Effective Speaking - What we can learn from Peter Mandelson , both a communicator and public speaking expert and The Third Man Posted By : Alan McMahon

Peter Mandelson, helped by his abilities as a effective speaking and public speaking expert, has played a prominent part in the Labour party during their time in power.

Mandelson, no stranger to, has caused even more with the release of his new book ? The Third Man.

His effective speaking abilities were on display at Foyle?s bookshop in London.

The evening took the form of an interview on stage by Times columnist James Harding and, putting aside the politics, and even the personal issues covered, it was a Master Class in both how to have an audience eating out of your hand and in effective speaking.

It is said that when you want to know how to do something that you do not need to learn how to do it yourself, you simply need to find someone who is good at it and role model or copy them. In this case our focus is effective speaking and public speaking.

Let?s look at what contributed to his very effective speaking performance.

There are seven paths to effective speaking and it was clear to me that he followed all seven when addressing his audience. Here I?d like to concentrate on just two of these.

Path 1 ? Be well organised and Path 4 ? Words and language

This is how Peter Mandelson performed in these two areas of effective speaking technique;

Path 1 ? Clearly he knew his subject very well and was prepared for the event.

When questioned he took time to think what his answer would be rather than speaking straight away. The gap was approximately 2 to 4 seconds before he started speaking and this gave him plenty of time to think before replying.

An interesting point regarding being well organized for an effective speaking event was this. The interviewer explained to the audience that their questions should not be speeches or statements and should be short and to the point. If he hadn?t done this the evening might have run over time or, sin of sins, it might have been boring. It all ended on time and was a lively and interesting experience.

Path 4 ? You did not need to know the content of his book or be knowledgeable about politics to understand the words and language used to get a lot from an evening with this effective speaking expert.

He is obviously a heavyweight intellectual and perhaps surprisingly Peter?s choice of language made him very easy to understand. His language was accessible rather than being lofty and difficult to follow.

Further when speaking he used self deprecating humour to great effect, and with a slant that always made him seem in command of the situation.

This for me was one of the great insights and lessons that I learned from watching an effective speaking and public speaking master at work.

In a nutshell what we can learn from Peter Mandelson is that to be an effective speaking and public speaking master you firstly need to take your time when answering questions, don?t panic and give yourself time to think, and secondly, use language that is easy for your audience to understand.