Memorandum

To:

Mrs. Renee Pay

From:

Hailee Horton

Date:

December 1, 2015

Re:

Professional Speaker Analysis

I had the opportunity to attend the 16th Annual Leadership Conference at

Utah Valley University on Monday, October26, 2015. The title of the
conference was Come Alive. Hoan Do was the keynote speaker in the
conference. He was a very enthusiastic speaker who taught my many things.
Among those things was the perspective of looking at life with a happy,
upbeat attitude.
Organization
Hoan Do taught me many different things throughout the progression of his
speech. One of the points was a challenge to Choose the Right Attitude. To
help us understand better he used changing your radio station as an
example. Changing your radio station expanded on the idea of thinking
outside of the usual and to be positive. Not only changing your thinking, but
changing your perspective and having more positive thoughts on life. If you
ever find yourself not liking what youre hearing, we were instructed to cut it
out and tune ourselves and our thoughts to a new station; a station without
static and all the depression of the world.
Another main point he expressed was Finding Your Outfit. You go through
many different ideas of what you want to wear and what you could wear
from searching through your closet. As well as searching through your closet
for the right outfit, you go through life searching for your passion. You may
not be able to find the right outfit in the beginning, but we need to learn
how to be patient with ourselves and the opportunities we are given.
The final point he mentioned was Making Meaningful Connections. In
making connections, Hoan Do suggests having a mentor, a mentee, and a
mate. A mentor is someone you look up to and aspire to become like. While
you already look up to them you also learn a lot from them and allow
yourself to be taught. Mentees are people that you can personally assist and
be a mentor for. A mate is someone you care for and have learned to help
when they need it and you know that they would do the same for you. When
you make meaningful connections with your peers throughout high school,
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you could be making acquaintances with potential connections in the future.

For example, if you become really close friends with a peer in high school he
could turn into the CEO of a big company. Since you are old friends you may
be able to take advantage of your association and get an interview and
possibly a job just from making friends with someone in your past. Simple
conversations could easily turn into potential job interviews, so make sure
you are always on the ball and being social with the type of people you could
see working for in the future.
The organizational pattern used by Hoan Do was Cause and Effect.
Throughout Hoan Dos speech he continued to use personal experiences and
examples of actions he took that would have an effect throughout his own
life. By using personal stories, from his school years, it was a lot more
relatable for his audience. An example of an effect he gave us was also a
main point in his speech. He incorporated Choosing the Right Attitude to
give us an idea of how choosing the right attitude can have a positive effect
on our lives in a general sense. He then gave us the idea to Cut out the
Whack Songs. The cause would be finding something in your life, on your
radio station that you do not approve of or want in your life. The way you
need to cut it out and tune onto another station. The effect in this case would
be having a more positive attitude about yourself. This can also come into
play when you are put down due to your mistakes or others opinions of you.
By cutting out this negative impact you have a positive outlook on what you
have going for you in life and your self-perspective. Since the effect of a
cause is never for certain I would assume the Cause and Effect pattern
would be using inductive reasoning. The outcomes of ones action are never
for certain and continue to be probable, depending on the evidence given
and the cause of the outcome. Hoan Do gave an example of inductive
reasoning by telling us a story of one of his high school experiences as a
wrestler. He was constantly trying his hardest to improve and reach his full
potential, but never thought of himself as the best out there. Once he
realized that he had the potential and the capability to reach his full
potential, not others expectations, he started to succeed and do as well as
he wanted to do. Since he was positive and decided that he was doing the
best he could do, he started to succeed. Your outcome is only as good and
your own expectations.
Supporting Material
Ethos
Ethos is identified as the credibility a person or speaker has. The conference
program stated: Hoan Do is a student success coach, author and competitor
in NBCs hot show, American Ninja Warrior. From an early age, Hoan
understood the sacrifices his parents has made in their escape to the United
States during the Vietnam War. Feeling indebted to his parents for their
courageous pursuit of a better life, Hoan vowed to ensure that one day, he
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would be able to take care of his parents. Hoans hard work took him to
Malibu, California where he attended Pepperdine University. Recognized as
the best youth mentor by the International Examiner, Hoan travels across
North America speaking at colleges, high schools, and student leadership
conferences where he shares practical advice that helps students to succeed
in and out of school. Hoans engaging style and abili8ty to share important
life lessons in a way that resonates with his audiences has earned him the
Verizon Wireless Motivator Award. All of his achievements built up his ethos
so well, and made his credibility that much better. Along with all of that, his
speaking showed how great of a speaker he actually is. He kept his audience
entertained the whole time with different stories and activities to keep us
engaged.
Pathos
Pathos is defined as a communicative persuasion in accordance to the
audiences emotions. Hoan Do is a very comedic individual who used his
jokes as a way to relate to his audience and to provide a very fun, youthful
tone to his speech. As he continued to tell jokes and keep it as entertaining
as he could, he figured out how to grab, and keep, the attention of many
young adults. By staying clear of any depressing or serious conversations he
continuously had the attention of his audience. Comedy was one main factor
that he noticed to be useful and continued to use it throughout his speech.
Since the audience reacted so well to his comedy it showed a very good
outcome.
Logos
Logos is defined as an act of persuading your audience by reason, as well as
logistics. Hoan Do used Logos in about every topic he spoke about. In any
circumstance of persuasion, whether it be credibility or touching peoples
emotions, you must have some type of logistics or system behind it. Every
story that was told appealed to his audience in a way that captivated us. In
order to be able to successfully do this, one must have a plan or a system
behind their every action. Throughout Hoan Dos entire speech he was able
to approach us, as teenagers, with a system that captivated us, but also had
some meaning behind it. Many times that I have observed professional
speakers they have either had to choose one or the other. If you choose to
captivate without any meaning then what is the point of the speech in the
first place?
One very specific example of Logos that I noticed and took very serious note
of was, Lower your stress to increase your success. I often think about this
saying when I am working towards goals in my life. In Company it has been a
big help. It has taught me to think optimistically when it comes to my
success. The less that I think about things and stress about them the more I
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can accomplish. I feel that stress is a way of putting yourself down and
doubting yourself. If you think less about all of the things you have to do, and
take it one part at a time, you will be able to act on your thoughts instead of
dwelling on them and making them a larger problem than they have to be.
Another part to , Lower Your Stress to Increase Your Success, is taking
action in the moment. If you become a leader of today, not tomorrow then
you will be able to act on things as they come instead of dwelling and
making yourself doubt your thoughts and actions.
Delivery
Hoan Do was a very prepared public speaker! He used many nonverbal
examples that helped us to more fully understand what he was trying to
portray to us, as the audience. As he was speaking I continued to notice his
eye contact. I found it very important to be able to see that he kept good eye
contact with everyone in the audience. This made it a lot easier to relate to
him when he was telling personal stories. I believe you can read individuals
through their eyes. You can tell when they feel pain, or compassion, and
anything they may be feeling at the moment. Another major physical quality
I noticed about Mr. Do was his ability to move his hands precisely with his
words. The way that his hand flowed right in with his words seemed to be so
natural for him. All of his movements caught the attention of the audience
and kept them very in tune with what he was explaining. Along with moving
his hands around he moved his whole body around. I feel that his ability to
move around with his gestures also helped him to create good eye contact
with everyone around him. There was a happy medium though between the
amount of hand gestures given and the words he was projecting. Sometimes
there are speakers who use their hands so much that they go past the line of
no return. After they start using their hands to speak, it is a constant
distraction for the rest of the time.
One of the things that helped Hoan Do along with his speech were his visual
aids. He started out with a PowerPoint that helped explain him and where he
came from. Most, if not all, of the slides contained detailed pictures without
any words that he would proceed to explain to us. The only thing I noticed
that wasnt ideal was the amount of time he spent on each slide. He was
continually talking for ten minutes at a time and would remain on the same
slide. He also used a cheer routine to give a very clear example of Choosing
the Right Attitude. He threaded these two ideas together by telling us that if
we would choose the right attitude and make the best of every situation that
we can make the best of those very situations.
Motivation
Motivation is a critical element of any speech. There is motivation in the
topic as well as the preparation of the speech. In order to be able to motivate
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others to act on what you are speaking about you have to be equally, if not
more, motivated to prepare for the speech. I have also come to find that
motivation is also incorporated into the organizational pattern as well as
Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. In order to have a positive outcome of any
situation you have to use the motivation to make yourself believe that
anything that happens will all turn our okay. Huan Do was a very inspirational
speaker who made me want to act on what was spoken. Being able to hear
that no matter the problem, there is always a way to find a solution. His
personal stories of his life helped me to understand the thrust of motivation
he had to have to make himself proud and reach the self-image he had
visualized of himself. He spoke of a time when he struggled with a school
assignment and how he wasnt comfortable with the project, but by the end
of it he decided to get over his pride and go the best he could with what he
had.