Becoming an outstanding speaker: keep it simple
Remember always that your purpose is to communicate.
Keep it clear
Whatever your topic is, I’ll bet that you are most definitely not speaking to convince someone that you are smart. And likewise you are not giving a briefing or chatting with your boss (this tip applies to both public and private speaking) solely to have performed the act of speaking. You are trying to educate, persuade, or inform your audience or conversation partner relative to a particular topic in which you are the expert.
We covered this when we were talking about writing, and I used the phrase “eschew obfuscation” to illustrate the point that while obscure words may be fun to use, they generally don’t further understanding. So say “be clear” instead.
The perils of trying to sound smart
In oral communications there is even more danger to your message in using $100 phrases. If you use big words and odd turns of phrase you are just as likely as not to stumble on them, or worse, to mispronounce them.
You will take a huge credibility hit for this. Stumbling over big words highlights to your audience that you are using words with which you are not familiar in an attempt to make yourself look smart. Since you failed in your attempt, you not only don’t look smart, you look manipulative, and your audience will become uncomfortable and probably stop listening to you.
Mispronouncing is even worse than stumbling, though, because then you don’t just look manipulative, you look manipulative and dumb. Your rendering of “eschew obfuscation” comes out more like “chew on crustaceans,” making everyone uncomfortable and torpedoing your shot at getting your audience to act on your message.
Some can get away with it — you aren’t in this bunch
(And neither am I.) There are remarkable individuals who were able to overcome their tendency to mispronounce words unfamiliar to them. For example, President Truman was largely self-educated and knew the meaning of a great many words from his enormous reading, words he had never heard pronounced, and which he consequently mispronounced in public. On balance, many people admired him for this because it was part of his “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” attitude. You are not President Truman, so if you aren’t sure, look it up.
For parallel reasons, don’t use a synonym you find in a thesaurus or dictionary if it isn’t in your active vocabulary. You are very likely to misuse it. On the plus side, however, making these kinds of mistakes will give everyone something to talk about around the Coke™ machine for the rest of the week.
We all serve in our own way.
