What Makes a Public Speech Good
Speaking in public often makes people anxious, and it does so for a good reason – getting a message across to a range of people without being misinterpreted is a challenging task. However, by using the techniques that help grasp people’s attention and introducing a product or an idea in an inspiring and intriguing manner is bound to help make the speech successful. The 2007 speech made by late Steve Jobs is a stellar example of how to capture the audience’s attention and introduce not only a product but an innovative idea so that it could remain impressively huge even a decade later (Lucas, 2008b).
In retrospect, clever use of rhetoric and the nonverbal elements of communication was what made Jobs’ speech so memorable. While one must give credit to the groundbreaking ideas that the innovator introduced to the audience, the delivery of the information also played a significant part in the success of the performance. Moreover, the sincerity of the speech and the lack of artificial elements contributed to the overall positive impression and made Jobs’ ideas stand out.
Gesture: Opening to Others
When considering the way in which Jobs used non-verbal elements of communication to render a specific idea or concept, one must give him credit for using “natural and spontaneous” (Lucas, 2008a, p. 257) gestures that created the impression of honesty and, therefore, made the audience trust the speaker. One might argue that, at some point, Jobs folded his hands on his chest, therefore, creating the impression that is typically viewed as uninviting. Indeed, the gesture of hands folded on one’s chest has been viewed as hostile and unwelcoming, especially when trying to reach out to the viewers and appeal to them emotionally.
However, further studies have shown that the identified idea is a myth that has nothing to do with reality. In fact, the realm of nonverbal communication used to have a plethora of theories that would, later on, prove to be completely detached from reality: “Over the years, more nonsense has been written about gesturing than any other aspect of speech delivery” (Lucas, 2008a, p. 257). Therefore, the fact that, at some point in his speech, Jobs folds his hands on his chest is not to be viewed as the factor that would make the audience feel alienated, and nor should he placed his hands behind his back be considered a positive communication technique. Instead, the amount of gesturing and the appropriateness thereof needs to be analyzed.
Although Jobs did use gestures quite a lot in his performance, the movement of his hands was always appropriate as it served a specific purpose. When he wanted to emphasize a particular aspect of the presentation, he would lift his hands or wave them slightly to mark that the on-coming piece of information is crucial to understanding his idea better. Therefore, he created the impression of a confident speaker who knows what he is talking about; as a result, the overall delivery of the speech could be viewed as of rather high quality. The gestures that Jobs used seemed to be spontaneous and natural, yet they also contribute to making his speech convincing and his ideas inspiring.
Delivery: Excite, Surprise, Inspire
Addressing technology-related issues and at the same time keeping the general audience invested is not an easy task. Numerous problems also arise when the need to simplify the technology-related concepts, at the same time acknowledging the audience’s intelligence, appears.
When analyzing the speech delivered by Jobs and determining the goals that he pursued in his performance, one may believe that informing the audience was the primary goal of his and that Jobs’ main endeavor concerned shedding light on the nature and specifics of his invention. While there is an element of informative speaking in his delivery, it is also very clear that Jobs wanted to persuade the viewers that his idea was worth admiring as a groundbreaking concept in the world of informational technology.
On the one hand, Jobs tried to inform the audience about the ample amount of opportunities that the iPhone could offer. The identified delivery of information aligns with the key principles of the speeches about concepts as they are interpreted by Lucas (2008c). Indeed, there is an evident focus on the specific elements of the concept in question, i.e., the three components that constitute an iPhone (including an iPod, a phone, and the Internet). As soon as Jobs mentioned that the underlying idea of the three elements in question is the focus of his speech, it became clear that he was trying to introduce the members of the audience to a larger concept that was bound to herald a new era in the information technology development. In other words, three is a purpose, the central idea, and the main points that Jobs wanted to convey to the audience. The presence of the identified elements aligns with the framework for an informative speech suggested by Lucas (2008c).
However, there are also elements of a persuasive speech in Jobs’ performance. Apart from tricking people into paying attention, he also tried to convince them that the iPhone was going to become the future of the IT industry. Jobs mentions the concept of a breakthrough several times, saying at some point that the iPhone is “five years ahead of any other phone” (Jobs, 2007, 00:08:41). Thus, it could be argued that he tried to plant the idea of the iPhone being a crucial part of the IT development process into the audience’s minds. From the perspective of the persuasive speech framework, Jobs’ performance gains additional significance and weight.
At this point, one must mention that the concept of persuasion has not been defined accurately yet despite years of extensive studies (Lucas, 2008c). Furthermore, it could be argued that the difficulties associated with defining the phenomenon arise from numerous theories that strive to explain it: “There are a number of scientific models of the persuasive process and a wide range of respected theories about how persuasion works” (Lucas, 2008c, p. 324). As a result, assessing Jobs’ speech through the lens of the persuasive speech format is a rather tricky task.
Jobs managed to use the language that was understandable to an average viewer, also appealing to their sense of humor: “You can do multi-fingers gestures on it… And, boy, have we patented it” (Jobs, 2007, 00:07:31-00:07:37). As a result, the audience was amused, invested, and surprised at the drastic changes that the iPhone as an invention inflicted upon the industry. It should be noted that using humor as the means of reaching out to the audience is the approach that should be taken with a grain of salt. On the one hand, a joke that guarantees to get the audience to laugh or, at least, get a chuckle of most of the viewers, is likely to create a more comfortable environment both for the speaker and the audience. On the other hand, making a joke that is bound to work in any environment is a rather complicated task since it is impossible to produce the one that will appeal to all members of the population regardless of their age, culture, sense of humor, etc. In addition, there is always a possibility that a joke will hurt some of the vulnerable members of the population at whom it may be directed. In his performance, Jobs, however, managed to use humor in a most welcome and appropriate manner by directing it at himself and his company. As a result, the threat of offending some of the members of the audience was avoided, and the joke was made easily understandable by all viewers.
Content: Precision and Accuracy
Even though Jobs did not overload his speech with engineering- and computer-related terminology, the essential information was represented to the audience in a very accurate and concise manner. The imagery described by him, e.g., the stylus and the associated problems, was vivid and memorable. The identified characteristic of Jobs’ presentation can be deemed as quite positive since “One sign of a good novelist is the ability to create word pictures that let you ‘see’” (Lucas, 2008a, p. 231). As a result, the audience was capable of memorizing the product and the innovative features that it had to offer.
People Go, the Message Stays: Quality of the Speech
Because of the use of gestures, a careful choice of words for framing the concept of an iPhone, and the elaborate presentation of the content, the speech made by Steve Jobs at MacWorld 2007 remains powerful even nowadays, when an iPhone seems to have become part and parcel of the communication process is not only the business environment but also in people’s personal life. When analyzing the performance to understand what made it so powerful and why its impact has an incredibly strong staying power, one must admit that the use of the elements of a persuasive and informative speech made Jobs’ delivery very efficient.
Furthermore, the use of gestures that could be observed during Jobs’ performance allowed subverting some of the most common myths about nonverbal communication. For instance, the supposition that, by folding one’s hands on one’s chest, one is likely to create an impression of hostility, was proven quite wrong given the levels of excitement and investment during Jobs’ speech, when he used the identified gesture. Furthermore, the theory about the appropriateness of gestures as the means of gaining the viewers’ trust and making them inclined to believe the speaker was proven after an analysis of the nonverbal communication used by Jobs.
Therefore, the performance under analysis can be viewed as a graphic representation of how a public speech can be made non-trivial and engaging. Despite the fact that Jobs did not resort to any unique speech techniques, the overall quality of his performance was very high because of the clarity of the message and the elaborate choice of tools for getting the message across to the target audience. Therefore, the performance can be deemed as exemplary.
References
Lucas, S. E. (2008a). Presenting the speech. In The art of public speaking (10th ed.) (pp. 222-297). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Lucas, S. E. (2008b). Speech preparation: Organizing and outlining. In The art of public speaking (10th ed.) (pp. 164-221). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Lucas, S. E. (2008c). Varieties of public speaking. In The art of public speaking (10th ed.) (pp. 298-410). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Jobs, S. (2007). Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone at MacWorld 2007.YouTube. Web.