How To Structure And Present Information Clearly And Accurately

Hello. My name is Michael Ronayne. I'm a director of the College of Public Speaking, and I'm going to be talking about different aspects of public speaking.

An audience will forgive a speaker virtually anything. They'll forgive a squeaky voice. They'll forgive someone who mumbles.

They'll forgive someone who has poor body language and poor eye contact. The one thing they never forgive is poor structure. And the reason structure is so incredibly important, is that is like, that's the bottle in which your content is being held.

That's what's holding everything together. So if you get lost halfway through in what you're talking about, your audience gets lost as well. They drift away in their mind.

And someone who has a good structure is basically sending a message of, "I know what I'm talking about. I've got my thoughts organized." Now, the rule of thumb in structure as a public speaker, it's very simple.

And I'd say that if the structure of your presentation is too complicated for you to write down on the back of an envelope, it's too complicated for your audience to follow. So the name of the game in structure is normally have no more than three points in a presentation. And if you think about it, it makes perfect sense.

Most of our nursery rhymes, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Three Blind Mice, Three Little Pigs, things come naturally in threes. In fact, if I said to you now, "Could you nip down to the shops and get milk, eggs, and butter?" You probably won't need a shopping list. However, as soon as I say, "Could you get milk, eggs, butter and cheese?" There's an element of, "I think I'd better write that down.

" So, three is an easy number for you to remember. It makes life simple for you, and therefore also makes simple life for the audience, as well. From an audience's point of view, they want to have a sense that you are in control, and the best way for you to be in control, is to be confident of your material and confident of your structure.

And quite simply, if you keep things in threes, you'll never go very far wrong. .