Have you been asked to setup a meeting? How do you arrange the invite and who do you include? How do you prepare and execute? Are you giving the presentation?

Look, we've all been there — the meeting that never seems to end, all the speakers tend to ramble, where the next scheduled group is impatiently knocking on the little glass window in the door, and worst of all, you have no idea what was supposed to happen. When you exit such a meeting, what runs through your mind? I'll bet it's something like, "next time Bob sends me a meeting a request, I'm going to ignore it."

Yeah, probably a good idea.

Rhetoric.

Such a dirty word. It conjures up of pencil mustachioed villains; side-show hustlers, cigar crunching, baby kissing politicians; well groomed business suit bosses; old white-haired Greeks in togas from ancient history; fire and brimstone preachers; and many, more negative images, all of whom leave a bad taste of people who manipulate others, their audiences, into working against their own best interest, and all in favor of the person on the podium.

People who are rhetorically skillful seem like swindling magicians, able to lie, conive and manipulate our words and thoughts with mere linguistic gymnastics.

It's time to claim the word Rhetoric back for the people!

It's not uncommon for a presenter, be it someone in a meeting, or a toastmaster, or a master of ceremonies to use the phrase, "So without further ado..." to transition between sections of an event.

It's a bit an overused trope, don't you think? It's also a bit lazy, but I get it. It a clause that sounds just sophisticated enough that we, as speakers, hope that the audience will value us a little bit more. Or, probably more often, we do it because we're uncomfortable making transitions between slides or portions of a meeting and the commonplace nature of the idiom is, well, comfortable.

So what can you do to replace it with something more original and without feeling too awkward?

We all get nervous when we get on stage. As Mark Twain put it:

There are two types of speakers: Those who get nervous and those who are liars.

—Mark Twain (attributed)

But some folks — okay, most folks — get it in their head that they have to provide a pitch perfect performance. This expectation causes even deeper anxiety and in turn, the butterflies take on monstrous proportions. It doesn't need to be that way.

No, it's not Godzilla's next major foe.

Chiasmus is where the second part of a sentence mirrors the first part, but in reverse. The one I like to use to remind myself to keep things humble is:

Take pride, but don't let pride take you.

But there is a more famous one most US Americans are familiar with...

A few years ago, I attended a TEDx conference in Portland, OR. There were a number of inspirational and interesting speakers, but I came away from it more upset than inspired. Many people did, as it turns out. As I walked out of the auditorium after the last speaker, I heard many mumblings about how cranky people were and how their expectations were not met.

All because of one person: the very first speaker.

In Daniel Pink's book, To Sell is Human (Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Sell-Human-Surprising-Moving-Others-ebook/dp/B0087GJ8KM), he writes about the ABC's of moving people; that is, how to persuade and sell to other folks. His ABC's are:

Keep this mind when giving a presentation or speech: tis far better to agitate than to irritate.

Today, I visited the District 55, Division J International Speech contest for Toastmasters, here in Austin, Texas. Toastmasters regularly holds these contests and it's a great way to see some fantastic speakers, one of whom might win the final contest held this summer in Colorado.

The winner of today's contest gave a stirring speech about her brother, and intelligent, fun loving fellow with some quirky ideas on life (at least to some people!). The final part of her story was the revelation that her brother was dying; she had come to take him to the hospital, something he refused to do for himself, but after some time, conversation, and reflection, decided to respect his opinion on the matter. She wanted to respect who he was as a person. It was touching and very personal; in my opinion, easily the best speech out of the five that were presented.

What is public speaking? Most people arguably would qualify public speaking as a performance of sorts not unlike being on stage for a play or in a movie. A speaker has a prepared dialog and is delivering it to a audience who, generally, do not interact with the "performer."

And rightly so that we should think of public speaking in the light of being a performance. But public speaking is also a conversation, and when a speaker approaches it as such, public speaking takes on a new light.