Foundations and How to Start
Winston frames speaking as a learnable skill driven more by knowledge and deliberate practice than innate talent (Knowledge + Practice over Talent), then shows how to open: lead with an empowerment promise rather than a joke, and keep an audience oriented by cycling on the subject, fencing your idea off from others, using verbal punctuation, and posing well-chosen questions.
- In this Section
- 3 learning activities
Explore this Section
Join the workbook to keep your learning progress.
In this Section
-
YouTubeRequired Not available yet
Speaking Is Learnable: Knowledge and Practice Beat Talent
Winston argues that the quality of communication is largely a matter of how much knowledge you have and how much you practice with it, with only a small role for inherent talent (the K + P + T formula). He illustrates this with the skiing anecdote about Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton, where he — the better skier — had the knowledge and practice she lacked, concluding that deliberate learning can outpace raw talent. The lesson frames this as the talk's opening promise: a set of speaking techniques that learners can add to their own repertoire to get their ideas valued.
Join to record your progress
-
YouTubeRequired Not available yet
Starting Strong and Keeping an Audience Oriented
Winston shows how to open a talk and how to keep listeners with you. Rather than starting with a joke — which falls flat while people are still settling in — he recommends an empowerment promise: telling the audience what they will know at the end that they did not know at the start. He then offers audience-orientation heuristics: cycling on the subject (say it multiple times, since roughly 20% of listeners fog out at any moment), building a fence around your idea to distinguish it from others', using verbal punctuation to create landmarks that let people re-board, and posing a carefully calibrated question. He closes by urging learners to watch speakers they admire and build their own repertoire and personal style.
Join to record your progress
-
WorksheetRequired Not available yet
Foundations and How to Start
Check your understanding and apply the ideas from this section.
Join to record your progress