If you have team members who are intimidated by the public speaking aspects of ethics bowl, here are some quick tips in the form of my Three Commandments of Public Speaking.
Commandment I: Know Thy Material
Knowing what you’re talking about as a speaker not only improves your content, but your confidence and delivery. Just imagine being asked to give an impromptu lecture on rocket booster o-rings. Right now. Unless you’re a rocket scientist who’s recently lectured on this topic, this would suck.
However, imagine being asked to give a talk two months from now on a topic with which you’re already familiar. Were you to take the time to carefully study it, craft a clear and organized message, and conduct additional background research, you’d a) have much more useful, accurate and informative ideas to share, and b) feel a heck of a lot better about sharing them.
With ethics bowl, knowing what you’re talking about means carefully reading and analyzing the cases, identifying the morally relevant details, drafting and refining a well-supported position, as well as anticipating and being able to respond to objections. It means understanding the nuances of any ethical theories that might be applied, as well as anticipating other takes on the issue, and how you might go about evaluating them. In a nutshell, it means having a breadth of understanding that will facilitate deep analysis on the fly.
Developing this level of mastery for a dozen or more cases can be tough. One strategy is to work up a summary table to help your team organize their thoughts. Click here for an article on doing that via a “case summary matrix.”
Commandment II: Be Thyself
The implicit pressure to adopt the style, mannerisms and tone of the judges (or what your team imagines the judges’ style, mannerisms and tone will be) can be strong, especially if they’re new to applied ethics and ethics bowl.
However, this is both likely to come across as transparently insincere (students are not judges, so why pretend to behave like them?), and to make your team feel a bit slimy.
Encourage them to find and become comfortable speaking in their unique voice, whatever that voice might be. Their “stage self” will be different (a little more polished, a little more formal, but still them) from their “hanging out with friends self,” or their “attending a concert self,” or even their “prepping with the team self.” But if the personalities that shine through are genuine, they’ll be more comfortable and confident, the judges will likely respect them more, and as a coach, their performance will be more likely to make you smile. (Warm smiles of pride are one of the primary perks of being an ethics bowl coach.)
Commandment III: Practice
Last, in order to develop your stage self, and in order to really know what you’re talking about, you have to practice. Your team won’t know exactly what questions will be asked, either by the moderator, the other team, or the judges, and so can’t rehearse responses. But they do know the cases, and they will have general positions sorted out beforehand, and can practice delivering an overview that establishes their mastery of the key details, as well as their general take, which they can customize and elaborate upon per the flow of the bowl.
Rehearsing a 60-second pitch that covers that much will significantly boost their confidence, and will allow them to begin speaking on a strong note. Starting strong will make a nice initial impression, affirming to themselves and everyone in the room that they’ve taken the event seriously.
To give them practice answering questions, simply conduct a mock bowl. How soon to do this during bowl preparation depends on your team’s familiarity with applied ethics, the cases and the bowl process. But there are few better ways to prepare for any event than running through the motions. That’s why actors do dress rehearsals, sports teams scrimmage, boxers spar, and militaries conduct war games. The more mock bowling, the better prepared and comfortable your team will be.
Stage Fright
Last, if you have team members who after carefully studying the material, embracing their stage selves, and rehearsing are still anxious about speaking, click here for a free chapter from my public speaking book on conquering nervousness. My “Urban Honey Badger” assertiveness drill is a little unorthodox. But it works!
For a video overview of my Three Commandments of Public Speaking, check out the below. And if you think your team could use my public speaking book, don’t buy it — just shoot me an email — happy to mail a free copy to any ethics bowl team that would do me the honor of using it. Cheers, Matt