Matthew Brown

ENCE424
First Pearl Diving Assignment
What are two or three concepts you learned from the readings
thus far and how are you applying them?
Within the first weeks of class I have already gained much valuable information from the
weekly readings. At this point in the semester we have been assigned three weeks of readings to
which have each delved into some different area revolving around public speaking and
communication. In the following paragraphs I will describe three different concepts that I have
learned from the readings as well as how I have been applying them not only in the classroom
but in all aspects of life. These three different concepts are: the transferable skills that are learned
in parallel with learning about public speaking, how to handle speaking anxiety and how to
remove oneself from an unwanted conversation.

Transferable Skills from Public-Speaking

A Pocket Guide to Public Speaking examines the transferable knowledge between public
speaking and other parts of life. The book tells us that enhancing one’s public-speaking also
enhances their ability to critically think (O’Hair). This comes from the fact that when public-
speaking, one must be able to formulate ideas and then back them up with logical claims. Not
only do these ideas have to be formulated and backed up, but public-speaking teaches one to
present them in a concise and logic order.
Furthermore, the study of public-speaking allows ones to gain credible access to the
public conversation, something like a political conversation. Public-speaking allows people to
research different social concerns that they themselves find interesting. During the research
process, they find different opinions and arguments, some that support their claim and some that
oppose their claim. One also learns to distinguish between meaningful speech that actually has
some ground to it (regardless to what side they are taking) and “uncivil speech that serves merely
to inflame and demean others” (O’Hair).
Lastly, we come to, in my opinion, the greatest of the transferable traits which is its
commonality to writing. O’Hair tells us that “Both speaking and writing often require that you
research a topic, offer credible evidence, employ effective transitions to signal the logical flow of
ideas, and devise persuasive appeals” (O’Hair). In addition to this, there is a very similar
organizational structure between a speech and an essay. This includes an introduction, a thesis,
ideas that support this thesis and then a conclusion. These skills can be used throughout one’s
schooling years and are transferable to the professional world.
As seen above, the book A Pocket Guide to Public Speaking dedicates an entire section to
show off the transferable skills from public-speaking. Even within these first couple of weeks, I
have applied many of these skills spoken about above in my school work. Recently for my
ENES317 class, I had to write a book review in which I went through the steps of reading and
researching the book, organizing my thoughts and creating an outline. In fact, many of the steps
that I have taken to write this current essay have been derived from my study of public-speaking
in the past as well as the past three weeks of readings in this class.

How to Handle Speaking Anxiety

 A Pocket Guide to Public Speaking as well as Crucial Conversations discusses the effects
of having “crucial conversations” and how to handle the speaking anxiety that comes with these
conversations (or speeches). This I believe is one of the most important topics when discussing
public-speaking in that no matter how confident someone is, there is always some sort of
nervousness when it comes to important public-speaking moments.
Crucial Conversations lays out the unfortunate truth about crucial conversations: “the
more crucial the conversation, the less likely we are to handle it well” (Patterson). This is
because the stakes are high during these conversations and the higher the stakes, the more
nervous we are and the probability of anxiety increases. The book tells us that although these
anxieties affect everyone differently, we are luckily able to learn how to get past these
impedances. I believe one of the most important steps that we are told in order to handle
speaking anxiety is “Focus on What You Really Want” (Patterson). The goal of any type of
speech is to accomplish some goal. These goals can range from entertainment to informational to
persuasion. Whatever the goal is, identification of that goal will ease the nerves and along with
it, the anxiety.
A Pocket Guide to Public Speaking has some similar ideas to reducing speech anxiety
with the first one being “Identify What Makes You Anxious”. The book offers some examples
such as “lacking positive public-speaking experience, feeling different from members of the
audience, or feeling uneasy about being the center of attention” (O’Hair). The book then offers
“proven strategies” to help with speech anxiety. Prepare, practice, modify thoughts/attitudes and
visualize success are the key strategies offered.
Personally, my speech anxiety thus far has been limited to impromptu public-speaking
scenarios. Therefore, some of the offered strategies I have not been able to use for the purpose of
counteracting speech anxiety (with that being said, for any speech I have done, I have followed
the preparation strategies mentioned in the above paragraph). For some recent interviews within
the past two weeks, I have really thought about focusing on what I really want, as mentioned in
Crucial Conversations. Behavioral questions asked during these interviews were totally
impromptu and therefore in order to refrain from getting anxious, I used many of the ideas
brought up in chapter 3 of Crucial Conversations.

Removing Oneself from an Unwanted Conversation

I believe this final concept of removing oneself from an unwanted conversation is one of
the most useful practices in everyday life. The Essentials of Business Etiquette outlines an
effective strategy of removing oneself from an unwanted conversation. Number 13 in The
Essentials of Business Etiquette tells us we must have an exit line that clearly insinuates that this
is the end of the conversation (Patcher). It also tells us that we must be the ones talking in order
to use this exit line. For example, one would answer the other persons comment and transition
directly into the exit line.
As mentioned before, I believe this is one of the most useful tools in that it happens all
the time in regular life. Within the past couple of weeks, I can think of dozens of instances where
I had tried to remove myself from an unwanted conversation. It is unbelievably common
experience to be caught in a conversation at a bar and after reading number 13 in The Essentials
of Business Etiquette I have been using the strategy of following up the other persons comment
and then throwing in my exit line. One very funny scenario that happened this past weekend, as
exactly described in the book, was using the “I need to go to the bathroom” and that other person
following up with “Oh perfect, I’ll come with you”. Another common occurrence is getting
caught in a conversation walking out of a class that was just dismissed. In this instance my usual
exit line is to again, follow up with their comment as described in the book and then use the exit
line “I have to make it to my next class, but it was nice talking to you. See you next class”.

What is an important concept you learned from the classroom activities?

At this point in the semester, we have only had two in-class activities due to the snow day
that cancelled one of our meetings. I very much enjoyed and learned a lot from our first
classroom activity of developing a rough speech around a given case. Our case prompted us to
manage a project which is designed to develop a standard engineering software package for all
121 civil engineering departments throughout the state which currently all use their own.
Working in a group and using what we read in Five Stars was very beneficial in that we actually
got to utilize some concepts that we had previously read about.
One of the most important concepts that I took away from the class was when our
professor, Dr. Shana Webster-Trotman was commenting on the importance of a presenter’s body
language. Her demonstration of what someone who is confident looks like vs. what someone
who is not confident was one of the more important concepts I have learned thus far. The subtle
changes in body language, as displayed by our professor, made a huge difference in the way I
perceived each of the speakers who followed her. I was able to use her demonstration to better
observe and critique the student speakers who came after.

How will you practice a business civility concept this week?

As mentioned in the first section of this report, the “Help! I’m in a Conversation and I
Can’t Get Out” is one of the most common situations I get in. Because I discussed this in depth
in the first section, I will describe how I practiced “I’d Like You to Meet … Er … Um” this
week (Patcher).
In my ENES317 class we were officially assigned groups this Monday. When joining up
with my group I realized there were some familiar faces. One face however was a face that I
should have known the name of but did not. Working at a beach club for many years, it was all
too common that I would forget a client’s name. Because of this I gained the ability of getting
around a conversation without knowing someone’s name however this was a special case in
which my friend (whose name I could not remember) asked me to introduce them to another
member of the group who I did know. Normally I would have just blundered the whole situation
and gotten all flustered, but I luckily had recently read The Essentials of Business Etiquette
weekly reading. I instead got ahead of the situation and made the comment “My bad but my
mind is just not working today, and I cannot remember your name whatsoever”. It was slightly
uncomfortable, but I knew it was better to get ahead then to wait till I had to introduce the two.
What have you done thus far in the course to increase your networking
abilities?
Thus far in the course, I have been able to increase my networking abilities simply by
being more open to meeting new people within the class. Our first day we were assigned to
exchanged numbers with two other people. I already had known a couple people in the class and
therefore had their numbers. I however went to talk to some people in the class who I had not
known and got their numbers in order to expand my network.
Furthermore, as I had written about in the first section of this paper, one of the concepts I
had learned from the readings was the transferrable skills from public-speaking. Although not
explicitly touched on in A Pocket Guide to Public Speaking, I believe some of the topics touched
on in Crucial Conversation and The Essentials of Business Etiquette have parallels to increasing
one’s networking abilities. My belief is that networking in itself comes down to communication.
Working on public-speaking in itself (gaining confidence in any speaking environment) is a way
to increase one’s communication skills. Being that public-speaking is a large part of this course,
just by actively listening to critiques on other’s public speaking abilities is a way that I have been
increasing my networking abilities thus far.
 Reference List

O'Hair, Dan, et al. A Pocket Guide to Public Speaking. 2016.

Pachter, Barbara. The Essentials of Business Etiquette: How to Greet, Eat, and Tweet Your Way
to Success. 2013.

Patterson, Kerry, et al. Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High. 2011.