The ability to speak confidently and convincingly in public is a crucial skill for anyone who wants to take an active role in the classroom, workplace, and community. As you master the techniques of speaking in front of audiences, you’ll find that it is a powerful vehicle for personal and professional growth.

Gain a Vital Life Skill

Skill in public speaking will give you an unmistakable edge in life, leading to greater confidence and satisfaction. Whether you want to do well in an interview, stand up with poise in front of classmates or in other group situations, or parlay your skills in your community or other public venues, public speaking offers you a way to fulfill your goals. Business magnate Warren Buffett passionately extols the role that public speaking has played in his success:

Be sure to do it, whether you like it or not . . . do it until you get comfortable with it. . . . Public speaking is an asset that will last you 50 or 60 years, and it’s a necessary skill; and if you don’t like doing it, that will also last you 50 or 60 years. . . . Once you tackle the fear and master the skill, you can run the world. You can walk into rooms, command people, and get them to listen to you and your great ideas.¹

Advance Your Professional Goals

Now, more than ever, public speaking has become both a vital life skill and a potent weapon in career development. Recruiters of top graduate school students report that what distinguishes the most sought-after candidates is not their “hard” knowledge of their majors, which employers take for granted, but the “soft skills” of communication, which fewer candidates display.² Similarly, dozens of surveys of managers and executives reveal that ability in oral and written communication is the most important skill they look for in a college graduate. In a recent survey of hundreds of business leaders, conducted on behalf of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), 93 percent ranked the ability to communicate clearly in oral and written form as more important than an undergraduate’s major.³ Among employer members of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), communication skills top the list of skills desired in new college graduates (see Table 1.1). Survey after survey confirms the value of verbal and written communication skills to employers across the board, making the public speaking course potentially the most valuable one you can take during your undergraduate career.

Enhance Your Career as a Student

Preparing speeches calls upon numerous skills that you can apply in other courses. As in the speech class, many courses also require that you research and write about topics, analyze audiences, outline and organize ideas, and support claims.

These and other skill sets covered in this guidebook, such as working with visual aids and controlling voice and body during delivery, are valuable in any course that includes an oral-presentation component, from English composition to nursing or engineering. Students in technical disciplines and the sciences are often called upon to explain complex information clearly and accessibly, and visual aids are often an important part of such presentations (Chapters 20, 21, and 22). Identifying target audiences (Chapter 6), explaining concepts clearly (Chapter 23), and applying techniques of persuasion and argument (Chapters 24, 25, and 26) are critical skills for anyone speaking to an audience, from the business student to the health sciences major. Guidelines for speaking across the curriculum, including speaking in science and mathematics, technical, social science, arts and humanities, education, nursing and allied health, and business courses, are the focus of Chapter 31, “Speaking in Your Other Courses.”

Find New Opportunities for Civic Engagement

While skill in public speaking will help you in your courses and contribute to both career advancement and personal enrichment, it also offers you ways to enter the public conversation about social concerns and become a more engaged citizen. Public speaking gives you a voice that can be heard and can be counted.

Climate change, energy, government debt, health care, immigration reform—such large civic issues require our considered judgment and action. Yet too many of us leave it up to politicians, journalists, and other “experts” to make decisions about critical issues such as these. Not including presidential elections, only about 35 percent of people in the United States regularly vote. Of these, only 22 percent are 18 to 29 years old.⁴ Over eighty million eligible voters did not participate in the 2012 presidential election. In recent mayoral races in Dallas, Texas, and Charlotte, North Carolina, only 5 and 7 percent, respectively, of registered voters cast their vote. Overall, voting patterns in the United States are substantially lower than most other established democracies around the world.⁵ When we as citizens speak up in sufficient numbers, democracy functions better and change that truly reflects the will of the people occurs. Leaving pressing social issues to others, on the other hand, is an invitation to special interest groups who may or may not act with our best interests in mind.

As you study public speaking, you will have the opportunity to research topics that are meaningful to you, consider alternate viewpoints, and choose a course of action.⁶ You will learn to distinguish between argument that advances constructive goals and uncivil speech that serves merely to inflame and demean others. You will learn, in short, the “rules of engagement” for effective public discourse.⁷ As you do, you will gain confidence in your ability to join your voice with others in pursuit of issues you care about.

Table 1.2, “Civic Engagement on the Web,” lists websites devoted to education about key policy issues and candidates and to engagement in social causes.