Learning is power.
Every Monday morning I get an e-mail from a friend of mine. She runs Mirelli Entrepreneur Training for Woman. They are a growing community of powerful, like-minded women who want to Learn, Connect, Grow and Prosper together.
Why do I get the e-mail?
I believe in what she is doing and we have become friends over a couple of years we have known each other. We have helped each other in business endeavors.
What has any of this got to do with plants and horticulture?
Well sit a spell and let me explain.
If you are reading this, more than likely you have listened to a speaker, either myself or someone else, talk about gardening, plants, or something horticultural.
Have you ever stopped to think what went into that talk?
The following is mainly the e-mail I got this morning, with editorial comments added by me in Italics.
What Do Public Speakers Actually Do?
Many people think they would like to speak more in public, but sometimes they don't realize everything that goes on before a speaker goes on stage. Here's a quick look at what a Job Description for a public speaker might look like:
Seeking a Public Speaker to deliver speeches and seminars to live audiences in an engaging way. Must be prepared to travel a significant amount of time, especially on weekends. Individuals with charisma, strong emotional intelligence, and excellent communication skills can do particularly well.
Duties and Responsibilities:
Perform Pre-Speech Research
The successful candidate will spend significant time completing in-depth research before making a presentation. They will research their topic to make sure they are well informed. The Public speaker shall also learn about their audience in order to present in a personalized and relevant way. They may also have handouts or giveaways.
Write and Outline Speeches
The Public Speaker shall spend time creating a speech that educates and motivates a crowd. They make sure that all talking points are sharp and concise. The most successful Public Speakers outline speeches that are engaging, informative, and persuasive. Or, in some cases prepare a powerpoint.
Rehearse Speeches
The Public Speaker does not speak off-the-cuff. Public Speakers rehearse. Practicing speeches prior to delivering them live is critical for Public Speakers. They prepare and rehearse to make their presentations more effective. Public speakers use rehearsals to simplify their message and find new ways to engage their audience through stories, analogies, and other interplay activities.
Give Public Presentations
The Public Speaker shall be expected to stand on stage and deliver live presentations and seminars. Their talks shall hold audience attention and encourage participation to be successful. A public speaker may talk to small groups of 10 or large groups of 10,000. Some presentations have a training and development component while others are more inspirational.
Promote Their Activities
Prior to any public event, the Public Speaker will assist event organizers in promoting the presentations, workshops, and seminars they will be delivering. The Public Speaker will provide the event organizers with requested materials for marketing, such as headshots, biographies, speech headlines and presentation descriptions. The Public Speaker will let their circle of influence know about ticket availability and event agendas.
Interacting with Audience Members
The Public Speaker, especially those who work in a training capacity, are expected to interact with audience members after their speeches. Through these conversations, they gain speech feedback, which they incorporate into future presentations. They also answer individual questions from audience members.
Public Speaker Skills and Qualifications
The successful candidate will possess the following essential skills:
Clear articulation The Public Speaker must be able to speak loudly, clearly, concisely without distracting verbal fillers and rambling sentences
Good body language The Public Speaker shall use vocal tone, facial expression, body language, and timing to communicate their points. Persuasive use of body language accents words and transforms presentations from boring to interesting and engaging
Sales skills Depending on the situation, the Public Speaker may need to generate sales and add allure and interest to products and services
Teaching skills The Public Speaker shall use adult learning principles to create educational presentations that are easy to understand
Memorization The Public Speaker will not rely on reading from notes or a screen but will memorize the majority of their presentations
Audience assessment skills The successful Public Speaker will evaluate their audience regularly and adapt their presentation content to crowd receptiveness and characteristics. Sometimes a crowd is very responsive and the speaker will feed off of that. If the crowd is quiet and the speaker is at least somewhat engaging, it can make for a long session.
Interpersonal skills The Public Speaker will interact with people continually and needs a positive demeanor and relationship skills to be effective at this job. Please don't be afraid to answer questions when the speaker asks, or, if the speaker has said that it is okay to ask questions during the talk, go ahead, there is bound to be somebody else with that same one.
Are you ready to apply?
So why did I bring all of this up?
I want folks to realize that there is a LOT that goes into presentations. Some speakers charge a lot of money and get fussed at for charging so much. The person booking the talk may have no idea what is really involved. A garden lecturer has to know about many different plants, diseases, pests, and other issues that are encountered in any particular garden. They never know what is going to be brought up.
I also wanted to mention something about the cost of plants. Just like everything else, the cost of plants is going up. There is a LOT that goes into that too! In the industry, we still get folks that say something like, "it's just a plant, WHY does it cost so much?" Well, I wrote an article about that too!
You can read it here: Behind The Bushes
The short summary of this entire article is this, Please be considerate of other people's time, efforts. and energy. Yes, they may thoroughly enjoy what they are doing, but there is still a lot of effort put into a good product, it should be rewarded. If you enjoyed or learned something from somebody you heard, pass the name along to others so they too can learn.
If you have any questions about this or any of my other articles, Please feel free to comment or send me an e-mail- TheCitrusGuy@netzero.com.
Or you can find me lurking around my website TheCitrusGuy.com
Happy Growing!
Darren
