The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking

Dale Carnegie

• Publisher: Samaira Book Publishers
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9789387550186
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

Public Speaking is an important skill which anyone can acquire and develop. The book consists of basic principles of effective speaking, technique of effective speaking, and the three aspects of every speech and effective methods of delivering a talk. All this relates to business, social and personal satisfaction which depend heavily upon our ability to communicate clearly to others. A must read book for effective speaking.

 

 

 

PART ONE

BASIC PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE SPEAKING

 

Chapter 1

Acquiring the Basic Skills

I started teaching classes in public speaking in 1912, the year the Titanic went down in the icy waters of the North Atlantic.

Over the years, at these classes, people are given the opportunity of sharing what they hope to gain from this training. Naturally, the phraseology varies; but the central desire, the basic want in the vast majority of cases, remains surprisingly the same: “When I am called upon the stand up and speak, I become so self-conscious, so frightened, that I can’t think clearly, can’t concentrate, can’t remember what I intended to say. I want to gain self-confidence, poise, and the ability to think on my feet. I want to get my thoughts together in logical order, and I want to be able to talk clearly and convincingly before a business or social group.”

Does this sound familiar? Have you experienced these same feelings of inadequacy? Would you give a small fortune to have the ability to speak convincingly and persuasively in public? The very fact that you have begun reading the pages of this book is proof of your interest in acquiring the ability to speak effectively.

I know what you are going to say, what you would say if you could talk to me: “But Mr. Carnegie, do you really think I could develop the confidence to get up and face a group of people and address them in a coherent, fluent manner?”

I have spent nearly all my life helping people get rid of their fears and develop courage and confidence. I could fill many books with the stories of the miracles that have taken place in my classes. It is not, therefore, a question of my thinking. I know you can, if you practice the directions and suggestions that you will find in this book.

Is there the faintest shadow of a reason why you should not be able to think as well in a perpendicular position before an audience as you can sitting down? Is there any reason why you should play host to butterflies in your stomach and become a victim of the “trembles” when you get up to address an audience? Surely, you realize that this condition can be remedied that training and practice will wear away your audience-fright and give you self-confidence.

This book will help you to achieve that goal. It is not an ordinary textbook. It is not filled with rules concerning the mechanics of speaking. It does not dwell on the physiological aspects of vocal production and articulation. It is the distillation of a lifetime spent in training adults in effective speaking. It starts with you as you are, and from that premise works naturally to the conclusion of what you want to be. All you have to do is co-operate—follow the suggestions in this book, apply them in every speaking situation, and persevere.

In order to get the most out of this book, and to get it with rapidity and dispatch, you will find these four guideposts useful:

* * *

First

Take Heart from Others’ Experience

There is no such animal, in or out of captivity, as a born public speaker. In those periods of history when public peaking was a refined art that demanded close attention to the laws rhetoric and the niceties of delivery, it was even more difficult to be born a public speaker. Now we think of public speaking as a kind of enlarged conversation. Gone forever is the old grandiloquent style and the stentorian voice. What we like to hear at our dinner meetings, in our church services, on our TV sets and radios, is straightforward speech, conceived in common sense and dedicated to the proposition that we like speakers to walk with, and not at, us.

Despite what many school texts would lead us to believe, public speaking is not a closed art, to be mastered only after years of perfecting the voice and struggling with the mysteries of rhetoric. I have spent almost all of my teaching career proving to people that it is easy to speak in public, provided they follow a few simple, but important, rules. When I started to teach at the 125th Street YMCA in New York City back in 1912, I didn’t know this any more than my first students knew it. I taught those first classes pretty much the way I had been taught in my college years in Warrensburg, Missouri. But I soon discovered that I was on the wrong track; I was trying to teach adults in the business world as though they were college freshmen. I saw the futility of using Webster, Burke, Pitt, and O’Connell as examples to imitate. What the members of my classes wanted was enough courage to stand on their hind legs and make a clear, coherent report at their next business meeting. It wasn’t long before I threw the textbooks out the window, got right up there on the podium and, with a few simple ideas, worked with those fellows until they could give their reports in a convincing manner. It worked, because they kept coming back for more.

I wish I could give you a chance to browse through the files of testimonial letters in my home or in the offices of my representatives in various parts of the world. They come from industrial leaders whose names are frequently mentioned in the business section of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, from governors of states and members of parliaments, from college presidents, and from celebrities in the world of entertainment. There are thousands more from housewives, ministers, teachers, young men and women whose names are not well known yet, even in their own communities, executives and executive trainees, laborers, skilled and unskilled, union men, college students, and business women. All of these people felt a need for self-confidence and the ability to express themselves acceptably in public. They were so grateful for having achieved both that they took the time to write me letters of appreciation.

Of the thousands of people I have taught, one example comes to mind as I write because of the dramatic impact it had on me at the time. Some years ago, shortly after he joined my course, D. W. Ghent, a successful businessman in Philadelphia, invited me to lunch. He leaned across the table and said: “I have sidestepped every opportunity to speak to various gatherings, Mr. Carnegie, and there have been many. But now I am chairman of a board of college trustees.

I must preside at their meetings. Do you think it will be possible for me to learn to speak at this late date in life?”

I assured him, on the basis of my experience with men in similar positions who had been members of my classes, that there was no doubt in my mind that he would succeed.

About three years later we lunched together again at the Manufacturers’ Club. We ate in the same dining room and at the very same table we had occupied at our first meeting. Reminding him of our former conversation, I asked him whether my prediction had come true. He smiled, took a little red-backed notebook out of his pocket, and showed me a list of speaking engagements for the next several months. “The ability to make these talks,” he confessed, “the pleasure I get in giving them, the additional service I can render in the community—these are among the most gratifying things in my life.”

But that was not all. With a feeling of justifiable pride, Mr. Ghent then played his ace card. His church group had invited the prime minister of England to address a convocation in Philadelphia. And the Philadelphian selected to make the introduction of the distinguished statesman, on one of his rare trips to America, was none other than Mr. D. W. Ghent.

This was the man who had leaned across that same table less than three years before and asked me whether I thought he would ever be able to talk in public!

I have seen thousands of similar miracles worked in my courses. I have seen men and women whose lives were transformed by this training, many of them receiving promotions far beyond their dreams or achieving positions of prominence in their business, profession, and community. Sometimes this has been done by means of a single talk delivered at the right moment. Let me tell you the story of Mario Lazo.

Years ago, I received a cable from Cuba that astonished me. It read: “Unless you cable me to the contrary, I am coming to New York to take training to make a speech.” It was signed: “Mario Lazo.” Who was he? I wondered! I had never heard of him before.

When Mr. Lazo arrived in New York, he said: “The Havana Country Club is going to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of the founder of the club; and I have been invited to present him with a silver cup and to make the principal talk of the evening. Although I am an attorney, I have never made a public talk in my life, I am terrified at the thought of speaking. If I fail, it will be deeply embarrassing to my wife and myself socially; and, in addition, it might lower my prestige with my clients, That is why I have come all the way from Cuba for your help. I can stay only three weeks.”

During those three weeks, I had Mario Lazo going from one class to another speaking three or four times a night. Three weeks later, he addressed the distinguished gathering at the Havana Country Club. His address was so outstanding that Time Magazine repotted it under the head of foreign news and described Mario Lazo as a “silver-tongued orator.”

Sounds like a miracle, doesn’t it? It is a miracle—a twentieth-century miracle of conquering fear.

Second

Keep Sight of Your Goal

When Mr. Ghent spoke of the pleasure his newly acquired skill in public speaking gave him, he touched upon what I believe (more than any other one factor) contributed to his success. It’s true he followed the directions and faithfully did the assignments. But I’m sure he did these things because he wanted to do them, and he wanted to do them because he saw himself as a successful speaker. He projected himself...