Speaking of Persuasion

Kurt Mortensen

What a deja vu experience today! I had my old public speaking teacher come and teach our class. I think his main goal was to prepare us for our book presentations, but I was sent back to some good memories. His class is still my favorite class that I have taken at BYU thus far. It’s real! It’s a class that teaches you real skills and then you put them to work and practice on them. His class made a HUGE impact on my mission and my life. I can’t even thank Professor Mortensen enough. 

I remembered a lot of the things he taught today form his class. It was basically a quick version of his first class period, the basics of public speaking. What stuck out to me this time in class is how similar public speaking is to leadership. They have the same principles.  These three principles of speaking stood out to me today:

Keeping the hands moving

1) Passion-If you want to be a powerful speaker or an influential leader you have to have passion. Passion is the foundation of why you lead or why you speak. Knowing your purpose is very important. 

2) Persuasive-A leader wants to help people to become better. A speaker wants his audience to take action. In both instances the focal point is the people. You know what you want them to do, but if it is for you, then you can forget any bit of success. The success is directing people to act because it will help them. If people can trust you as a leader or a speaker they will follow and they will act.

Yes we are prepared

3) Mistakes-This is a principle that has come up probably 1,000 times this semester; or maybe just 3 or 4 times. Professor Mortensen gave a few examples of his bigger speaking mistakes, but he said you are going to make a mistake every time you speak. I know that is my biggest fear. My fear is to fail or do something wrong. My pessimistic side says, “Why try if you aren’t going to do it right or the way you expect.” I have fought this mentality for a long time. I feel like I’m 50-50 on this. My desire is to do better at having a better attitude or mentality. I want to be able to not be afraid of success. 

Presentation Goal/Statement: I will help my audience have a desire to read “Toy Box Leadership”. I will do so by using testimony, examples, stats, and a story. I will speak from my heart. My audience will feel the impact the book had on me.  I will speak without focusing on mistakes. I will be done in 6 minutes.