirection.
He leaves the road, visits the fields, wanders in the woods, listens to the murmurs of springs, the song of birds.
He gathers flowers, scales the crags and comes back to the highway refreshed, invigorated.
He does not move in a straight line.
He wanders and winds like a stream.
Of course, no one can tell a man what to do to become an orator.
The great orator has that wonderful thing called presence.
He has that strange something known as magnetism.
He must have a flexible, musical voice, capable of expressing the pathetic, the humorous, the heroic.
His body must move in unison with his thought.
He must be a reasoner, a logician.
He must have a keen sense of humor - of the laughable.
He must have wit, sharp and quick.
He must have sympathy.
His smiles should be the neighbor of his tears.
He must have imagination.
He should give eagles to the air, and painted moths should flutter in the sunlight.
The best political speech I ever heard was made by Governor Richard J.
Oglesby of Illinois.
It had every element of greatness-reason, humor, wit, pathos, imagination and perfect naturalness...
Lincoln had reason, wonderful humor and wit, but his presence was not good.
His speech at Gettysburg is one of the masterpieces of the world.
Of course, I have heard a great many talkers, but orators are few and far between.
They are produced by victorious nations-born in the midst of great events, of marvelous achievements.
They utter the thoughts, the aspirations of their age.
They clothe the children of the people in the gorgeous robes of genius.
They interpret the dreams.
With the poets, they prophesy.
They fill the future with heroic forms, with lofty deeds.
They keep their faces toward the dawn-toward the ever-coming day.
That was but a sampling from Ingersoll's reply to the reporter's question seeking advice for those who would be speakers, or orators.
It is well worth reading in its entirety.
It is available in a book about Ingersoll entitled, "Sixty-Five Press Interviews with Robert Green Ingersoll" (AAP, Austin, TX, 1983, pp.
279-282).
All the best and good wishes.
Now go gather some flowers, scale a few crags and refresh and invigorate yourself.
I think that would please the Colonel.