Public Speaking Styles

Dr. Hlne Dieck, a welfare specialist at QF and former project

manager and researcher at the French Ministry of Defense, gave a talk about
public opinion and its effects on post-cold war U.S. military interventions. I
was intrigued by not only the sheer subject of the talk, but also by the fact
that it was going to be presented by a French female researcher. The cold
war is not very often discussed in the 21st century, especially not from a
European perspective, and even more less in the Middle East. The role of
women in politics and the overall reputation of such researches are not very
well-established in this region. Due to all of those challenges, I was curious
about whether this presentation would be successful in an engineering
university, and whether such a speaker will address those issues in an
interesting manner. Little did I know, the speaker delineated absolute
mastery of both speaking skills and guiding the audiences interest and
attention throughout the presentation.
The speaker first started with establishing a strong speaking ground
and credibility by introducing herself, her career history, and the significance
of the different kinds of research that she has done. Through the confidence
in her voice and the presence she showed at the beginning of the lecture,
she almost pushed the thought of Of course, a former manager at Frances
Ministry of Defense is not be taken lightly, into the audiences minds, who
were now less likely to dismiss her talk as one of lower caliber or complexity.
Although many of the attendees were American, the challenge of bringing
the subject to the interest of the rest of the audience was still to be
overcome.
Dieck, in my opinion, found a fair balance in merging the technicality of
the report with the local interests of the audience present. At many point,
she would refer and emphasize on parts of her research that included
interventions into Iraq and Pakistan, conflicts that audience is very familiar
with. Although much of her research was focused on interventions such as
those of Hawaii and Vietnam, she gave a brief history of each conflict and
related the politics behind to general themes that everyone could make use
of. Had she not done that, I believe the audience would have been otherwise
lost between the facts and transitions between the different military
instances that every the average American would not be very familiar with.

Finally, she found interesting ways to get the audience involved, as

asking the audience some relevant history questions and nominating people
to answer. Interactiveness is one feature that I try to employ often in my
presentations, but seeing how useful it can be in such cases, Ill definitely try
to employ it even more. One thing that I could think of that the speaker could
have done better is including a few French interpretations or words, since
she is a French speaker herself, and adding a special flavor to the
presentation will always help make her stand out.