Public speaking courses in Dhaka
International business travel offers a variety of opportunities, often when you least expect them. For example, I’d finished my project in Bangladesh, and now, the only thing that stood in the way of domestic bliss was the long journey home.
Having fought my way into the airport (I’ll discuss that another time), I made my way through check-in and security. You know that wonderful sense of relief when you pass through the final sliding door and into the travelers' lounge. Now you have time to kill before you step onto the plane.
And that’s what I did. I found a perch in one of the many coffee shops and began to reflect on my public speaking courses and then look forward to the two public speaking courses I had lined up in the following days. I hoped the clock would spin around. Ten minutes later, an English chap joined me in the same booth. His name was Danny, an accountant from Exeter, and he parked his laptop case and bought himself a coffee. He’d been volunteering at an NGO as a consultant for a week. We exchanged details of our similar but different projects – both volunteers working with NGOs. Then he asked if I could look after his bag while he bought his wife and children some presents.
When he returned, we had a further productive chat about our work, and surprisingly, Danny invited me to be a guest speaker at the Chartered Institute of Management Accents annual event in Exeter. Considering we’d only known each other for thirty minutes and he’d never seen me speak before, I must have convinced him that I could do a good job.
However, the event was still several months away and sometimes the unforeseen happens and events get canceled. What will be will be, but I knew I'd be there so long as I could fit it around my schedule. That day came around surprisingly quickly.
I left home in south London early and arrived at the Exeter hotel around 11 am. Just in time to see the last speaker before the lunch break. I’m glad that I was there to observe what was a masterly speech by Greenwich Council leader, John Comber. The speech had everything: spontaneity, structure, humour, quotations, and the use of a myriad of other rhetorical devices. I glanced around the room and measured the audience's reaction. It was so well delivered, and so well received. I had a terrible sense of foreboding. I didn’t want to have to follow it.
I am gregarious by nature, but during the lunch break, I could barely string a sentence together. Danny came over to welcome me, at which point I told him that I didn’t plan to deliver my prepared speech, but I’d be happy to do something more experimental. Instead of giving a variation of a conference speech I’d done several times, I would use John Comber’s speech as a case study, deconstruct it and explain what tools he’d used. It was cruel (with kindness in heart), a bit like when you see how the magician pulls off a stunning trick. By breaking the speech down into its component parts and categorizing the usage of rhetorical devices, the audience would go home with the echoes of John’s excellence, and an explanation of how and why they found those words so relevant and compelling.
So, I asked them, “Who enjoyed John’s speech this morning?” All the hands went up. “Who thought it was one of the best speeches you’ve seen for years?” All the hands went up. “If I could explain the strategy and mechanics behind it, would you find that beneficial?” Most of the hands went up. “I thought it was brilliant. So much so, I’d like to spend the afternoon talking about John's speech. Don’t be upset for me, I’ve heard my speech before…”
Understanding the underlying components of communication is a fascinating skill to develop and it opens possibilities that you never knew existed.
And that was my favourite speech primarily because I surprised myself. Sadly, it wasn’t any brilliance on my part that made my day. I do something similar with another speaker’s speech which I use as a classroom case study. The speaker does a magnificent job of introducing multiple rhetorical devices without making them look or sound contrived. I just changed the context and delivered a far more spontaneous message than planned. We all went home happy.
We run multiple public speaking courses every month close to King's Cross, London. It's never too late to develop a career-enhancing skill and become the communicator that you know you can be.
