Developing Youth Leaders

A few weeks ago, I delivered five hours of public speaking training to a group of high school students.  I don’t enjoy the anticipation of long training events as they require more preparation than most people realize, and the delivery of long training sessions is physically draining, particularly for the voice. As the day goes on, I begin to hear the tiredness in my voice.  It’s also difficult to keep the audience engaged for long periods, so I rely on my content, some video, and I work to engage the group in conversation. I much prefer 20-to-40 minute presentations, but will occasionally perform longer training events.  Once they’re complete, I enjoy considering the impact, but I usually feel some dread anticipating the event.

The event with the high school kids is now complete and there were many rewards. Part of this training was to prepare some of the group for speeches before a larger group later in the month. Feedback I received later was that three more of the kids stepped forward and decided to speak at the larger event. That delights me.  I had provided them with a simple, bulletproof structure that works anytime to build a simple, well-organized speech and, as a result, it seems their confidence grew. 

Also, a hallway conversation I had with one of the students was very rewarding. During the short lunch break I refilled my water bottle and was walking back to the class room. A shy young woman in the group smiled and thanked me for attending. I simply smiled and said it was my pleasure. But she continued, she wanted to share some more.  She said she used to be very confident, but she was bullied by a young jerk in class who always commented and mocked her after anything she’d say. She didn’t know how to manage that at the time, and it’s affected her. Something in the training event helped her.  I’m not sure what specifically helped, but I learned she was one of the students that later spoke to the larger assembly. 

We Can Have An Impact With Youth  

I wasn’t looking forward to delivering five hours of training. Now I’m glad I did.  I could have predicted that I would be pleased once the training was complete. I had no idea what the exact outcome would be, but I was confident some attendees would receive great value.

I didn’t do much more than offer the attendees some simple organizational techniques, some ideas about how to engage audiences, and some practice time before an audience of peers. I suppose I gave them the opportunity to experiment telling some of their stories and assessing and shaping the stories impact and value. I showed them some video of some great speeches including the well-known Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford University. In that speech Jobs tells three stories, makes sure the audience understands the point of the stories, and is done in 15 minutes.  It’s such a great speech for so many reasons. It's been viewed 40 million times at time of writing. You can see the speech here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&t=4s

We had a humorous moment when I introduced the Jobs video as content from “the late, great Steve Jobs,” and one of the students stopped me to say ‘wait, you said late.” The young man who was surprised with this news would have been around age 7 when Jobs died. Most of the class was aware Jobs had died 10 years ago and this was a humorous moment shared with the group.    

So, the end result for the students was increased confidence in their speech preparation and skills, a good discussion on what makes a speaker effective, and some experience sharing their personal stories and ideas.

There are times when I, and you, know we have value to share from our experience. Like me, you might not revel in the anticipation of presenting. But more often than not, the impact we have is a remarkable reward for our efforts.