executive public speaking

Egocentric Communication & executive public speaking
The majority of people communicate in a way that is fundamentally flawed - in that they adopt the egocentric communication model. This involves the presenter deciding what they want to say and how they want to say it, with little or no regard for the characteristics of their audience.

This model is termed egocentric because of the significance that the presenter attaches to their own role in the communication process. The type of attitude that the egocentric presenter will typically have is summarized as follows: I have decided what to say and the way I am going to say it. I will then say it and assume that the audience agrees, more or less, with my interpretation. This process, of packaging a message, is called encoding and it determines which human senses (hearing, vision, touch, etc.) will be used to transmit the message. The next step in a communication is to send the encoded message to the receiver. The receiver then has the difficult job of decoding the message in terms which they can relate to. It is at this point that they may misinterpret, change, filter or edit the message to fit into their own preconceived framework. In this way egocentric communication often fails to convey the intended message, however by translating the encoded message for its intended audience the chance of misinterpretation is greatly reduced.

Translating Your Message
To minimize the chance of your message being misinterpreted another step should be added to the communication model. This new step is called translating and involves you encoding the message as before, but then translating the message, to take into account a variety of issues from the audience’s point of view. When done properly the result of this translation step is to frame the message in terms that are better suited to the audience - in other words a far more relevant and focused message for the audience to decode. This process will produce a message that has more impact. Think about how many times you and your colleagues have attended the same meeting or presentation and yet have come away with different interpretations about what was meant. When preparing your messages try to think of the different ways that it could be interpreted by your audience; and try to translate it in a way that will minimize inaccurate interpretations.

Know What Your ‘Aim’ is
You must be absolutely clear on the aim of your presentation at the outset in order that you can stay focused when preparing it. Think of your aim as the final destination, and your presentation as the journey. Your objective, when executive public speaking, is to ensure that the presentation delivers you, and your audience, to the correct and clearly defined destination. It is only if you are absolutely clear about your aim that you will carry conviction in your forthcoming presentation. The purpose of nearly all business presentations is either to inform OR to persuade. You should decide which applies and then prefix your presentation with an aim statement that is worded accordingly.

Understanding Your Audience
Once you have decided on your aim and written this down you can begin to consider the content of your executive public speaking presentation. However before you can plan the content in detail you will need to know how to analyze the audience that you will be presenting to - in order to help you to translate your message in an appropriate way. Analysis of audience characteristics can be undertaken based on a simple but effective model. On this diagram the vertical line shows levels of dominance and the horizontal line represents levels of sociability. Each candidate should be classified as one of the four personality types shown.

There are three questions that we need to ask concerning the characteristics and composition of the audience;
Firstly, what personality types are likely to be in your audience?
Secondly, how can we recognize them in advance?
And finally, what happens if you are presenting to a mixed audience?

A description of the traits associated with each personality type follows:
Emotive people are people-oriented and they tend to be; sociable, animated, spontaneous, unstructured and welcome change. They prefer the broad picture but cant be bothered with the details. Emotive people often have a short attention span, so keep the presentation short and focused and keep it at the overview level, avoiding discussion of any details.
Directive people are high in dominance but low in sociability. They tend to be; aggressive, intense, pushy, determined and opinionated. Their goal driven nature can be misinterpreted as unfriendly, especially if they encounter resistance to their aims at work. When presenting to these people stick to the facts, cover each point clinically and proceed to the next.
Reflective people are low in both dominance and sociability. They tend to be; precise, questioning, aloof, serious, scientific and stuffy. They often occupy product related jobs - such as scientists and engineers, and they pay attention to detail. When presenting to these people supply lots of detail and have plenty of support information at hand in order to address the detailed questions that are likely to be raised.
Supportive people are high in sociability and low in dominance. Their traits make them easy to recognize, being; loyal, steady, solid and reliable good workers. The majority of people are from this group, but you should bear in mind that they tend to fear change and will worry if given cause. You should therefore avoid risking being seen as uncaring or aggressive and should take time to pre-empt any contentious issues.

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