From Behind the Desk to the Front of the Stage

CHAPTER 4

Content Versus Style

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

—Maya Angelou, American poet, singer, and civil rights activist

There is plenty of research that shows audiences respond much more to style than to content. Up to 90 percent of a presentation’s impact can be attributed to the speaker’s voice and body language, a frightening thought for the inexperienced speaker.¹ Put another way, content is not king when it comes to public speaking: you have to work on the style too (see Figure 4.1).

Figure 4.1 The speaker’s impact

The visual ...