Contrast With Startling Information

Public speeches are always enhanced by starting out with startling facts or statistics. Later in your speech, you can bring the audience’s attention back to the speaker by inserting startling information. One way to include startling statements in a speech is the use of contrast. Over the summer in visiting Thailand, Cambodia, and Guam, I found several examples of startling information.

There were 10,000,000 land mines in Cambodia at one time and a million still remain. Tourists are warned not to stray off paths because of the danger of land mines. The longest airline route is 18 hours and 40 minutes from Los Angeles to Singapore. Guam has l63,000 people and l4,000 are government employees, not counting Federal employees. A super typhoon in 2002 in Guam had winds up to 245 miles per hour and caused much destruction. The largest university in the world is Ramkhanhaeng in Bangkok. It has over 300,000 students. Let’s look at how we might use some of these items in speeches.

For example, in talking about the danger of not following hiking trails in a given location, you might begin with the million land mines in Cambodia and then say, "We don’t have to worry about land mines in the Smoky Mountains, but you can easily get lost or run into a bear if you stray off the designated trails." Or if you were talking about how to handle boredom on cross country flights, you could mention the over l8 hour flight to Singapore and then say, "Fortunately it is only a four-hour flight to Phoenix, but some of these points still apply." If you are discussing the growth of a particular university you could mention the 300,000 statistic and then say, "Northern Kentucky University will never be that size, but growing from 2,200 students in 1972 to well over l6,000 in 2004 says a lot about its impact in the Commonwealth of Kentucky."

Combining contrasts with startling information is a powerful way to help people remember an important point or regain the attention of the audience. In researching for a speech, continually be on the lookout for startling information.

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When NOT to Tell Your Own Story

In public speaking one of the ways to be successful is to learn to tell your own story. In interpersonal communication, however, you will be seen as an excellent conversationalist if you resist telling your own story! Instead, let the other person tell his or her story and then find out more about the person in the story by asking questions and affirming his or her narrative.

When someone tells us a story in conversation, it is human nature that we can’t wait until he or she finishes to tell our own story and usually it is a bigger and more dramatic story than the other person. We in essence say, "You think that story is significant, but mine is better!" That is not the way to earn respect and rapport with the other person. Instead, when a person relates a personal experience to you, resist the temptation to tell your own "more significant" story and instead listen carefully, nod your head, and include an appropriate "wow," or "That had to be difficult." Then when the person pauses, instead of launching into your own story, ask a follow up question. "How did you feel when that happened?" or "What happened after that?"

No matter how desperately you want to tell your story, if you shift the center of attention to you, the other person will feel slighted. You will have lost some sense of connectedness with the other person no matter how great your story is.

By resisting the urge to tell your own story in response to the other person’s story, you will be seen as a good listener and one who is really interested in people. It is my experience in watching people that this habit is one of the most difficult to master and one which will immediately put you in the upper ranks of people who communicate well one-on-one.

Learning to talk less and listen more in conversation, not telling your own story, and encouraging the person to elaborate on his or her story will make you be seen as a pleasant and desirable conversationalist.